Maputo, Mozambique

Well, I'm finally here.

I went to church with the family I was staying with on Sunday morning. After church we drove straight to the airport and had lunch there. Then Nathan and Sissy left me with the final parting words, "Don't talk to any boys."

My bag was supposed to weigh 30kg, but instead it was 33kg (72.6lb). I started thinking how I would remove those extra 3 kilos. The guy asked me, "Why is it overweight?" I responded with, "It's only 3kg over. Hamna shida." He grinned and let my bag through. Woohoo!

Upstairs in the airport I had to go through security again. I greeted the guard with, "How are you?" He frowned at me dramatically and said, "Oh, not great."
"Why?" I questioned.
"Because you're leaving," he responded sadly, then he waved me through. I noticed that though he had asked the lady before me to remove my shoes, he hadn't asked me to.
"What about my shoes?" I asked.
He peered over the counter for a minute, then looked at me and replied, "They are very nice, ma'am."
Smart alec. :) I laughed.

My ticket implied that my flight would go straight from Dar es Salaam to Maputo, Mozambique. Shortly after I'd settled in and was ready for 4 hours in the air, the flight attendants came through and announced we were landing. Confused, I put my seat in its "upright position." We landed at the very small but clearly labeled "Pemba" airport. I thought maybe we were dropping off some passengers, but they herded us all off the plane and through immigration. It must have taken at least an hour.

After all the confused passengers had their visas, we got back on the plane. Once in the air, the pilot announced our flight time would be "20 minutes." I figured I must have heard him wrong. We were still in the far north of Mozambique. Maybe he said "120 minutes." Nope. Twenty minutes later we began our descent into Nampula. Surely this time we wouldn't have to get off the plane. But we did. Everyone got off and went inside. I chatted with a few other passengers as we waited for probably 20 minutes. Then we all got back on the plane and continued our journey. Thankfully that was the last stop. The next leg of our trip took us directly to Maputo. I wanted to sleep (seeing as it was dark outside) but the cabin lights were so bright that I couldn't. They fed us a meal with fish. I asked for a vegetarian one, and the guy said, "It's fish." I asked if he had anything else, and he said, "Chicken." So I ate the rice and a piece of bread.

During the first two legs of the journey, I had my row entirely to myself. Then on the third segment a guy decided to sit in the aisle seat next to me. I didn't mind, except that he had awful body odor and everytime he moved a wave would rush toward me. I turn the air conditioning on full blast to try and dissipate the smell.

We were supposed to land in Maputo at 8:40pm. I'm not sure what time we actually landed, but I didn't get my bag until 10:20. I waited as they unloaded all the bags from our flight, but mine didn't show up. Neither did the bags of the two other white guys on the flight. Another plane came in and we waited for them to unload it also. Then a third plane. Still no bags. Finally an employee thought he could help us. He walked us through a maze to another part of the airport labeled "international arrivals," thinking our bags would be there. They weren't. He chatted with a lady and then took us to a back room filled with unclaimed luggage. Sure enough, there were all our bags. Why in the world they were put there instead of with the rest of the bags, I'll never know. I'm just happy I got my bag eventually.

Justin, Neil, Janelle, and Marquelle all picked me up at the airport. It was so nice to see familiar faces!