The After the Trip Letter

Lourenço Marques, Beira, Mozambique: Portuguese...tropical...apple-green water over coral shoals...coconut palms against blue sky and puffy white clouds...lacy-leaf’d royal poinciana trees topped by masses of flame-colored blossoms...the ancient fort whose gates sagged open on rusty hinges, tho it's used as a jail...a prisoner lolled in the doorway of his cell at the noon hour drinking lukewarm tea from a battered "Flit" can! 

Again: slamming doors, swirls of dust, window panes crashing to the yard below, and we dashed for shelter as a brief but violent "shower" whipped in from the sea and drenched us before we could find a roof. 

Side note: You can kinda smell the rain, huh? The internet and my husband confirm that ‘Flit’ was an insecticide, not a beverage, which would make the exclamation point make sense.

The Day to Day Journal

Fri. Dec. 17: 6 a.m. docking at Lourenço Marques. 

Side note: Lourenço Marques was a Portuguese explorer, who, in 1544, explored a land he would creatively call Lourenço Marques. I say, if you land at a place with people already there you should not get to name it after yourself. In 1975 though, the city became Maputo. It was and is the capital of Mozambique.

Shag and I to town - the war memorial across from the R.R. Station appealed to me as no other so far. An heroic figure of a woman on a round base with 4 fine plaques. 

Side note: The war memorial had its debut two years earlier, in 1935. Though a heroic figure of a woman indeed, it represented the Portuguese fending off Germans, and not struggles of the local people.

It was to be demolished as the city shed colonial relics, but it turned out too fortified, so it stayed. But over time, its significance changed to represent a strong woman fending off snakes in order to save locals, and she was deemed ‘The Snake Lady’, where she fends to this day.

The streets are wide, 3 flank-columns of red plumed royal poincianas standing at attention down the avenue. Most shops have roofs over the street - they're needed, for shade. The workers are prisoners, two men with ankles' chained together - clank, swish, clank - makes an ominous sound.

Side note: Mozambique had horrid colonial history and though slavery was abolished, prison labor doesn’t seem much different.

At 5:00 Shag and I taxied to the beach, made arrangement to be picked up at 11. Thunder and lightning and a full moon! Tropical rain. Shelter under a tin roof at a picnic table. The taxi did not come back - we walked back in 1 1/2 hours! - most amusing. But Shag was an hour late for his watch.

Side note: That beach date sounds like a plot for a romantic comedy, maybe even one with dance numbers in the rain?

Sat. Dec. 18: Lunch at Polana Hotel, high overlooking beach: prawns (like large shrimp, lobster flavor, delicious).

Side note: Her first prawn! I was also in my 30s the first time I had a prawn, but for different reasons than her.

Big wind blowing up as we drove back along the beach, and wavy as we returned to the ship. Up anchor at 7:00 p.m., got into swells that made us roll. 

Boat deck with Shag. One wave caught athwart boat deck spills over engine room ventilators. Bottles and dishes rattled back and forth all evening.

Side note: Athwart is a good word

Sun. Dec. 19: Read pages of "The Nile" to Shag.

Side note: Now she is reading The Nile TO Shag. A book about Egypt… where they want to motor off to together. So cute.

Beira

Mon. Dec. 20: Dawn in Beira. The anchor is swung from the bow and the anchor chain fastened to an enormous buoy. 

Took a tattered bus for sixpence over bumpy roads. Poked into several unattractive stores and just then the heavens opened, a deluge descended, wind blew, doors banged, glass broke. Shelter in a store until a taxi rescued us, took us to the Savoy Hotel. Lunch back to the ship, very wet - afternoon in Shag's room, reading. Typed cargo lists topside this evening, fascinating - timber, refrigerators, Ping-Pong tables, apples, wax, paint.

Side note: Her love of lists is endearing, and it has been passed down through the generations.

Tue. Dec. 21: a.m. on the boat deck, reading "The Nile" with Shag. I read him yards of figures: r.p.m., per day, per hour, generator, valves, etc. Reading in the hammock, a lovely day, wore shorts for the first time. Peered down #2 Hatch while rolls and crates of paper came swinging out on the lighters.

Side note: When I first read the second sentence above, I thought she meant she was reading to Shag the ‘…yards of figures’, like as pillow talk, which for them, could very well be. But then just below she says ‘more figures for Chief’ so most likely she was studying for Ship Shop (get it? like Wood Shop or Metal Shop in school, but about ships?). Whichever way, it’s cute.

And for our trivia for today: define ‘Lighters’ (in relation to shipping).

[Answer key: Lighters = a mini boat used to move stuff back and forth. Maybe its name derives from it being lighter than the boat it resides on??]

An amber moon cut off on top, sliced its way up thru clouds to sail off majestically into the soft black night

Sailed 6:00 p.m. More figures for Chief, then Shag. An amber moon cut off on top, sliced its way up thru clouds to sail off majestically into the soft black night. 

At Sea 

Wed. Dec. 22: Very hot in the sun. Engines stopped 1/2 hour during Shag's watch. Paced deck with S., wrote numerous cards, typed more cargo lists. Reading more "Nile" in p.m. with S. 

More abstract for Chief at 4:00, first scotch & soda visit topside after dinner - heard the news Frank Billings Kellogg is dead. 

To the boat deck, passed a vessel, saw the Morse light work for the first time, could read it, which was a bigger thrill. 

Another moon rise, a soft glow swelling to a crescendo of light, lines of cloud-like sooty brush strokes across the sky, the moon-path so bright as to seem elevated from the water. Slept out tonight with the moon in my eyes.

Side note: Frank Billings Kellogg helped usher in a bill (named after him) that would stop wars from being waged. You can ask the year 1945 how that went. But the bill was used to charge people responsible for the war with a Crime Against Peace (or Crime of Aggression) which was, ironically, punishable by death.

And that moon rise she watch from her outdoor hammock, I wish she’d bottled that so we could all live it.

Mozambique 

Side note: She’s been in Mozambique this whole post, but is now docking in Mozambique?? I, too, was confused. But it turns out Mozambique is the name of the country and a town in it. Welcome to Mozambique, Mozambique!

Thur. Dec. 23: Katy, Dreyer, Shag and I went ashore - 2 shillings round trip, paid a penny at the gate. The town different from any we've been - no motor traffic, narrow streets, phaeton hooded rickshaws, everything looks clean and newly washed, no wind to stir the dust. Buildings mostly built in long rows, houses distinguished from one another by the color - lovely sun-mellowed shades, crushed raspberry, dull gray-green, terra cotta, mild yellows. The triangles where streets come together with green grass plots and young flamboyance. The yellow wall and the palm trees against most glorious puffs of cumuli. The brick church with its white spire. 

Side note: Pottery Barn must have a color called ‘sun-mellowed’, no? And ‘crushed raspberry’? But maybe not ‘dull gray-green’. She was on a tear in that paragraph — the ‘young flamboyance’ of the street corners. ‘Puffs of cumuli’ clouds.

The walk along the beach, the avenue of tall spreading trees with poincianas in between. Looking up thru the lace patterns of the leaves and the flame-red blossoms toward the sun. The marble war memorial "Aos Mortes da Grande Guerra", the ancient bullet scarred fort (1502) its iron gates swung open. Inside-barred doors hanging open while prisoners scarcely guarded carried plates of black beans and rice form the line at the mess hall door some patch of shade for lunch. In one corner of the hot open square a small chapel, one door for "Europeaos", the other for natives. 

Side note: Separate doors in a church?? How so very pious of you, Europeaos.

Back to the ship, the P.O. closed 11:00 — 2:00 for siesta — "for only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun", and it was hot! Not humid, like Beira, but blazing white heat — the Portuguese wouldn't let me go ashore without a toupee, borrowed one of Shag's. Under way at 1:00 p.m. along the beach the most vivid apple green water I've ever seen, over coral reefs and dark green water until we'd cleared the bay. Most gorgeous banks of cloud and on the water the exotic touch of lateen sails. One running before the wind like an enormous bird, wings spread. On a coral reef right off the light hangs a freighter much like ours, abandoned last October. S. and I decide not to see so much of each other. 

Side note: So first… WHAT!?!? I’ve read all this before and kind of remember that last sentence, but don’t remember it being so matter of fact. It even has the same measured handwriting as all else (her handwriting is tidy, to say the least). My journal would have had one of two things woven into that sentence: a weak, pained chicken-scratch or an heavy-hearted bold. And in both cases, a splash or two of wine. Maybe she was doing the breaking off and Shag is off somewhere with a wine stained journal?? Stay tuned!

Lastly, that song lyric is from by Noel Coward and is about traveling near where she is traveling, but oooh boy the lyrics are a lot dated.