[previous post finished]

I thought getting some monkey apples would be cool - I just did not bargain on the late night adventure that ensued….

First things first however. To complete the previous entry a picture of my handle bar moustache:

It is fugly but I like it. Owen said it would be good but, I admit, I put his enthusiasm down to wishing the worst for me. The moustache is good - it has bags of comedy value. I hope it comes back around March time but am in negotiations with Hannah.

Anyhoo.

Last time I was in Mozambique I picked up one of the many fruit, known as monkey apples, outside of our reed hut and took it home having dried it. Often people ask what it is. Often I fondle it while on the phone. While in Mozambique this holiday (swimming with dolphins at Ponta do Ouro) I was determined to pick up a bowl-full of apples - a fun keepsake of my travels.

Snorkelling with the dolphins was awesome but not compatible with my handle bar moustache as the mask leaked (see it in the picture?).

Almost a week of sea, sun, sand and dolphins and still no clues where the monkey apples were. Then on the penultimate day one of the ‘Dolphin Encounters’ staff gave me directions out of the resort along a dirt road. I chose to venture out after dinner, in the dark, even though I could have gone before my last swim the next day as sunrise was shortly after 4am. I left valuables behind, took an empty rucksack and large torch which could serve as a truncheon if needed. I wasn’t expecting trouble but was suitably alert as I walked along the dirt road busy with locals. Not wanting to draw attention to the only Caucasian I did not use the torch and consequently was straining to see into the roadside undergrowth for moon-lit apples. I walked much further than directed and now hot, sweaty, tired and very much aware of how disapproving my loved ones would be, if they knew, and how far I had come I decided to head back. Well, maybe just now. I figured I should at least ask a few people.

The third passer by I stopped pointed to a tree up the road and one of his friends walked over to and pulled a monkey apple from it. They left me searching for others. Moments later a young guy started helping me. I explained I could not pay but he insisted. We finished with that tree, especially after the large red ants found my forearm (either nice or nasty), and walked on in search of other “Masala” trees.

He called himself Dennis, although his African name is Thabani, is sixteen years old and at school. Using his South African ID book he wants to become a doctor or lawyer in SA. He does whatever work he can (pushing boats out etc) to pay for his schooling. Or so he told me, and as we talked I tended to believe him.

Two small boys, perhaps 110cm / eight years, who were following us offered to get big apples from their house. We went with them and were led further from camp along the road, then down a track, down a footpath through crops where maybe my good food had come from, past a shack to a house where there was an avenue of large masala trees. I did wonder why we did not stop and why we ended up scrambling around a scrawny masala tree at the end of the avenue beside another shack. As we left the bush angry voices came from the shack I assumed directed at us. Thabani fell into conversation, and then an irate man stepped out to shout at Thabani. I stood silent not understanding a word of Portuguese expect for the regular ‘masala.’

It was at this point, for the next three quarters of an hour or so, that I found myself in an extraordinary situation, one of those brilliant moments in life where everything is so much more, so intense, so different to reading a book. For me it was just magic.

My torch shone beside my feet providing minimal light; just enough to see each others faces. Their shack had dull electric lighting, maybe running off a car battery, which pierced the many slits and holes in between the jumble of planks, posts and corrugated iron that made it, and spilled onto various boxes, firewood and things stacked up against the walls. On the horizon a thunderstorm was in full throw with much lightening that lit a sweeping valley of crops the shack overlooked. Every so often a flash of lightening, much closer, would light up our surroundings, either showing details or silhouettes, and as if the light were absorbed it seeped away.

The man went into his shack and appeared with a mobile phone and a child holding pen and paper. I helpfully provided more light still unaware of what was going on. I broke my silence by asking Thabani, who had been standing there like he was being told off at school, what was going on. He didn’t answer and I became frustrated.

I pulled my rucksack straps tight and tied my trouser draw strings just in case I needed to run for it. Not a good option.

The man had been dictating a phone number to the child which when he tried calling failed. Judging by the various ways and places he held the phone I doubt he got reception. Then Thabani explained he was calling the police which I knew would be time consuming out of all proportion. Thabani still would not translate for me so I wrote R100 on their paper in way to settle whatever was the problem (I had money and he and his family didn’t). We were called inside.

I followed Thabani who told me to turn off the torch. He went into the adjoining room and I saw him kneel in front of a bed before the door closed. One of the children told me to sit, in good English, on the only chair. I gave them the single pen I keep in my rucksack to the nearest child barely being able to see anything. After ten minutes Thabani and I left taking another path to the main road. He filled me in over the next fifteen minutes and we were silent for the rest of the walk back to Dolphin Encounters.

Apparently the man was an off duty police man who was trying to phone his on duty friends. He would have accepted R300 but Thabani had suggest R250 and explained the children had led us there. The man argued that you could not bring white people there as we would kill them, maybe bringing a gun next time. I told Thabani I would give him R100 for his troubles back at the camp but not to pay them to which he explained that the old woman in the shack was a witchdoctor and had put a curse on him.

As we approached the camp gates, now about 12.40am, Thabani asked for a pair a swim shorts saying that one hand washes the other. I gave him a pair of shorts and R200 and asked the gate guard to take a photo of us.

Thabani and I shook hands goodbye and I said “one hand washes the other.”

So all fun and games really, unlike getting tonsillitis.