Seattle to Mozambique

My best friend in these parts has a car that it is hard for someone like me not to love. It has all the quirks and troubles that I have been accustomed to in my long career of crappy cars. My cars have had doors that don’t open (in one car all the passengers had to get in through the drivers side, in another I had to crawl in through the passenger door and over the stick shift to get in), tricky clutches, strange wires that had to be tweaked just so, and my little Mr. Mustard of a Toyota truck didn’t have a key for the ignition or an e-brake. I had to hot wire the baby and then open my door, place a block of wood and the floor and then roll back onto it for an e-brake. Bruno’s car has lovely quirks like these. The tires are wobbly, the driver-side window doesn’t roll down (try driving in 100 degree Beira weather to know how important that is), the battery cables are loosy goosy and need constant adjustment, the lights are low and wonky…we rattle down the road in blessed cluckyness that makes me feel at home.

The brilliance of Bruno’s car (that I promptly named Chicha) is made even wackier by the presence of no less than one million giant potholes that scatter themselves in crazy patterns along Beira’s roads. One day, bumping along in Bruno’s car, Moises (a data junky) decided we should do a study to see if there were more potholes or paved spots on Beira’s streets. I think the potholes would win hands down. These are not your run-of-the-mill bumpy potholes but instead are often locally referred to as graves. They are big, deep, car eating potholes that have to be avoided at ALL cost. Most of the time you are warned of their presence by a slight reddening of the pavement from the earth that bubbles out of their depths. Sometimes they take you by surprise and you have to do some last-minute swerving to avoid being swallowed up. Chicha is a master at avoiding these holes but alas, her wiggle is made even more pronounced when she swerves. She is like an aged ballerina--graceful, even when the wobbles set in.

Many of HAI’s cars also have various lovely quirks. Most of the older ones don’t have seats that go forward. This is not a problem for me because they all come equipped with first aid kits. I pop those puppies onto the seat and I’m riding in jacked up style. Some don’t have side mirror, others need some serious time before they turn over, and one doesn’t have a gas gauge that works. These cars always seem to fall into my hands—I think it’s fate. The other day I took one of these cars out to the beach of Savanha, a lovely beach down a long potholed earthen road. It is actually an island and you have to get there by crossing a river on a boat (more about that later). On the way back from this St. Patty’s day trip to the beach (more on that later too) we were bumping and thumping along when Shelagh looked back and quickly said in a calm tone---“um you should stop we have no back window”. Yup our window had popped right out and right into the bed of the truck. Luckily the window is a plastic affair and suffered no damage. I was still made to pay for re-gluing the window into its frame though. I actually felt a little resentful about this. It’s like the person that pulls out the one Janga block that makes the whole tower fall. It wasn’t that block, or that drive, that was the problem…that damn window was just hanging on its last Janga block and I got stuck with the trip that pulled it out.