IKURU Census 2011

The 2011 IKURU census, otherwise known as a tour of Nampula´s seediest hostels, like the epic Golden Anchor in Namialo or the Cave Negra (Black Cave) in Malema, was an immense job of about three weeks in the field (bush). We ran on fumes mostly, getting 4-6 hours of sleep, driving three to eight hours a day on terrible dirt roads/goat paths in a beat up Toyota Hillux that was more dead than alive. But we completed about 90% of the planned job, and are now hard at work organizing the massive amount of data to please the various interested parties.

It was great traveling with four Mozambicans. My Portuguese got much better, and I learned lots of Mozambican slang. Lisboa and Lagres are big conversationalists, so we had lively debates about politics, news, life, education, work. I learned a lot about Mozambican life, customs, beliefs. All of my colleagues believe in healers, witches, omens, spells, magic potions, and more. I learned a meal is not a meal without meat. We ate shrimp, dried and fresher than fresh, crab, rockfish, can after can of sardines, lots of chicken, goat, a suckling pig and an adult pig, and gazelle.

Our biggest problems were car-related. In Malema the mechanic first asked for 3,500mts ($100). We got him down to 1,500, still a rip-off, of which 500 he shared with the first “mechanic” called. We were 9 hours late to our meeting as a result of several occurrences, like taking forever to make French fries for breakfast, charging an already charged car battery, chasing down a mechanic, waiting for him to BS to earn more money and invent problems to solve, negotiating or rather begging him to lower the price and forget that the car has USAID plastered all over it and a white dude in the passenger seat. To top it off, he didn´t have a receipt, and said he would only get us one for 200mts, or about $6, which is absurd of course. We paid out of pocket for the work, knowing full well that without an official receipt a reimbursement is unlikely. These districts where we travel don´t have ATMs, but we don´t carry much money in case of theft, and we pay out of pocket hoping accounting will have paid our lodging and meal advances or reimbursements.

On the return trip from Iapaca, around 1900, after chasing a rabbit for dinner in the car, we saw sparks fly from under the hood. Lisboa stopped the car, popped the hood, and I saw that the bar normally screwed down to hold the battery popped loose and the fuse cover nowhere to be found. Not only did the mechanic screw us on price, which should have been 800-1,000mts, but he didn´t screw down the battery. As a consequence, the wire connected to the positive terminal was severed and the battery was bouncing around the engine compartment.

This is criminal negligence. A sparking battery could´ve set the engine aflame, and as there often aren´t gas stations in the districts, we had several 20L gas cans in the bed. As it was, we were hung out to dry in the middle of nowhere with no hope of a mechanic, and possibly with large animals roaming in the bushes.

Lagres cut some of the wire securing the grill and used it to wire the battery cable back together. The nut holding the bar in place was lost in the engine compartment, so Abel cut several lengths of the rope holding the tarp in the bed in place, which Lisboa and Lagres used to tie the battery in place, knowing full well that a plastic rope in a toasty engine compartment wrapped around an acidy battery isn´t a great solution. But graças a Deus (thank God) we made it to Malema, to continue limping along.


Traveling in rural Nampula made me forget to ask certain questions, like:

Is this towel clean?
Is this water safe to drink?
Did the cook wash his hands?
Can I go this way?
Is this a road?
Should I eat this?
Do you have soap/toilet paper?
Are these eggs cage-free?
Where´s the nearest WiFi hotspot?
Why?
Is there a gas station around here?
What is that smell?
What kind of meat is this?
Is this a urinal or a shower?

And finally some notable quotes from the IKURU survey:

Há um discurso sobre a ponte (There is a discussion about the bridge, ie “We don´t know if the bridge still exists.”
Esta discoteca cheira de peixe seco (This disco smells like dried fish)