The Road of Terror...

The roads in Mozambique defy belief. A chaotic webwork of dust paths crisscrosses the country, reaching some destinations and entirely ignoring others. Paved roads are few, and 4 wheel drive is essential for traveling anywhere outside the capital city. Even the main arteries, though technically paved, have potholes that would befuddle an Abrams tank. Some are literally three metres wide, and an arm’s length deep, which necessitates a sort of ridiculous slalom across the highway’s two narrow lanes, dodging careening minibuses and enormous cross-country trucks. Driving properly, between the lines, would quickly shatter even the hardiest of vehicles – and it’s been effectively demonstrated that our truck is NOT in such esteemed company.

But it sure beats some of the other wheeled calamities we saw en route. In Africa, the drivers of public transport are paid according to the number of people they move, as I may have intimated while writing about traveling in Lesotho. In Botswana, this often means that drivers pack people into the beds of their trucks, as many as can sit down and then some. But today in Mozambique we passed a pickup which had clearly been loaded with as many people as could possibly stand up – at least twenty people were crammed into the open back, all on their feet. The passengers in front leaned forward over the cab, clinging to whatever they could, and the next layer of people clamped onto them in turn, and so on. This terrifying spectacle raced around the potholes and other traffic much as we did, clocking at least 100 km an hour. I’m really glad we’ve got our own transport – public transit is a damn scary thing here.