Night Out – Tofo

It’s Friday night in a small beach side community and the girls are heading to where the action is. Tofo, and there’s no stopping them!

Well not a stop really, more a pause in the proceedings as we indulged in a few Savanna’s and vodkas at the local Shebeen while waiting for the taxi to come pick us up from Tofo.

There had been a few signs, a constant whining noise and the electronically written message on the dashboard.  It had told us the car was overdue for its maintenance check.

Apparently the cars warning signs had not been in jest, our transport was now unmovable on the side of the road.  Three of the wheels were facing forward while the front left was facing at a severe 90-degree angle towards the bushes. When looked at with a smartphones torch, all its ball bearings were exposed in their casing to the world –  oops!

Following Mozambican road safety protocol we broke branches off trees and laid them in front and behind the car along with reflective triangles before proceeding to the Shebeen.  Great local music was blaring out as we entered the bar full of three people, including the barman.  They were a very friendly, chatty threesome and honored us with a change of music to what they thought we’d like to hear.  Dire Straits serenaded us while we drank a few rounds until our rescue taxi arrived.

Let the night begin! Again. This time, we made it to Tofo and proceeded to do a mini pub crawl which started at the starkest, whitest hotel bar I’ve seen in years called Tofo Mar.  Then we headed onto the beach bar shacks called barancas (pronounced barracas) where we tried to drink stupidly expensive, awful wine.  Who’d be stupid enough to drink red wine at a beach shack right?

We call it at 1 am by clambering back into our rescue taxi and taking the route home past the lonely, un-mobile car. All a little quiet and ready for sleep we came wide awake on seeing that the cars bonnet was up and the petrol tank cap was wide open! Wanna-be thieves had smashed the passenger front window taken the cars manual and a pair of sunglasses. They’d also attempted to remove the battery and siphon petrol, none of which they succeeded at.

A generous friend climbed out of bed to come and lend a hand, taking us to the police station where we roused the two policemen out of their beds.  One was persuaded to get dressed, grab his gun and go stand guard over the car.  It turned out to be a sensible investment of cash and resulted in him catching the three culprits. They were caught red- handed returning to the scene of the crime, armed with the tools they needed to finish the job.

This kind of thing is unheard of in this tight, supportive little community.  The perpetrators (yes, I watch my fair share of detective dramas) were “strongly” dealt with in a local way in an attempt to stop such folly in the future.  Nobody in the community, local or expat wants things like this to start to happen.