Wednesday 17th October,2007

Fight on the Bus.

At 3.30 am in the morning Charly my young English volunteer and I made our way to the bus bound for Maputo called Bafana Bafana. Our destination was Vilanculos to conduct a pony camp for the children. As anticipated the bus stop was a hive of activity, squawking chickens, smelly goats resigned to their fate, sleeping babies wrapped in capulanas, but this time I was confident we had good seats reserved. I vigorously waved our pre paid tickets in the conductor's face and we had to stand back for a nail biting few minutes while he reluctantly heaved squatter passengers from our reserved seats. After an enormous struggle we triumphantly clambered over a mountain of luggage and settled ourselves in, feeling a bit euphoric like climbers reaching the peaks of Kilimanjaro.

I waved cheerily at Albert the driver giving him the thumbs up that all was well. As Albert drove off he left a thick cloud of oily landrover smoke which permeated the bus and caused us all to cough. It was then things took a turn for the worse. The conductor suddenly appeared towering over us and aggressively demanded extra money for carrying our luggage. Reluctantly after an insipid argument on my part I handed over a substantial amount having visions of our luggage being tossed off the bus.

It was then that an extraordinary series of events took place. The conductor then turned to a Mozambican passenger and made the grave mistake of trying to extort a similar amount of money for carrying his luggage. Unfortunately for the conductor the passenger's rather drunk and boisterous relatives were wishing him a fond farewell. On hearing that a demand had been made for money the conductor was hauled out of the bus by one of the relatives." Pagar Nada" shouted the hysterical passenger repeatedly, whereupon his relative ran to the window and gave the driver a really hard slap across the face. As the driver retaliated with a back hand another exuberant relative not to be outdone jabbed a fist through the window and managed to punch the driver between the eyes.

Charly and I sat rigid in our seats wild eyed and extremely shocked. The conductor who had been involved in a vigorous kung fu type kicking match with the rest of the relatives reappeared and threw himself through a side window and exited with an enormous spanner like thing which he brought down on one of the relative heads. It was at this moment I jumped up demanding that sanity be restored immediately. Charly hastily pulled me back down as a wild haired woman, girlfriend of the man who was hit with the spanner, scrambled recklessly over the luggage and proceeded to strangle the bus driver. She was hauled out by a handful of hair extensions and this motivated the driver to engage gear and speed off. Sadly the door could not be closed as the relatives wedged themselves into the bus screaming obscenities. As Charly and I cowered in our seats peeping over our bags I observed through the window a few limp bodies lying in the road.

It was impossible to jump off as we were caged in by the luggage. As the driver zigzagged thought the street trying to throw off the relatives I hid my face in my hands. We finally came to a screeching halt outside the police station. There both parties disembarked and made their way through the main entrance with the bus left running. After an hour and just as I was about to make a phone call to Albert to pick us up the driver reappeared without the conductor. He eased himself into the driver's seat and to my surprise as there was not a ray of sunlight, slapped on a pair of dark, shiny sunglasses which he adjusted in the review mirror. We then proceeded on our journey as if nothing had ever happened. 

We had not gone far before there was a ominous rattling noise underneath the bus. Passengers were sticking their heads though the window to see what the problem was. Our driver seemed oblivious to the clanging of metal hitting the tarmac. Eventually it sounded as though we had lost the bottom half of the chassis. We eventually limped to a stop and miraculously a man appeared from the bush opposite the BP garage armed with a welding rod and a gigantic gas bottle. We disembarked and flopped around in the blazing sun buying bananas from street urchins for sustenance until they had welded back what had come apart.

We finally arrived in Pambara just in time for pony camp. Pat was there to meet us looking frantic. "What the hell took you so long, I have been waiting for hours" he sounded exasperated. We didn't bother to explain. Who would believe us anyway. That's Africa for you. Its a journey and you must enjoy the ride.

Mandy Retzlaff
Chimoio
Mozambique

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