First off, okay... 1,000,000 hours in a chapa might be a little bit of a stretch. To be honest, at one point I simply lost count and that number just popped into my head and sounded nice and round ;-) A better, very rough estimate might be ~400 hours... which, as anyone who has ever been on a chapa knows, is way too many! Along with my negligence on accurately keeping track of these chapa hours, I also didn't do a great job of keeping up with tagging the crazy chapa events throughout my blog. That said, if this page whets your appetite and you want to hear some more chapa stories, they're all there, you just have to go looking for them in my blog's history...
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In light of recent “experiences” on Mozambique’s infamous chapas, I have decided to add a small, new feature to my blog where I’ll be keeping track of how many hours I spend on chapas here in Mozambique. It will appear on the blog’s sidebar, so if you reading the blog posts via email, you’ll have to actually visit the gatorinmozambique.blogspot.com website to see the running tally. I have already started looking back at my travels since I arrived in Nauela and I believe that I can roughly estimate the amount of time that I’ve been on them thus far. I’m sure that I’ll continue to have more and more stories about riding on chapas, but if you’ve been following my blog, you probably already have a good idea of what the ordeal entails. If not, I’ve included a few NEW chapa stories for your amusement and so you can fully appreciate the running Chapa Time tally…
A Close Call
Rain on the Runway
Time to Make Friends
A Note from a Former PCMoz Country Director
New Years Gurue Chapa
New Years Moloque Chapa
Gurue Trip
The Chapa: A First Impression
On our way to New Years, Allison, Camille, Kat, Julia, and I were all looking for an early morning ride from Gurue to Quelimane via Macuba. We had been waiting around for a while, keeping our eye on a chapa that just wouldn’t fill up (closed roof chapas don’t typically leave for their destination until they have sold all their seats) and we were getting antsy because we knew the drive was going to be pretty taxing (and obviously we had a long night ahead of us while bringing in the New Year).
So there we were, twiddling our thumbs and trying to be as patient as possible, when an open back chapa screeches past the chapa stop, filled to the brim with people literally hanging out the back. Without regard to the comfort or personal space of the passengers in back, the driver and fare collector yell out to the people at the chapa stop encouraging them to get on board to go to Macuba. We probably should have known better and just waited the extra hour or so for the enclosed chapa to fill up, but then again, if we did, I wouldn’t have this story to tell you!
Needless to say, after some nervous looks at each other, we decided to toss our backpacks up and jump on board. Before we had even left the city, Camille, who was being rubbed up by some old farmer, had already began yelling out, letting us know that this was not her idea and that, for the record, she definitely was against it! Somehow Allison had made it on the chapa without a place to sit down, but that didn’t last for long because once we started moving, she quickly fell to her knees on top of a few chickens which broke her fall. The chickens immediately let out jarring screams that grabbed the whole chapa’s attention before eventually quieting down. Meanwhile, Julia had spent the ride thus far holding on for dear life, trying to dig her fingernails into the chapa’s metal siding while balancing on the truckbed’s narrow outer rim. We were only 15 minutes or so outside of Gurue before Julia had had enough of this and demanded that we stop the chapa and get out at that instant. Camille, for all her initial resistance was even more adamant now that this was an even WORSE idea (getting off a chapa in the middle of nowhere) than before. The fare collector, however, signaled for the chapa driver to stop and with everyone looking at us expectantly we slowly began to get off the chapa. Kat, who had been relatively quiet up until this point, was the first one off the chapa. However, in reaching for her bag while backing out of the chapa’s bed, she lost her balance and, with a big thud, landed flat on her back on the dirt road below.
With everyone trying to compose themselves from the recent chapa experience, we were probably less sympathetic than we normally would have been towards Kat. After she had been righted and was standing firmly on her feet again, we started aimlessly walking along the road toward Macuba and left the chapa behind us before the driver even had the chance to ask us what was up. Quickly recovering, the chapa pulled up alongside our motley crew and demanded payment for the 20 minute chapa drive from hell that we had just experienced. We resisted at first, but just wanting to be done with it, we handed him his ridiculous sum and, as an expression of his immense gratitude, we were left in a large dust cloud awaiting the next chapa…
A Note from a former PCMoz Country Director Concerning the Chapa:
“This next section I would like to dedicate to our hardened Chapa-riders, who think that their long hours and profound experiences on the Chapas go unnoticed in the greater universe. It is not so. I have spoken to some of you about the spiritual aspect of chapa-riding, and those few have urged me to share these thoughts more broadly. So, here it goes…
Few people as yet know this but there is a direct inverse relationship between those grinding hours you spend on the Chapas and the later hours you are assigned in purgatory (you know, that place you have to go to before you get your heavenly reward). (if you believe you might be going the other way and not destined to a heavenly reward, this section is not for you.) That is, for every hour you spend on a chapa, your ultimate stay in purgatory is reduced. The actual ratios involved (whether they are 1/1 or 2/1 or what) are not entirely clear, but it is known that greater credit is given to rides on dirt road than pavement and for rides through mud, sand, rivers and over rocky cliffs. Pushing time is also well recognized, as is any waiting time at a Junta over two hours. Animals in the chapa also affect the ratio, and apparently, by ruling of the heavenly GAD Committee, women get bonuses for those vexing gender related experiences. By the way, in case you are wondering, this was all revealed to me in a dream. I do not believe Larium had any role in it, but that requires more scientific determination than I am able to provide…”
