About two weeks ago I finally made it up to Zavala, and got to float my little heart out in the pristine, sparkling, tuorquise, lagoons.
Zavala is about an hour north of Chidenguele on the EN1 – the main/only major highway/paved road that goes up to the north of the country. I had passed Zavala a number of times in a chapa, as I made my way to Inhamabane, but never actually stopped.
Ok, that is a lie, I stopped once when I was making my way home from Vilankulos and ended up hitchhiking with a truckdriver. He stopped in Zavala, bought me juice, and took a shower. But I was too busy trying to avoid being sleezily sexed up to appreciate my surroundings.
There is this moment when you pass through Zavala in a chapa, where everyone, even Mozambicans, just sort of gasp and stare in hushed awe. The town is situated right on the main road, which forms the perfect lookout over the series of lagoons, followed by sand dunes, followed by expanse of
Amizava, a timbila (type of music/dance traditional to the region of
I was more excited for the lagoon/beach opportunity than the Mozambican music, but Iraque was into the cultural aspect so I thought I might as well check it out. Well, as it turns out, timbila music is the most entertaining spectacle.
The instruments are basically xylophones made out of wood and gourds of varying sizes for varying tones, but there are just hoards of gourds playing at once. And then there is a group of people, mostly men, from age 7-70 dancing in front of the musicians. But this is not just any dancing. First of all, there are little man skirts and animal skin shields involved. Then, on top of that, the dance basically consists of mesmerizingly intricate pelvic thrusts which would put beyonce to shame, punctuated by a series of jumping/slapping the floor acrobatic moments.
The dancers take their shields, grunt and slap the ground, then shoot up and spring into the air, kicking one leg up like the best of the inny-minny college cheerleaders that you are afraid might somehow manage to kick themselves in the face, and then they sort of flap their arms around in an incredibly rhythmic flying motion.
Audience members come up, dance/thrust around, do the beyonce booty move, and give the dancers money.
There also usually seemed to be one grandma/grandpa dancer that sort of did her/his own thing. Aka shuffled around doing Beyonce booty moves and a series of shoulder/pelvic thrustings. They were sure agile little senior citizens.
I tried to dance a little, just because I was so fascinated by the process. But Iraque started laughing hysterically at me, so I didn’t make it up to the stage. All in all, it was fantastic.
Day two, we watched a little music/dance/pelvic thrusting in the morning, and then headed down to the lagoons. FYI, distance is further than it appears. And is all downhill… which made the return trip a sweaty nightmare.
After about 40 minutes of walking, we arrived at the crystal paradise. But it wasn’t really a paradise up close. I mean, the water was clean and beautiful. But in reality, there was no beach for laying other than this mini-strip about 10 feet wide of wet sand. Also, there were a bunch of Mozambicans around, fetching water and washing their clothes. So they just thought I, in my little bikini, was a big fat crazy pants. Also, I THINK lagoons are salt water, so diseases such as schistosomiasis aren’t rampant in the water, but I am not really sure. So the idea of microscopic animals boring through my skin, bloody poop and future infertility just kept running through my head.
Well, for a variety of reasons, we decided to change locations, and try to make it to this glorious looking patch of sand further along the shore of the lake. Some nice little Mozambican boys gave us some coconuts to eat, showed us the path, and told us it wasn’t too far.
Liars.
We wandered through people’s little farms in the heat of the day FOREVER, and never got there. Eventually, after accidentally stomping some poor mans lettuce patch and bleeding from the leg thanks to some viciously sharp African grass, we decided to head up.
Straight up. The biggest hill of my life.
When we finally reached the top though, the path dumped us right at the beautiful overlook where the festival was centered. So we sat in the shade, watched the acrobatic antics, and drank a much needed diet coke. Ahhh.
All in all, its totally worth stopping to take a few pictures in Zavala at the lookout point. But I found the lagoons more of a pain in the ass then a glorious relaxing float. To be honest, and sort of selfish, I am actually quite relieved. I always felt the slightest pang of jealousy for the volunteer that was stationed in Quissico, because the view is just so darn amazing. But now I know, my site is better, neener neener.
And I probably have matequenha in my foot again or something from the farm trekking.
No comments:
Post a Comment