More than Coca-Cola, more than the FRELIMO posters for the recent elections... those were the two words ("we're together" in Portuguese) that I saw the most on billboards, T-shirts or painted, with bright yellow happy faces, on walls throughout the country of Mozambique whilst on a recent visit there. The entire country, like many others in Africa, has lept-frogged to the mobile telephone revolution and that was the ad campaign for one of the companies. It's not uncommon to see women, at the market, bags of food on their heads, take out a cell phone tucked away in the folds of their brightly coloured 'capulanas' (sarongs).
Maputo is one of the more pleasant African capitals, laid out on a the edge of a bay on the Indian Ocean, with wide avenues, a mix of colonial and 70s modernist architecture. Although there are still remnants of the socialist dream of Samora Machel, the country's first president after independence from Portugal in 1975, European, South African and Chinese companies have set up shop and there is somewhat of a construction boom going on. Despite still being a very poor country, Mozambique is seen as a shining star in Africa, on the road to a better future from its bloody 20 year civil war that ended in the early 90s and labeled it as being the poorest country on earth.
I enjoyed the sidewalk cafes and met many locals there or on the street, in markets, on the waterfront. Moçambicanos are easy going, friendly people. There are in fact many peoples in this country of 20+ million souls with over a dozen ethnic groups each with their own indigenous language. The country however functions in Portuguese and unless being in a remote area where perhaps education is minimal, almost everyone speaks it. I had to tweak my own Portuguese, with my Brazilian expressions and accent, even though they understand it with all the Brazilian tele-novelas on TV each night.
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After 10 days in the south, going and coming back to the capital from a beach town called Tofo, I flew up to northern part of the country, to a city called Nampula and made my way to Ilha de Moçambique, an old Portuguese colonial town on a 3km long island. This was the first administrative centre of the Portuguese and it was an important link to their trade routes to Goa. They built a fort there in the late 1500s and it remained the capital until late 19th century, when they moved south to Lourenço Marques, what is now called Maputo. Ilha however was an important Arab trading port and boat building centre long before Vasco de Gama arrived. More than half the population is Muslim and there is also an Indian influence, even though the majority are African. Some people live amongst the crumbling ruins of the old colonial buildings but the majority are in the traditional reed huts of the local Makua tribe.
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| Makua girl (watercolour) |
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| Local mosque |
I decided to spend the week. The atmosphere was amazing. The light was very bright, a dry furnace-blast of heat from the sun during the day then the wind off the turquoise sea would blow steadily in the late afternoon. I stayed in a beautifully restored "pensão" done by an ex-pat Italian. It's across the street from the main mosque, which is on the beach where fishermen bring in their daily catch. It was here where I spent time with Rodrigo, a young Portuguese man I had met. We were both stunned at the beauty of this charming island and its people, particularly the happiness of all the care-free children.
I was impressed with the dhow sailboats, which came in many sizes, all built right on the beach in front of where I was staying. I spent several hours hanging out with a group of boat builders. The main man using his adze was so precise as he was hacking out square beams from large hardwood branches. These traditional Arab boats have been around for centuries along the east coast of Africa.
Rodrigo and I set up a one day sail on one of the dhows with a nephew of a boat owner and his friend. Like most men on the island, they were expert sailors as they are all fishermen, the main economic activity of the island. We sailed for the entire day to an islet out in the bay as well as to Chaga beach, across the bay on the mainland. Despite having borrowed some sun screen from a fellow tourist at the hotel (could not be found on the island) we still got fried in the hot sun.
Public transport in Mozambique is indeed a trip. Either mini-bus, a small van or the back of a pick-up truck, they pack them in like sardines. And, just when you thought it was completely full and should be ready to go, they will stop yet again and pick up more people with their cargo. There is no better way though to see the passion, laughter and friendliness of Africans than on these public buses. Babies will be passed through a window to someone on the roadside while mothers squeeze out from the back row. There is a constant chatter amongst passengers as the music is blaring while the driver is negotiating pot holes and dangerously over-taking slower vehicles on blind curves. Once on a slightly more modern bus, I was not sure if it was in my honour or not (being the only whitey-foreigner on the bus) that after playing some cool Tanzanian hip hop videos on the screen, they put on a dvd of Shania Twain and cranked up the volume.
Further north to Pemba, another magnificent bay on the Mozambique's long coastline, the rainy season was just starting and for several hours each morning, the heavens opened wide and torrential rain created instant streams and rivers on the cracked red soil. It would dry up later in the afternoon as the sun came out and the heat soared. On the way up to Pemba, I often thought of St. Exupery's The Little Prince as I saw many baobab trees, like majestic monoliths in an otherwise dry bush landscape.
As elsewhere in the country, there is an abundance of seafood. Grilled prawns, coconut curried crab, steamed clams, fish... I kept returning to this one local restaurant that served excellent grilled squid with 'matapa', a mash of cassava leaves on rice that could almost be considered a national dish. Everything I ate was complemented by Mozambique's famous piri-piri, their homemade hot sauce that was slightly different each time you ordered food. Some, mixed with either lime or mango, had a sweet/sour taste and reminded me of Indian chutney.
Pemba was windy and the dug out canoes that fishermen used varied from the ones further south. Not only did they use a small lateen sail with their canoes but they had a double outrigger, an 'ama' on each side. I spoke to a fisherman repairing his canoe and he told me it takes about a week to carve a canoe out of a single log. The wood used is a trunk from a 'cajueira', a cashew tree, which although a hardwood, is surprisingly light.
My last few days were spent on the beach before flying back to the capital and then home. As they say in Portuguese, "ja tem saudade" - I'm already nostalgic - for the warm people I met in Mozambique, a fascinating, spicier and tropical feel, a more laid back contrast to its British influenced neighbours.
