Viva!

I was born in a small town called Mutare which lies on the Zimbabwe/ Mozambique border. From there it is not a long drive down to the coast, in fact many people used to drive down to the port of Beira to spend the day by the sea and have some famous piri-piri chicken. Of course when I was growing up, Mozambique had been ravaged by a civil war and the Portuguese had long gone, however in recent years there has been a lot of investment there and the country is slowly being rebuilt. A lot of Zimbabwean farmers went there when they got chucked off their farms by Mugabe, and it was my fortune to actually go there to visit a young couple that were rebuilding their lives from scratch, in a little place called Villamoura. It seems really strange in Mozambique because the African people don't speak English at all, they speak Portuguese. Anyway, driving down to the coast we had to cross over this big river that separates the provinces, and when we got to the bridge we were extremely nervous as it was blockaded by heavily armed military personnel, who didn't look too amused to see us and you feel a bit vulnerable when you are sitting in a car with several machine guns trained on you. One guy came over to check our papers and passports, he had the coldest, meanest eyes I'd ever seen and I wasn't too comfortable about having a British passport then, I can tell you! There was some deliberation going on in Portuguese and every second that passed seemed like eternity, I was beginning to wonder if they were going to let us through. All of a sudden my friend called out to them "Viva Roberto!" (meaning Mugabe), and "Viva Samora!" (an old Mozambican President) ."Viva Roberto, Viva Samora!", and he waved his hand in the air in a victory salute of the old freedom fighters. I thought that we were definitely history now, but all these hard, mean army guys started laughing their heads off, their faces broke out into the most beautiful grins and all of a sudden they just let us through, no problem, waving and laughing at us as we in turn drove over the bridge still shouting "Viva" and doing the victory salute. It was quite a bizarre experience really, but in a way it was so typical of Africa.