Saturday, 2nd December 2000
“Where are you from?”
The Tanzanian border guard is fairly friendly but still suspicious. While two of his colleagues look on, he walks around my motorbike eyeing the colourful Ugandan number plate and improvised steel pannier rack with its plastic jerry cans strapped to either side.
Border crossings always make me nervous. Over the course of my trip, which started in Alexandria six months ago, I’ve learnt that many border guards in Africa are enterprising individuals, and the precise terms of each crossing are invariably open to negotiation. If you don’t play your cards right, you could get end up getting fleeced or, worse still, having your bike impounded.
“I am living in Uganda”, I tell him impulsively. “I will be coming back this way in a week.”
These are lies. I am actually heading straight back home to South Africa, but I hope that, by rooting myself in a neighbouring country instead, I will somehow win his favour. He may also be more lenient this time around if he believes I can be fleeced again on my return trip. I place my passport and licence papers onto his outstretched palm, and he leafs slowly through them for a minute before walking into the border hut.
One of the other guards standing nearby tells me that a South African had passed this way on a motorbike just a day or two earlier. There aren’t many travellers in this part of Africa, and my inkling is confirmed when the first guard emerges with his Temporary Import Permit book open and I immediately spot Joerg’s name. We are both riding to South Africa. He is a good friend, and in between long periods of solo travel we’ve been meeting up intermittently to share our experiences and keep each other company for a few days as we head south.
The guard notes down my details, closes the book, hands back my papers, and signals his colleague to raise the boom. I’m puzzled that they haven’t charged me for an Import Permit, but too relieved that the Tanzanian side of the crossing has gone so smoothly to give it much thought. I kick-start my bike, raise my hand in farewell, and ease forward into no-man’s land to ride the few kilometres to the Rovuma River which divides Tanzania and Mozambique.
When you’ve been on the road for 6 months, travelling can become just another job. The elation I had felt in the first few months of being out of London and having the freedom of a wide-open continent to explore had waned, and I’d begun to dwell with increasing longing on the simple luxuries of first world living – hot showers; tasty and varied food; a clean bed; not having to live out of a backpack. A bout of malaria a month ago and riding thousands of kilometres on mostly bad roads had left me tired and rake-thin, and I wanted to get back home.
At the Rovuma River crossing, I am swamped by the usual band of border swindlers hoping to take advantage of my foreign greenness and travel-weariness to sell me Mozambican currency at outrageous exchange rates. They are skilled at using pressure-sales tactics. Who can blame them? They live in poverty, and if I had been in their position I’d be doing the same. But six months of rough travel and continual haggling have hardened me, and I am ill-humoured, tired and intolerant. Besides, I need my remaining money to get me home safely. I negotiate unyieldingly for 10 minutes and, after realising they are dealing with a seasoned hand, one of them eventually agrees to sell me some currency at a reasonable rate.
A boat owner then offers to take me across the river, but his wooden boat is small and I fear the weight of my bike might be too much for it. I decide to wait an hour for the tide to raise the water level so that I can cross by ferry. Nightfall comes quickly in Africa, and by the time I reach the opposite river bank it is pitch black.
I ride up the mud slipway and continue along with just the weak yellow arc of my headlamp lighting the track tunnelled through the trees. After a kilometre, I come to woman standing outside a village of four huts. I greet her with a friendly smile and ask in pidgin Portuguese where the border control office is. Muttering, she turns around and walks away. Just then, six men step out from one of the huts and walk towards me through the darkness. They are all quite small and have empty, zombie-like expressions. One of them stops behind my bike, while the others gather in front. I greet them nervously and repeat my question. One silently indicates that the border post is indeed further along the same road. I thank them hurriedly before riding off, and glance back after 20 metres only to see that three of them are sprinting purposefully after me, eyes glassy and arms pumping. I shout ‘Ja?’, my heart racing. At this, they skid to a halt, spin around in unison, and begin sprinting back just as quickly in the opposite direction. Thoroughly shaken by this odd and menacing behaviour, I continue riding as fast as I can. However, as if enfolded in the cloying tendrils of a nightmare, I can’t seem to get away quickly enough as the track is muddy and slippery and the light from my anaemic headlight stretches barely a few metres in front of me. I look back over my shoulder every so often to ensure I’m not being followed, and my heart only stops thumping when I arrive, mud-splattered and relieved, at the Mozambican border control hut a few kilometres later.
The mud hut has no electricity, so the two Mozambican guards go through my paperwork with the aid of a torch before I hand over my $20 ‘licence fee’. My headlight is too weak to allow for safe night-time riding on my own, so I decide to await the arrival of a pick-up truck that had been on the ferry with me. If I can follow the pick-up to the large village of Palma, I can stop there for the night. The pick-up arrives and I follow it for 50 metres before giving up and turning back – my bike is snaking around in the thick beach sand covering the road, and in the dark it would only be a matter of time before I had an accident. My ‘licence fee’ bears fruit as the guards allow me to park my bike in their living enclosure and to stay in the border hut for the night. I make myself comfortable on the sand floor and fall asleep.
Sunday 3rd December 2000
Up early and on my bike. The 50 kilometre stretch to Palma passes without a hitch, although ploughing the bike along the sandy roads is sweaty and exhausting. Palma is an idyllic village of neat fishermen’s huts and palm trees. I stop here hoping for something to eat, but this is a largely Moslem village and it’s Ramadaan, so all the shops are closed. I press on a further 70 kms to Mocimboa de Praia where all I can find is some Coke and glucose biscuits at a small café.
Portuguese ghosts linger everywhere in this town. The whitewashed stone borders in the park ring thriving weed beds where there had once been flowers, and benches stand empty in the patchy grass. An almost derelict children’s playground has some red and green swings and a rusted slide.
The unhurried decay of colonial civilisation has held an alluring fascination for me throughout my journey, but today I have no time to sit for hours in contemplation. I want to head south. After changing more currency and refuelling, I guide my bike around the potholes out of town and back onto the coastal road. The outskirts of Pangane are reached by mid-afternoon, but I fall twice along the way when my front wheel furrows into beach sand that has blown in thick banks across the road. Both times, it surprises me how heavy my laden bike is when I grip the handlebars to haul it upright before remounting. Although I’m not badly hurt, beach sand is abrasive at speed, and my scrapes and bruises quell any remaining enthusiasm for further travel that day.
Pangane is paradise-perfect with its white sand, palm trees, and turquoise sea. On my way through town looking for a place to stay, I stop on a whim and ask a villager whether he has seen a ‘mzungu’ on a motorbike. ‘Mzungu’ is a word meaning ‘white person’ in many languages of east and central Africa. To my surprise, he points immediately to a road that runs amongst the palm trees and fishermen’s huts just above the beach. Hardly any tourists venture this far north in Mozambique, and everyone knows when a mzungu on a motorbike is in town. I ride along this road for a few kilometres, stopping once or twice to ask further directions. The road begins fading into the beach and, as I slow, Joerg’s face pops out from behind a rough wooden fence beneath palm trees. He’s heard my bike approaching, and is just as surprised to see me.
Our reunions after solo travel are always joyful, and we both have plenty of stories to relate. Joerg has been stranded here for several days now; despite taking apart, cleaning, and reassembling the carburettor, his bike refuses to run for more than a few seconds before cutting out. In between sporadic attempts at kick-starting the engine, the bulk of his time has been spent reading on the beach or writing in his travel journal. I ask what he’d been intending to do next, and have a good laugh at the sudden image of him trapped in Pangane for years - growing a Robinson Crusoe-like beard, making increasingly feeble and dispirited attempts to kick-start his machine, and perhaps eventually taking a local wife. He doesn’t find the image as amusing. While unpacking my tent, I suggest that he tries removing the sparkplug from the cylinder head, squirting some petrol into the chamber, replacing the spark plug, and trying once again to start the bike. My hunch is that the extra petrol in the chamber will help ignite the engine. He tries this out; the bike fires instantly and runs perfectly. Grins all round.
Over a dinner of rice and octopus, we agree to continue our journey south in the morning.
Monday 4th December 2000
We wake early and, instead of continuing straight down the coast, decide on a detour to see the island of Ibo. This lies about 10 kms off the coast, and is one of 27 islands in the Quirimbas Archipelago which is part of the country’s northern-most province of Cabo Delgado. Ibo was a prosperous ivory and slave trading post for over 500 years, and it has Arabic and Portuguese ruins dating back to the early 1500s. Our plan is to sail there on a dhow with our bikes.
The dhow arrives mid-morning and moors several metres off the beach. It’s a small boat, and we have doubts about being able to fit both bikes on board. The skipper balances a plank between beach and boat and we begin wheeling my bike across. This isn’t easy – the bike is heavy, and the plank is narrow.
It’s still well before midday, but already the sun is scorching and sweat begins trickling into my squinted eyes. As often happens in rural Africa, a growing crowd gathers on the beach to watch the mzungus. Our every move is followed by lively commentary, and there are irritating titters of high-pitched laughter. At one stage, my bike tilts precariously on the ramp, and the mirth escalates as we struggle to prevent it falling into the water. We finally accept that the dhow is just too small, and return to our beach camp for the day. In the morning, we will ride to a town further down the coast, find a secure place to park the bikes, and take a dhow to Ibo from there.
That night, I spend hours lying on the beach looking at the sky. I’ve done this so often on my journey that the constellations, although still nameless to me, have become familiar.
Tuesday 5th December 2000
Our departure is delayed yet again when Joerg discovers that all his documents are missing, together with some money. His shoes had been stolen a few days before my arrival, and the documents were probably taken at the same time. He’d been intending to continue the journey wearing his hiking sandals. Without documents, however, we’re stuck.
Haashiem is the owner of the land on which we’re camping. We inform him of the theft, and spend the rest of the morning compiling a police report in Mukojo, the nearest large town.
On the ride back, I flatten myself against the petrol tank and pass Joerg at top speed, revelling in the bike’s lightness and manoeuvrability without its makeshift panniers. He immediately takes up the challenge and we race neck-and-neck along the beach-sand tracks, our mettle sharpened by the frustration of the morning’s events.
That afternoon, back in Pangane, we’re sitting under a palm tree on the beach discussing the unpleasant prospect of having to ride straight through to Maputo to acquire new documents. Just then, Haashiem appears with the missing goods – including the shoes. He tells us the things were stolen by a Tanzanian immigrant, and they had been recovered just that afternoon by someone in the village. The money is still missing, but we’re relieved nonetheless to have been spared the trip to Maputo and the inevitable bureaucratic quagmire of applying for new documents. We’re just as relieved to have found the shoes; a few days before, we’d been weighing up, with some concern, the possibility of Joerg having his sandaled feet ground down to stubs in the event of a high-speed bike accident.
Wednesday 6th December 2000
We leave Pangane by mid-morning and have an easy ride down the coast to Quisanga. After arranging to park our bikes in the courtyard of a restaurant, we set out on foot to Takanyara village. We walk for over an hour in the shimmering heat along sand tracks and across large, open pans with mirages in the distance. The glue in my hiking sandals melts, and the heel straps give way completely so that just the front straps are holding the soles on. The straps begin chaffing blisters into the tops of my feet, and I have to keep my sweaty toes clenched at each stride to prevent the sandals from dropping off into the parched dust. My irritation is aggravated by the small band of hangers-on who follow a few metres behind us with the standard running commentary. We try to get rid of them a few times by stopping suddenly and waiting, but they are unfazed by this and simply do the same. We sense that their reserves of patience run far deeper than ours, so we give up and carry on.
Takanyara village has a small harbour, and the owner of a dhow agrees to take us to Ibo following some negotiation. We have a guidebook which says ‘Expect to spend two hours on the water.’ We spend six, without food or water, and arrive at Ibo after dark. The wind must have been blowing when the guide book was written. We have a fish dinner at Joao’s Bar; there is no water so we drink Coke. In the village, we find a place called Kevin’s where we will spend the night. It’s a dilapidated house which the owner is renovating. There are no beds, so we sleep in the sand in the open courtyard. It’s an uncomfortable night plagued by aggressive mosquitoes. As the sun rises, the mosquitoes disappear and relentless flies take their place.
Thursday 7th December 2000
We spend the morning walking around the village of Ibo and taking photographs. It’s another Portuguese ghost town.
The Portuguese had first colonised Mozambique in the 1400s, and by the early 1970s the settler population numbered over 250,000. Their presence wasn’t welcomed by all Mozambiquans, and a guerrilla organisation called the Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique (or ‘Frelimo’) was formed in 1962 so seek the overthrow of Portuguese colonial rule. Frelimo had the military and financial backing of the USSR and China and, by the mid-1960s, Portugal had some 70,000 troops in the country to combat the insurgency. Frelimo took advantage of the 1974 left-wing military coup in Portugal to force independence. Within a year, most of the 250,000 Portuguese settler population had fled Mozambique to escape the new Frelimo-led Marxist regime.
The town is centred around a square with park benches on plinths and a bare flag pole. A 16th Century Dominican Church with bell tower dominates one end, but a rusted padlock seals its salted wooden doors. Most of the other buildings around the square look to be 19th and early 20th century, and all are boarded up. Although untended for over two decades, some of the hardier plants have survived in the carefully planned stone borders of the landscaped layout. The square must have been a lively place for centuries.
Off the square, the roofs of some of the houses have caved in along an overgrown residential street. Sagging cables still link the telephone poles. There is a line of derelict villas running along a promenade, verandas looking out to sea. The only signs of life are the goats and chickens on their front steps.1
We leave the island by dhow at midday, passing an old wooden pleasure cruiser on our way out of the natural harbour which is lying beached below the rear of the church. It’s an easy three hour sail back to the mainland, with no tacking necessary. After retrieving our bikes, we continue south towards the large town of Pemba.
We’re stopped at a roadblock 5 kms outside Pemba by four police - three men and a woman. They aren’t friendly. The woman in particular is hostile. Perhaps this has something to do with our nationality. South Africa (together with the US) had funded and directed the dissident group Renamo in a brutal civil war against the Marxist Frelimo government, and South African forces were involved in direct covert operations against Frelimo for years. A peace accord between Frelimo and Renamo had only been signed in 1992, so memories of the war are still fresh in the minds of most Mozambicans.
With a flap of his hand, one of the policemen orders me to remove all baggage from my bike. He must have a cold, as he sniffs continually.
“What, all of it?” I gesture. My panniers are improvised, and tent and backpack are held on by a complicated system of elasticated ropes and ties which takes me ages to make secure. I don’t want to offload everything unless it’s absolutely necessary.
He gives a curt nod and a sniff. I try unsuccessfully to hide my annoyance.
While we’re offloading, two of them work through our papers in great detail. There is continual discussion between them, and by the time they finish they seem disappointed that everything is in order. They turn their attention to our bags next. Everything – clothing, toiletries, tools, first aid kits - comes out and gets picked through. Every corner of our panniers and backpacks is emptied and laid out on the table under a thatched roof.
My policeman picks up a small plastic container of pills from the first aid kit.
“Drugs?” Sniff.
“No, no drugs. Malaria.”
He isn’t convinced, and slowly unscrews the top to peer inside.
A bottle of water purification tablets is selected next.
“Drugs?”
“No, no drugs. Por acqua.”
Sniff.
The unhurried picking through continues, and I sense an optimistic ripple when one of them finds a small bundle wrapped in newspaper. Surely this must be marijuana. Everyone knows how it looks and smells; it can’t be passed off as anything else. Mzungu travellers are always smoking it. The police have what they’ve been looking for.
As the others look on, his knowing fingers gently unwrap the newspaper. He eases apart the last layer to reveal a necklace which I’d bought as a gift in Southern Kenya.
Putting the bundle down, he has a brief word with the others. They seem to be debating whether or not to continue the search. Eventually, and without looking at us, the senior policeman flaps his hand lazily and turns away. We’re free to go. We repack our bikes and, an hour after being stopped, we’re on the road to Pemba once again.
We search the town in vain for somewhere to spend the night, but all the hotels are full. Over supper we decide to head for Wimbi Beach, a few kilometres south of town. We arrive after dark and ride for a while before coming to a backpacker’s campsite. It’s run by a South African of about forty and a stocky Australian with curly hair. I ask the South African where we can pitch our tents, and he points to a thatched roof which can just be made out in the dark towards the perimeter of the campsite.
“Are you sure our stuff will be safe up there?” It looks pretty out-of-the-way to me.
“Ja, of course.” He seems completely relaxed, although I get the impression he couldn’t really be bothered one way or the other.
We pitch our tents under the thatch and turn in for the night.
Friday 8th December 2000
After waking and repacking, we’re riding back through Pemba to continue our journey south when Joerg gets a flat tyre. Luckily, we haven’t gone very far, so we head back to the campsite to fix the puncture. It’s afternoon by the time this is done, so we decide to stay in Wimbi Beach once again and leave the next morning.
After supper, we get speaking to two Israelis who are travelling in an old Land Rover. Israelis are tough – they’ve all been through years of military training, and many of them have seen active service. We’re sitting around their campfire chatting when one of them offers us a smoke from his home-made bong. The stuff in it is strong, and soon all four of us are heavily stoned.
The bong gets passed round to the first Israeli once again, and I look over at him squatting on the other side of the fire. He is wearing just a pair of shorts. With his thin torso and wiry, nut-brown limbs he looks like a wise old spider monkey. He takes another puff, gives a satisfied sniff, and says: “It’s nice, it’s fresh, I like it.” Suddenly, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard, and I can’t stop laughing.
The laughter continues when they tell us how their Land Rover got stuck in some mud a few weeks before, and some local tribesmen and their kids appeared out of nowhere to help push it out. The Israelis thought this was very kind until they stopped a few hours later to find that the tribesmen had stolen everything off the roof of the Land Rover, throwing jerry cans, bags and whatever else they could find into the bushes as they pushed. My cheeks begin to cramp when he tells another story about disassembling a Honda 250cc off-road bike and smuggling most of into Israel in parts to avoid import taxes.
We head back to our tents later and are getting ready for bed when I realise that my backpack is missing. In my confused state, this is a terrible discovery, and I’m ill-equipped to deal well with it. I inform Joerg, and he bursts out laughing. He is no use, so I pull myself together as best I can and go down to the main hut to notify the camp’s owners. All they can suggest is that we speak to the police in the morning. I go back to my tent and try to enlist Joerg’s help in the search, but he still can’t stop laughing. He sobers up quickly enough when he discovers that one of his own bags is also missing. This contains all his travel diaries and used camera films.
Nothing constructive can be done that night, so we climb into our tents and aim for sleep. I try and take stock of what was in my stolen backpack, cursing the thieves out loud occasionally. My contact lenses, sleeping bag, tent, helmet, Lalibela ring, torch, and a few other bits and pieces don’t sound like much when compared to six months’ worth of diaries and film. I eventually drop off about two hours later to the sound of Joerg’s heartfelt weeping.
Saturday 9th December 2000
The morning is passed in the police station reporting our losses and obtaining police reports. We seem to have spent a lot of time doing this recently. The policeman insists on typing everything up laboriously on an old manual typewriter. He instructs us to take his report to the immigration office in Pemba on Monday morning.
Later, back in the camp, we meet the South African owner.
“Geez, bad luck guys. Did the police give you any help?” he asks.
“Not really, I specifically asked you whether it was safe to leave our stuff up there, and you said it was fine.”
“Ja, sorry man. It’s been a long time since they’ve come over the fence and stolen stuff.”
“You mean they’ve stolen stuff from the thatch before?” I try to stay calm.
“Ja, but we fixed the fence up”.
“If I’d known stuff had been stolen from up there, we would’ve left our stuff down here instead of up there.”
The flies in Pemba are more numerous and aggressive than anywhere else I’ve experienced. Small and agile, they cluster around the blisters on my feet. I flick them away continually, but they loop around tirelessly and land again. It’s baking hot too, and the frustrations of the past few weeks’ travel have accumulated. I’m in no mood to let this go.
The Australian had been listening to our conversation, and he steps forward.
“I’ll get hold of Dina – he’s a Frelimo army vet and he knows all the people in the village. You can borrow my bakkie to drive with him to the village if you like.”
I’m grateful for the suggestion and offer – at least it’s constructive.
Dina duly appears, and the two of us climb into the dilapidated yellow Mazda bakkie with Joerg in the back. Dina instructs us to head for the harbour in Pemba instead of the local village. “They will not keep the stuff in the village, they will take a boat. The boat leaves soon”.
We arrive at the harbour only to find the dhow had left 15 minutes earlier. We can see it heading across the bay towards a village on the far side. Dina asks around at the harbour and yes, they saw some mzungu bags being taken aboard. We get back into the bakkie and head towards the other village, hoping to meet the boat as it moors. I drive as fast as the bad roads and worn bakkie will allow, but it still takes us an hour to get across the bay.
The approach to the harbour is along a narrow causeway built through a marsh. Despite my anxiousness to arrive before the boat, I have to go slowly here for fear of toppling into the marsh which lies over a metre below on either side. Every thirty metres, there are corrugated iron pipes which allow the marsh water through beneath the causeway. The pipes are badly rusted, and suddenly our front wheels go straight through one of them with a thump. The bakkie lies grounded on its sump and front suspension, and Dina calls over a crowd of villagers to help us push it out. We decide it’s too risky to continue on to the harbour, and so I carefully reverse back over the causeway. The bakkie’s vague steering makes this harrowing, and it takes us five minutes to get back to the mainland.
We then learn from Dina that the boat had actually arrived some twenty minutes before. It puzzles me that he had directed us towards the harbour; perhaps he thought the bags might still be there. He climbs out of the bakkie and tells me to drive slowly behind him. A large mob of excited and chattering villagers skips along with us as we make our way to the headman’s house in the centre of the village. As I drive, it occurs to me that it would have been far more sensible if Dina had instructed us to park well outside the village while he went in quietly on his own to investigate. I suspect that he might not have been tasked with any strategic operational responsibility during his days in the Frelimo army. We arrive at the house to find that the chief is out. By now, everyone knows that the mzungus are here to look for their bags. Continuing our pursuit is futile, so we head dejectedly back to Wimbi Beach. We pay Dina for his efforts and go for a swim before dinner and bed.
Sunday 10th December 2000
We ride into Pemba in the morning to buy breakfast and chocolate. There isn’t much dietary variation available when you’re travelling the large distances between cities in Africa, and I had dreamt often about Western food en route. When there is chocolate available, you must make the most of it. Back at camp that afternoon, we drink beer and watch the Springboks play the Barbarians. A dozen South African immigrants who live nearby also come to watch. They call the Australian ‘Curly Wee’, which is apt. I meet a South African girl and relate our story of the theft and subsequent unsuccessful chase. When she learns that my helmet was amongst the goods stolen, she offers to give me an old one she has lying in her garage. I thank her, and agree to stop by her house in the morning to collect it.
Monday 11th December 2000
We present our police papers at the immigration office in Pemba that morning. The desk clerk looks puzzled, and tells us there is no need to have done so. Perhaps the police thought that some of our documents had been stolen too, and that we required their report to obtain temporary ones. Had we known that our trip to the immigration office wasn’t necessary, we’d have left yesterday. In any event, we ask no further questions and decide to have breakfast. Next, we pass by the South African girl’s house to collect the spare helmet. While I’m grateful for her kindness, I’m disappointed to see that the helmet is old and visor-less. All my contact lenses were stolen, so I’m wearing glasses now. On the bike, I can’t risk wearing the glasses unprotected for fear of a stone being thrown up and shattering the glass, so I will have to wear goggles over them. This won’t be comfortable, and there is still a vast distance to be covered before we reach Johannesburg.
On our way back through Pemba, we stop to change money at the office of a businessman named Osman Jacob. He is in his mid-50s, short, portly, cartoon-faced. We wait in front of his desk for 15 minutes while one of his employees goes off to fetch the money. It appears he is involved in many other lines of business besides foreign exchange, and I enjoy watching him at work. His phone goes on several occasions, and on each he leaves it to ring for a while before his dumpling fingers pick up the receiver. He holds it to his ear and allows another few seconds’ pause before delivering a quiet, deep, weighted “Hullo”. He emanates competence and is a man entirely at home in his world.
We buy more chocolate on our way back to the camp and do little for the rest of the day, our energy sapped by the sweltering heat. At mid-afternoon, I find Joerg lying in the tent despite it being several degrees hotter than outside. It’s a willing trade-off to escape the tormenting flies if only for a while.
Tuesday 12th December 2000
There is little to pack, as most of what I had been carrying was stolen. We’re on the road early, and are a few kilometres south of Pemba when, in the distance, I spot the roadblock where we’d been waylaid a few days before. I turn off my headlight immediately and signal Joerg to do the same. We open our throttles wide and speed on. The police are caught unawares and have no chance to step out from under their thatch. I grin to myself as we sweep by.
1 I’ve since learnt that South African and European foreigners have been buying up some of the houses on Ibo and turning them into guesthouses and small hotels. I’m glad we had the chance to see the island when we did.
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