I decided that if I didn't see any whale sharks, then I wanted to see the manta rays which live in the area. I did 2 dives: the first was a shallow dive just to get used to diving again, since when out of practice you tend to spend most of the time looking at dials, your buddy and making sure that you have the proper buoyancy so as to not accidentally kill thousand year-old coral with you fins. The second dive, apart from wanting to see rays was done because of the first
dive.
There were 15 people on the zodiac for the first dive; 3 people doing the last dive of their open water course, myself, 4 instructors, 3 dive masters, a free diver (which means he had no air tanks...he basically was able to hold his breath for a long time) and 3 crew. Two of the dive students I had not met before and the third was an American girl I met several days earlier. The free diver was a guy from Australia who I met the day before and went out for dinner and drinks, and I vaguely knew some of the dive masters and instructors.
The free diver went in first, followed by the divers. The divers followed a buoy line held by one of the dive masters and at the bottome they were split into two groups, each following a different dive master. It was a simple dive with a maximum depth of about 18 meters and we basically made our way around a coral reef. I used up my air quicker than the other people in my group, so I surfaced with one of the assistant dive masters in our group. When I made it back on the zodiac, there was already some of the other group up there, so we just waited for everyone else to surface. By this time, my ears were hurting a bit because I didn't equalise well enough when I first entered the water.
A few minutes later, the remaining divers surfaced and were in the boat, when an uneasy feeling came over everyone. Nobody knew where Brad, the free diver was. Although I wondered why I couldn't see him when I came up, I didn't think much about it since I figured someone in the crew knew where he was and he just wasn't visible from our spot. Someone saw a person walking on the beach, so we figured he got blown by the current, but looking a bit closer we realised it wasn't him. Everybody started looking around for him, but he didn't carry a buoy with him and he went without a dive buddy, so if was in trouble there was nobody to notify the boat.
The instructors and a dive master decided to take whichever tanks had the most air and go look for him. Personally, I thought this had to be an act of desperation; trying to find a lone diver in a large area, not knowing which way the current could have taken him. I found out later that the other students felt the same way. The instructors were not in agreement as to where to look, but in the end decided to fan out from the dive point marked by the GPS. About five minutes later, two of the group surfaced with Brad.
We went to go pick them up, but as we got close we saw that they were holding him up shaking their heads in a "no" gesture. His skin was pale, lips blue, eyes closed and there was bloody water in his mask. The boat pulled up beside them to pull him in. He was big guy and quite heavy so I jumped to help pull him in, reaching down to grab his legs and pull them up over the boat while they pulled him in from the shoulders.
The instructors who found him pretty much knew any first aid attempts would be useless. Everyone else came to the same realisation when we pulled him in because as he was face down, and due to gravity, what seemed like litres of blood and water that filled his lungs rushed out onto the boat deck, where it lingered pretty much until we got the zodiac to shore. What the instructors thought at the time - having found him lying face-down in the sand not far from our entry point - and was later confirmed by the autopsy was that he had suffered from a shallow-depth black-out.
It seems free-divers use a hyper-ventilation technique to help them stay down longer than a regular person normally can. It's a standard thing, but it also puts them into a kind of state of elation. If they misjudge the amount of time they are down there, they can black out on the way back up, and if they go too fast, the air in their lungs expands so rapidly that it causes rupture. And since no-one was there to see it happen, nobody could help him and it was suspected that he had remained under water for about 40 minutes before he was found.
I've never seen a body outside of a casket, and I've never had to pick one up before either. I had read that in situations like this, one of the ways to deal with the shock is to disassociate, or turn off what is going on around them and just concentrate on what had to be done. I thought I would just tune everything out to the point where I wasn't actually aware of what I was doing. But it wasn't like that at all.
The entire time this happened there was no real emotion but I was fully lucid of the events taking place around me. As we came closer to the body, I was thinking that it was definitely Brad, and as we pulled him in I remembered that he was from Brisbane and had attended the same college I did (Though not at the same time since he was about 6 years younger) when I was on exchange at the University of Queensland. And as I reached down to remove the mask from his face and his lungs started to drain, I thought he was dead and there was nothing that could be done about it.
On the way back to shore, I wasn't thinking about the horrific accident and the loss of life. I was thinking that I was hungry, thirsty and my ears were still hurting from the dive. Occasionally, I would take a look back at the body, lying face down near the back of the boat with a small towel covering his head, and all I could think about was how odd the image looked.
It dawned on me after several days that the reason it looked so odd was that the position of the hands at his side didn't seem right. They weren't in a "wrong" position, but I realised that with the arms down to the side of his body as his were, it wouldn't be a comfortable way to lie, and thus you'd never see people in that position.
Later that day, while waiting to see if the police wanted our statements, I still hadn't had any emotional reaction to what happened. It was just a fact, no more. Fine, I had only known Brad a short while, but surely I should at least feel something regarding the loss of life, but nothing came about. I almost envied the American girl who burst into tears almost immediately when Brad was found, as she seemed to at least come to terms with what happened.
Those I spoke to seemed to think it was a natural defense mechanism to have a delayed reaction to the event. Mind you, they hadn't gone through something like this before now, and they all seemed to be moved by the event. Of course, as nasty as it is to think, they might have been faking it as well, behaving in what they thought was the accepted "normal" manner.
Well, it's been almost 2 weeks since Brad drowned and still no reaction. To be honest, it's scaring the living shit out of me! Maybe Bugs Bunny cartoons and watching too many A-Team episodes do desensitise kids to violence. Maybe my reaction is just very delayed because I have a very, very strong defensive mechanism, but how long can a delay be before you are officially a heartless, uncaring bastard? I guess one test would be to watch Bambi again. If I feel a lump in my throat when her mom dies, well then everything is OK, but if I don't…well, I'm not sure I want to find out for fear it's the latter.
What's even more troubling is the fact that my reaction - or lack of it - to Brad's death has pre-occupied and disturbed me more than the death itself. Of course, I could argue that merely writing about the event was my way of grieving, but I'm not sure I believe it. But in the interest of promoting my own saneness, I could probably be convinced.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Mozambique - Part 1
So early in the morning I boarded the bus to Maputo, Mozambique. As far as some of the buses I've seen so far in Africa this was by far not the worst, but it has seen better days. All in all, I thought that for a 10 hour trip it would more than suffice. The only real drawback was that the air conditioning didn't really work all that well, so it might be a bit uncomfortable seeing as it was quite a hot day.
After several hours we crossed into Swaziland, as that was the most direct route from Durban to Maputo. Of course, this meant that we would have to go through customs 4 times during the course of the trip, which probably accounted for 6 of hours of the 10 hour trip. Once in Swaziland, it was good to see that since the last time I passed through, it hasn't stopped raining. That was almost 2 months ago.
At first, this was quite a welcomed change from the heat in South Africa. But almost as if the powers that be heard my sigh of relief, the rain started coming down harder and harder, to the point where it was practically torrential. By this time, we didn't care that the air-conditioning in the bus was on the fritz, we were more worried about the fact that water was leaking into the bus from everywhere and a small river was beginning to flow in the space below our seats, changing direction and speed depending on whether we were accelerating or breaking.
By the time we got to Maputo in the late afternoon, the rain had mostly stopped. Not that it really mattered since all our luggage - which was in the holding bay below Bus River - was soaked. The most we could hope for was that the clothes buried deep in the packs would still be relatively dry, and in fact this was the case. As for the rest of the stuff, We would have to dry it out before it turned into a mouldy mushroom farm, but since the humidity was about 90% and the sky overcast, it seemed it best to let nature take it's course while at the same time do my share to help the burgeoning laundry industry in this country by paying someone else to wash the dank mess afterwards.
As I mentioned in the previous email, Mozambique is a Portuguese-speaking country, and for that all you Portuguese in the audience have a lot to answer for! Why the hell is Monday called "pegunda-feira"? Why isn't it, as one would assume "prima-feira"? Even more importantly, why isn't there a "prima-feira" at all? And saying "prima-feira" is actually Sunday, is not an acceptable answer, because Sunday is called something else.
Not to be overly critical, but look at the other European languages. All the romance languages implied some higher meaning into the days of the week by naming them after Roman deities. Even the French, who do nothing like anybody else just to show their French - as if we couldn't tell from a personal hygiene regiment that consists of a sole weekly shower - followed this tradition.
OK, maybe naming the days after Gods who were notorious for random killing sprees and shagging their own mothers, sisters, daughters, etc. doesn't quite fit into the Portuguese psyche, there were still the Norse gods used in northern European languages. If that still doesn't suite your fancy, you can name the days after Aztec Gods, Hindu Gods, the colours of the rainbow, species of lichen, types of stains...anything! Anything at all would be an improvement to numbering them! But even if this isn't possible, how about at the very least starting with day number 1?
I personally believe that the revolution that took place in Mozambique had less to do with atrocities committed by the Portuguese colonialist government or the human need for self-determination, than it was sheer anger of having to listen to the surrounding countries laugh at their calendar. Had they not pre-ordered all their calendars until the year 2050, I'm sure they would have changed to a more manageable language by now.
Once in Maputo, I decided I should take a walk around to see all the city has to offer. About 10 minutes later I was pretty much done, when, of course, it started to rain. So I made my way to the Franco-Mozambiquan centre, which was by far one of the nicer places in the city, with a pleasant cafe and English and French periodicals and newspapers available for everyone to read. It seems strange for France to do this, since this was a Portuguese colony, but I saw it in Namibia as well, which once belonged to Germany.
I think it's an official part of French foreign policy to go into former colonies of other European countries and build lavish buildings aimed at "cultural exchange", but in essence is just their way of saying "See, if you were our colony, everything would be like this! Not only that, but you only have to shower once a week! Remember that the next time you want to be a colony again" Of course, in their own former colonies, rather than build grand edifices to peaceful understanding, they send the Foreign Legion to kill everyone.
The next day, I decided to go north to Tofo, which has beautiful beaches, the warm Indian Ocean and supposedly some of the best diving in the world. It was another 10 hour bus journey, and when I saw the bus, I started to dream nostalgically of that palace on wheels complete with its own river which brought me to Maputo in the first place. Well, the bus did not break down or crash into anything due to lack of brakes. Nor did it spontaneously combust, but that was probably due to the fact that it was raining more than anything else. It was a bit late in arriving at the destination, but in essence it was not that uncomfortable a ride. On arriving at the bus station in Inhubame, which for some reason always came out as "inhumane" when I said it, I was taken to the backpackers in the back of a Land rover, where I
shared some standing room with 4 other people, 6 cases of beer, food and a huge barrel of diesel fuel which occasionally spilled onto the person in front of me. Not that that stopped her from smoking, though.
The backpackers was made up of an assortment of reed huts. The huts were separated from the sea by large dunes, so that it was only when arriving at the bar/restaurant built on the dune that one could see the ocean. The beach was quite nice and several kilometres long. Apart from a couple of tourists in the water and maybe a few locals walking, it was empty. I found this quite unnerving since beaches are usually teeming with life unless there is something wrong with the place...like sharks. But there didn't seem to be any when I threw the dog in (just kidding...the dog was way to heavy) and after a while of swimming alone and sitting on the beach without having everybody and their brother try to sell you something that neither you nor they would obviously want, it became quite enjoyable.
One of the attractions of Tofo is the chance to go snorkelling with whale sharks. The group that went before us saw 3 or 4 of them and were able to swim with them for over an hour. The group after me, same thing. And when I went out...we saw a marlin. Well part of a marlin fin, at least we convinced ourselves that that’s what it was. We basically did a 2 hour cruise on a zodiac with 9 other people, most of the time looking into the water trying to spot them, even though we had no idea what to look for. Finally we did go snorkelling just for the hell of it. I saw a jelly-fish and some sponges...it would have been easier to just hang around the fish market!
After several hours we crossed into Swaziland, as that was the most direct route from Durban to Maputo. Of course, this meant that we would have to go through customs 4 times during the course of the trip, which probably accounted for 6 of hours of the 10 hour trip. Once in Swaziland, it was good to see that since the last time I passed through, it hasn't stopped raining. That was almost 2 months ago.
At first, this was quite a welcomed change from the heat in South Africa. But almost as if the powers that be heard my sigh of relief, the rain started coming down harder and harder, to the point where it was practically torrential. By this time, we didn't care that the air-conditioning in the bus was on the fritz, we were more worried about the fact that water was leaking into the bus from everywhere and a small river was beginning to flow in the space below our seats, changing direction and speed depending on whether we were accelerating or breaking.
By the time we got to Maputo in the late afternoon, the rain had mostly stopped. Not that it really mattered since all our luggage - which was in the holding bay below Bus River - was soaked. The most we could hope for was that the clothes buried deep in the packs would still be relatively dry, and in fact this was the case. As for the rest of the stuff, We would have to dry it out before it turned into a mouldy mushroom farm, but since the humidity was about 90% and the sky overcast, it seemed it best to let nature take it's course while at the same time do my share to help the burgeoning laundry industry in this country by paying someone else to wash the dank mess afterwards.
As I mentioned in the previous email, Mozambique is a Portuguese-speaking country, and for that all you Portuguese in the audience have a lot to answer for! Why the hell is Monday called "pegunda-feira"? Why isn't it, as one would assume "prima-feira"? Even more importantly, why isn't there a "prima-feira" at all? And saying "prima-feira" is actually Sunday, is not an acceptable answer, because Sunday is called something else.
Not to be overly critical, but look at the other European languages. All the romance languages implied some higher meaning into the days of the week by naming them after Roman deities. Even the French, who do nothing like anybody else just to show their French - as if we couldn't tell from a personal hygiene regiment that consists of a sole weekly shower - followed this tradition.
OK, maybe naming the days after Gods who were notorious for random killing sprees and shagging their own mothers, sisters, daughters, etc. doesn't quite fit into the Portuguese psyche, there were still the Norse gods used in northern European languages. If that still doesn't suite your fancy, you can name the days after Aztec Gods, Hindu Gods, the colours of the rainbow, species of lichen, types of stains...anything! Anything at all would be an improvement to numbering them! But even if this isn't possible, how about at the very least starting with day number 1?
I personally believe that the revolution that took place in Mozambique had less to do with atrocities committed by the Portuguese colonialist government or the human need for self-determination, than it was sheer anger of having to listen to the surrounding countries laugh at their calendar. Had they not pre-ordered all their calendars until the year 2050, I'm sure they would have changed to a more manageable language by now.
Once in Maputo, I decided I should take a walk around to see all the city has to offer. About 10 minutes later I was pretty much done, when, of course, it started to rain. So I made my way to the Franco-Mozambiquan centre, which was by far one of the nicer places in the city, with a pleasant cafe and English and French periodicals and newspapers available for everyone to read. It seems strange for France to do this, since this was a Portuguese colony, but I saw it in Namibia as well, which once belonged to Germany.
I think it's an official part of French foreign policy to go into former colonies of other European countries and build lavish buildings aimed at "cultural exchange", but in essence is just their way of saying "See, if you were our colony, everything would be like this! Not only that, but you only have to shower once a week! Remember that the next time you want to be a colony again" Of course, in their own former colonies, rather than build grand edifices to peaceful understanding, they send the Foreign Legion to kill everyone.
The next day, I decided to go north to Tofo, which has beautiful beaches, the warm Indian Ocean and supposedly some of the best diving in the world. It was another 10 hour bus journey, and when I saw the bus, I started to dream nostalgically of that palace on wheels complete with its own river which brought me to Maputo in the first place. Well, the bus did not break down or crash into anything due to lack of brakes. Nor did it spontaneously combust, but that was probably due to the fact that it was raining more than anything else. It was a bit late in arriving at the destination, but in essence it was not that uncomfortable a ride. On arriving at the bus station in Inhubame, which for some reason always came out as "inhumane" when I said it, I was taken to the backpackers in the back of a Land rover, where I
shared some standing room with 4 other people, 6 cases of beer, food and a huge barrel of diesel fuel which occasionally spilled onto the person in front of me. Not that that stopped her from smoking, though.
The backpackers was made up of an assortment of reed huts. The huts were separated from the sea by large dunes, so that it was only when arriving at the bar/restaurant built on the dune that one could see the ocean. The beach was quite nice and several kilometres long. Apart from a couple of tourists in the water and maybe a few locals walking, it was empty. I found this quite unnerving since beaches are usually teeming with life unless there is something wrong with the place...like sharks. But there didn't seem to be any when I threw the dog in (just kidding...the dog was way to heavy) and after a while of swimming alone and sitting on the beach without having everybody and their brother try to sell you something that neither you nor they would obviously want, it became quite enjoyable.
One of the attractions of Tofo is the chance to go snorkelling with whale sharks. The group that went before us saw 3 or 4 of them and were able to swim with them for over an hour. The group after me, same thing. And when I went out...we saw a marlin. Well part of a marlin fin, at least we convinced ourselves that that’s what it was. We basically did a 2 hour cruise on a zodiac with 9 other people, most of the time looking into the water trying to spot them, even though we had no idea what to look for. Finally we did go snorkelling just for the hell of it. I saw a jelly-fish and some sponges...it would have been easier to just hang around the fish market!
More South Africa
Once the truck tour ended and the bro fled home, I decided it was high time I actually did a bit of independent travelling. The fact that hundreds of people were doing practically the exact same route at the same time is totally irrelevant.
I took a luxury overnight bus (it seems the luxury part comes from the fact that it only broke down once over the course of the trip) from Cape Town to what's known as the Wild Cost, which is sandwiched between some other coasts with various pleasant touristy names like Hibiscus, or Dolphin or Puppy Dog or Happy Meal; the coast names seems to change every 500 meters or so.
Apart from the rugged and undeveloped beaches, the main "wild" thing is the ganja that pretty much permeates the whole area. There is so much of it that the funky, hippy, spiritual crystal stores don't even bother with the ever-present incense to hide the smell of what they're smoking out back, and just burn weed upfront. I think it's actually cheaper than incense here.
Unlike the beaches near Cape Town where the water is cold enough to cause one's testicles to rise up into one's throat - which is a self-preservation reflex triggered by the mere thought of having to go into the water - the waters here a luxuriously warm. But with warm water, also comes many a menace from the sea, which I unfortunately experienced first hand.
While wading through the water, I felt in sharp pain over the front of my ankle and then the pain spread around in a thin line as if a tentacle was wrapped around my leg. Using my advanced powers of
deductive reasoning and examining all the evidence around me, I came to the very exacting conclusion that there was some kind of stingy tentacly thingy wrapped around my leg. I deduced that the only things with stinging tentacles apart from mutant octopus-electric eel hybrids were jellyfish and space aliens; but everyone knows that space aliens can't survive in water without their bio-domes on.
Having come to the realisation that I've been stung by a jelly fish, I quietly went up to shore to wait for the pain to pass. The next person was also stung, but he totally did not have the same level of self control I had, because he went on and on whining and screaming about how it stung and burned. To be fair, he was only about 7 years old, but still. Suck it up, man!
One thing about backpacking is that apart from meeting some interesting people, you meet lots and lots of boring people who look and act in exactly the same manner as everyone else. Unless of course, you're accepted into these inner circles, then all the dreds and similar Celtic tattoos are really cool.
Of course, I wasn't accepted in, but it got me to thinking that with people whose collective IQ could be counted on one hand, if it were multiplied a hundred fold, I could use this to my advantage. I decided I should start a cult and my every wish will be a command to these lemming people. The problem is, I'm too lazy to do all the ground work to start a cult from scratch; you know, with printing all the flyers
and standing in on street corners heckling people; getting the remaining Beatles to come stay at my secluded ranch; buying firearms; etc. So I decided to take a lesson from nature and mimic an already well-known organisation to lure people in.
After some thought, I decided to could start the Jojoba Witnesses, whereby I would profess that salvation could be attained through the delicate, wash, rinse, repeat mantra that would also give shiny, healthy looking hair. Of course, being follicly challenged myself, I'd be more of a "Do as I say, not as I do" type of Fearless Leader.
I must apologize that last couple of paragraphs...but in my defence, it was a long, long ride into Mozambique, and I'm pretty sure the diesel fumes were pumped directly into the bus. But now I'm here, and armed with a Portuguese vocabulary which consists solely of "bacalhao" and "obrigado". At best, I'll never go hungry, and at worst people will think I'm a rather courteous foreigner with a fish fetish.
I took a luxury overnight bus (it seems the luxury part comes from the fact that it only broke down once over the course of the trip) from Cape Town to what's known as the Wild Cost, which is sandwiched between some other coasts with various pleasant touristy names like Hibiscus, or Dolphin or Puppy Dog or Happy Meal; the coast names seems to change every 500 meters or so.
Apart from the rugged and undeveloped beaches, the main "wild" thing is the ganja that pretty much permeates the whole area. There is so much of it that the funky, hippy, spiritual crystal stores don't even bother with the ever-present incense to hide the smell of what they're smoking out back, and just burn weed upfront. I think it's actually cheaper than incense here.
Unlike the beaches near Cape Town where the water is cold enough to cause one's testicles to rise up into one's throat - which is a self-preservation reflex triggered by the mere thought of having to go into the water - the waters here a luxuriously warm. But with warm water, also comes many a menace from the sea, which I unfortunately experienced first hand.
While wading through the water, I felt in sharp pain over the front of my ankle and then the pain spread around in a thin line as if a tentacle was wrapped around my leg. Using my advanced powers of
deductive reasoning and examining all the evidence around me, I came to the very exacting conclusion that there was some kind of stingy tentacly thingy wrapped around my leg. I deduced that the only things with stinging tentacles apart from mutant octopus-electric eel hybrids were jellyfish and space aliens; but everyone knows that space aliens can't survive in water without their bio-domes on.
Having come to the realisation that I've been stung by a jelly fish, I quietly went up to shore to wait for the pain to pass. The next person was also stung, but he totally did not have the same level of self control I had, because he went on and on whining and screaming about how it stung and burned. To be fair, he was only about 7 years old, but still. Suck it up, man!
One thing about backpacking is that apart from meeting some interesting people, you meet lots and lots of boring people who look and act in exactly the same manner as everyone else. Unless of course, you're accepted into these inner circles, then all the dreds and similar Celtic tattoos are really cool.
Of course, I wasn't accepted in, but it got me to thinking that with people whose collective IQ could be counted on one hand, if it were multiplied a hundred fold, I could use this to my advantage. I decided I should start a cult and my every wish will be a command to these lemming people. The problem is, I'm too lazy to do all the ground work to start a cult from scratch; you know, with printing all the flyers
and standing in on street corners heckling people; getting the remaining Beatles to come stay at my secluded ranch; buying firearms; etc. So I decided to take a lesson from nature and mimic an already well-known organisation to lure people in.
After some thought, I decided to could start the Jojoba Witnesses, whereby I would profess that salvation could be attained through the delicate, wash, rinse, repeat mantra that would also give shiny, healthy looking hair. Of course, being follicly challenged myself, I'd be more of a "Do as I say, not as I do" type of Fearless Leader.
I must apologize that last couple of paragraphs...but in my defence, it was a long, long ride into Mozambique, and I'm pretty sure the diesel fumes were pumped directly into the bus. But now I'm here, and armed with a Portuguese vocabulary which consists solely of "bacalhao" and "obrigado". At best, I'll never go hungry, and at worst people will think I'm a rather courteous foreigner with a fish fetish.
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