"Crossing Cultures on a Chapas

My most significant cross-cultural experience happened shortly after I completed my semester at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. After I was finished with school, I had the chance to travel in northern and central Mozambique. After spending a week-and-a-half exploring villages, attempting to speak to locals, playing Frisbee with kids, and relaxing, my travel companion and I left ourselves a very small time frame to get back to Johannesburg to catch our flights back to the U.S. It was July 10, 2005 and we needed to get from Vilanculos, Mozambique to Jo-Burg in three days. After waking up at dawn and walking to the central market in Vilanculos, we were quite dismayed when we saw our bus leaving the market in a cloud of dust. We somehow needed to get at least five hours south to Inhambane in order to get to Johannesburg in time. We then walked to the taxi rank and attempted to explain our situation to a taxi driver using English and the little bit of Portuguese and Xichangana that we had picked up.

After I was about 50% sure that the driver understood where we needed to go, he pointed us in the direction of a dilapidated looking “chapas” (VW mini-bus). We were the first people to get on the chapas, and within the next half hour we were joined by 22 other people, several screaming babies, 3 live goats, and 5 squawking chickens. A torn up sticker inside the mini-bus looked as if it said “ registado 14 povos,” which I deciphered to mean that the chapas was only supposed to carry 14 people. I had never felt so claustrophobic in my entire life, but I was quickly comforted by the smiles on my fellow travelers' faces and the offers of bread that I eagerly accepted as I had not had anything to eat since 5 pm the day before.

A few hours into the bumpy, cramped journey to Inhambane, a pick-up truck sped up to pass our heavy load of people and animals, and a large tire fell out of the truck and our chapas plowed straight into it. We stopped and the taxi driver exchanged some angry words with the driver of the truck and, just as I was getting nervous, a fellow traveler wearing a FRELIMO (Mozambican Freedom Party) T-shirt gave me a look that everything would be okay, and my mind was put at ease, just by the comforting look on this stranger's face. Next thing we knew, an entire village came out to help our driver. In the next ten minutes the truck driver gave our taxi driver 5 more chickens and helped him hammer out some dents in the chapas. By the end of the ordeal everyone was laughing, and I was singing a Bob Marley song with some 10-year-old boys who did not know any more English than the words to “Redemption Song.”

Several hours later (our 5-hour trip actually took close to 9 hours) we arrived at the market in Inhambane. While getting out of the chapas, the driver came up to me, patted me on the back, chuckled, and said “nginesibindi umlungu.” He must have seen the South African flag on my backpack as he told me that I was a “brave white-person” in Zulu. This journey was the most uncomfortable, nerve-racking, yet enriching experience of my life, as it taught me that human kindness and humor have absolutely no cultural boundaries and can get you through nearly everything."