What would you do for $2?

My birthday was this past weekend.  To celebrate, about 10 volunteers met me at Jill’s house in Carapira to just hang out and eat some fried chicken, baked beans, potato salad and cake.  Good food and good company, what more could a person want for their birthday?!

On the ride back to Nampula Sunday morning, Adam and I had another chapa adventure, this time dealing with the stereotype of the perceived wealthy American. 

After catching a boleia with a nice couple to Namialo (a city about halfway to Nampula from Carapira), we opted to take a chapa for the remaining distance to the city because the road seemed pretty empty this Sunday.  It became time to pay.  Let me explain the typical paying procedure for this van filled with at least 25 people.  Chapas have a “motorista” who drives the car, and a “cobrador” who stands in the back with the passengers, opens and closes the door, and is in charge of collecting the money from each passenger, typically beginning with the back row. 

Both Adam and I were unsure of the price for this unfamiliar chapa ride, so I asked a woman sitting next to me how much it should be.  Unfortunately, she forwarded my question to the cobrador who quickly decided to take advantage of our ignorance.  He told us the price was 100mts, which we didn’t think much of until we remembered that it was 95mts all the way to Carapira, so that couldn’t possibly be the correct price.  We watched as the cobrador gave the other passengers their change back, wanting to verify that this was indeed an incorrect price.  We noticed that he was giving everyone else change so that they paid only 70mts. 

I then proceeded to argue with the cobrador (yes, in Portuguese) about how he had overcharged us.  I began with politely asking for our 60mts change and he proceeded to explain that no, it was indeed 100mts.  So I asked him, why then was everyone else paying only 70mts.  He decided to reason that because we had asked the price, it was higher.  I quickly followed, calling him out on his ridiculousness stating, no, we live here in Mozambique, we are professors and never before has this happened.  We were going the same distance as everyone else, and thus should pay the same price and he could not raise it simply because we were white.  This evoked a slight smirk out of him, indicating that I had indeed called him out and this is precisely what he was trying to do. 

He proceeded in refusing to give us our proper change, so I continued to remind him every few minutes or so about how we still needed our 60mts in change.  (Ok, that is only about $2, but that is a lot of money here in Mozambique, almost an entire other chapa ride!  And it was more about the principle of the matter, and not allowing him to rip us off.)  Eventually, he gave me 20mts, thinking that would appease me because he had “discounted” the price from 100mts to just 90mts a person.  Adam and I told him, ok great, but we still are only going to pay 70, so we still need 40 more. 

To make a long story short, we eventually did get the full amount of change, but it was not an easy task.  Typically, in the few other instances where something of this sort has occurred before, other fellow chapa riders back you up, telling the cobrador to pay up and be fair, but this was the first time no one really said anything to him.  I also want to emphasize, that yes, I have become accustomed to knowing that people will try to increase the price because they see white skin and think MONEY, but usually people relent after they find out we live here and know better, and it is certainly not something everyone does.  (I don’t intend to put a bad light on the entire country, just this one man, this one day.) 

I was pretty proud of myself for getting our proper change and doing it all using Portuguese.