Lemonade: Tete and South

Final Phase of the Trip. We took a bus into Tete City (Which, I wish I had more energy to write about right now. It seems like an awesome place with a humongous suspension bridge spanning Mozambique's Mississippi. Except this river has hippos), and then another one from Tete City into Chamoio, Anna's Site. I spent a few days hanging out with her and exploring before taking a chapa up to Messica with another Anna (if you're keeping track, this is Anna #3, she lives in Messica, outside of Chamoio). She had surprised me (sort of) right when we arrived in Chamoio and I was completely ecstatic to see her. She was my next door neighbor during training and she's one of my closet friends here. She like my Lauren in Africa.

Here's some pictures!

Walking across the Zambezi on Tete City's Bridge.

Old Church in Manica overlooking the city.

Manica, just down the road from Messica towards the border with Zimbabwe, is famous for the Chinhamapere Rock Paintings. But, because it's so off the beaten track, visitors seem to be rare. There's no tour center, or even a little info station. There's no Park Ranger, no sign, and no advertisements along the way. There is absolutely nothing that says these drawings are where they are except for a little blurb in the lonely planet we had

You gotta pay to get in though, whih I thought was kinda funny. But this experience is a little difference. To get to see the drawings, you need to go with a guide. The locals think the drawings are sacred, so someone needs to take you in order to perform the proper rituals required before you can see the drawings.Sure enough, when we got to the house of the overseer or owner, a older woman came out with acarved wood try asking for a donation. It was only something like 200 mts for everyone, so we happily paid it.

Sure enough, a small ceremony followed before our shoeless guide started hiking us up the side of the mountain overlooking all of Manica. You could tell this woman's done this before. A few times. She was in great shape for someone who looked as old as she did. Still, she kick our ass's getting up that mountain, performed another ceremony and than sat and waited for us as we basked in the moment, perched on the top of a historical mountain, overlooking the entire valley, and staring into Zimbabwe just over the chain of mountains in the distance.

The drawings are up there!

Infrastructure.

Following our shoeless tree-carrying woman.

Anna and her Director.

Ancient History, bro.

The View from the top. Zimbabwe's those big mountains on the Left Side.

Chamoio Anna and I parted ways the next day. School was starting up again for her, so she needed to get back to work. Messica Anna, however was still free. So we went to Beira.

Beira is a confusing city. It makes you think that it's developing and evolving as good as of them, but it's also a marvelous liar. Beira shoes progression, but it's got some pretty horrific poverty too. One thing that stands out is the Grande Hotel. Anthony Bourdain talks about on his show "No Reservations" during the Mozambique episode. Well, we went there. Nothing he says is exaggerated. A place that was once one of the nicest 5-star hotels in the world is now hell on earth.

Thousands of people living in what must be one of the most densely populated placed anywhere. It makes me think about the Kowloon Walled City. Rooms, closets, bathrooms, balconies, stairwells, and every single corner had already been claimed. People how had claimed space in the Grande Lobby brought in their own bricks and rocks in an attempt to put up small walls in order to create even a little privacy. Capulana's served as walls for others.

The entire hotel has been stripped raw. The marble was torn of the walls, the metal bannisters in stairways have been stolen, the gates along the concrete bridges connecting the buildings is gone, and in some places it looks like people even tried to pry the rebar reinforcement out from inside the concrete walls. The structure itself is failing on a catastrophic level; Support columns are crumbling due to ignorance as a result of there having been no upkeep or maintenance since being abandoned by the company that ran it.

Today, the building has such a large population that it now has it's own localized market in the front of the complex. I bought a snack there, and while talking with some girls selling the bread cakes, I got made fun of for accidentally saying a terrible word in their local language while mispronouncing the expression "Do you live here?" Good ice breaker I guess.

They told me that the building had no electricity and no running water. Wouldn't matter even if there was anyways because all the wiring and piping has already been torn out and stolen. To get water, all the residents must take their old plastic gasoline canister across the street and pay some guy to use his tap. All three or four thousand of them.

But still, even in all it's shitty glory, and probably because they have no other options, people still call the Grande Hotel home. Scary.