it could always be worse.

If you have not read “It Could Always be Worse.” Go to your local bookstore, find the children's section, and read it. It is one of my Mom's favorites and it translates incredibly well. I tell it to kids in Manjacaze often, and I think the lesson is one that we unfortunately learn again and again.

The weekend after the cyclone, I was supposed to head to Maputo for a conference. However, just as I was leaving, I got a message that the road had been flooded.

I know I complain about transportation in Mozambique a lot, but to me a flooded road meant it might be a bit slow. The road to Manjacaze floods all the time, and is still “passable” and this is the main road in Mozambique, heading right to the capital. There was just no way that the road was completely unpassable.

But about ninety kilometers from Maputo, Macia, a regular truck stop town, was filled with buses of all sizes. Buses coming down from Nampula, Quelimane, and Beira, had been stopped in Macia. Hundreds of people sat in the shade of the buses and opportunists sold mangos to the stranded travelers. I called a volunteer who lived in Macia to stay with her for the night.

As did three other volunteers heading down for the conference. That night we all spent together, excited to be reunited with all our friends the next day. We just did not believe that this road would lay unfixed any longer, how could a country function without access to its capital?

But the next day, it was clear that the road was not going to be fixed that day, or the next, or perhaps for a week.

We weighed our options and decided rather than take a boat across the flooded road (the boats were apparently way over-filled and did not seem like a great idea) and decided to take the train.

The train runs from Maputo to Zimbabawe and back again and goes passed where the floods ended (the road was flooded because a dam to the west had been opened, the train was far enough south that it was unaffected but no roads followed the train's route). One of the volunteers had taken the train and warned us that it is by no means a comfortable endevour, but we decided it was worth it, and as long as we were together we would be fine. The distance from Chokwe (where the train left) to Maputo, would have taken about four hours tops in a car, how bad could it be?

We left at around 9 PM and were assured at the train station that the train was not going to stop to load and unload cargo as it usually did, this was a train especially for all of the stranded passengers trying to get to Maputo.

We should have known better than to believe the men at the train station. Ten hours after we left, we pulled into the station in Maputo, sweaty, tired, and annoyed we arrived at our hotel around 7 AM, just
in time for breakfast before the conference.

Needless to say, I was once again reminded of the challenges of traveling in Mozambique, just when I think I have the system figured out, something happens and I get to learn it all over again. On the way back, I decided to take a chapa back rather than bolea (the road was fixed after six days), and I had never felt so comfortable in a chapa.

It could always be worse.