African Sanctum
An essay on Mozambique, first published in the Age (2005)
I was 27 and at a crossroads in my life, when a redundancy payment unexpectedly afforded me the ticket and time to be in Mozambique with my sister, who was working there with Save the Children Fund UK. It was snowing in London when I flew out with Aeroflot in February 1991, and the Gulf War was under way. My sister and I dumped my bags in her airy flat on the 26th floor of the tallest apartment block in the capital Maputo and went straight to the Costa do Sol, a humdinger of a restaurant with a wide veranda, at the end of Avenida Marginal, overlooking the placid bay and a row of tall, spindly palm trees. Chico, an ancient, lame waiter, gave us a table at the front, where we had a fine time getting drunk on vinho verde and gazing in a blearily thoughtful way out to sea.
Throughout the 1970s and '80s, when Mozambique's economy and infrastructure were shattered by war and supplies were almost impossible to get, the Greek couple that ran the Costa do Sol kept it going. Their son Manoly is in charge now, Chico has finally retired, and the restaurant is a Maputo institution, as much for its easygoing ambience as for its seafood. Politicians dig into plates of garlicky clams and big prawns, alongside artists, UN employees, aid workers of just about every international charity you can name, backpackers and wary South African tourists.
There were no tourists in 1991. The socialist government had been brought to its knees by apartheid South Africa and a cabal of international conservatives who funded a very effective guerilla movement. There were regular electricity cuts and water stoppages, and the shops were empty except for the foreign-currency supermarket, which often had large quantities of certain items, such as Russian caviar. Houses had gone to seed. There were few cars, no taxis, no cinemas. There was an incredibly friendly, egalitarian atmosphere in which everyone made do and felt uplifted: parties were frequent, the dancing energetic and we walked home at dawn and told jokes as we climbed 26 flights of stairs in the dark.
There were no tourists in 1991. The socialist government had been brought to its knees by apartheid South Africa and a cabal of international conservatives who funded a very effective guerilla movement. There were regular electricity cuts and water stoppages, and the shops were empty except for the foreign-currency supermarket, which often had large quantities of certain items, such as Russian caviar. Houses had gone to seed. There were few cars, no taxis, no cinemas. There was an incredibly friendly, egalitarian atmosphere in which everyone made do and felt uplifted: parties were frequent, the dancing energetic and we walked home at dawn and told jokes as we climbed 26 flights of stairs in the dark.
Even the hopelessly inefficient bureaucracy could sometimes be jollied into competency. The joie de vivre had never felt so acute. London seemed dismal by comparison, but I wasn't yet ready to return to Australia. I bit the bullet and went back. My sister's one-year stint turned into 16 and she met and married a Mozambican, ending up with two beautiful children: mistos in the local parlance.
Just about everyone is mixed race, the Portuguese colonisers being miscegenation yahoos compared to their Boer neighbours, a mere 70 kilo-metres south of Maputo, and to their British counterparts in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Tanzania. It may be partly why racism is rare and tolerance the norm, but it's harder to pinpoint why Mozambicans are, on the whole, so good-natured. After the war, there was no need for a reconciliation commission; people forgave the man next door his considerable crimes and got on with their lives.
I'm not the only one to feel a sense of sanctuary in Mozambique. During the apartheid years, many radical South Africans found shelter in the city then known as Lourenco Marques, after the Portuguese captain who first traded in Delagoa Bay in 1542. Among the most famous ANC activists were Ruth First and Joe Slovo. The SA military sent First a letter bomb that killed her and wounded several university colleagues; Slovo survived to become Mandela's minister for housing. Graham Greene made it a refuge in his 1978 novel, The Human Factor, in which Maurice Castle, a British Intelligence officer based in South Africa, falls in love with one of his Bantu operatives, Sarah MaNkosi. They are forced to flee to Lourenco Marques and stay in the elegant Hotel Polana, which is where every visitor to Mozambique wants to spend at least a night or two.
The balcony of the Polana is a classier, more languid affair than that of the Costa do Sol, perfect for a caipirinha, which is served with a bowl of roasted cashews. The Polana did not close its doors either during leaner times, and coffee was always available, though not often with milk and certainly not with the couple of shortbread biscuits you get today.
There are pictures dotted about the foyer that show that the Polana was the first building out on the cliff in 1922, too late for Winston Churchill, who as a young reporter for London's Morning Post was caught in a train ambush during the Boer War and imprisoned near Pretoria.
He escaped two months later and found refuge in Mozambique, though a suspicious British consul took some persuading. Now the stately British high commission has a plaque commemorating its role in Churchill's life and they once went so far as to try to convince the government to change Avenida Vladimir Lenine, which runs past the high commission, to Avenida Winston Churchill. He would certainly have stuck out among Maputo's Avenidas, which include Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse Tung, Julius Nyerere and Salvador Allende.
Times change. The Polana is now surrounded by an affluent suburb. Close by is the house shared by Nelson Mandela and his second wife, Graca Machel. She was a freedom fighter during the struggle for independence, then its first minister for education, and is still in a sense Mozambique's first lady through her earlier marriage to the charismatic revolutionary and subsequent first president, Samora Machel. A Museum of the Revolution tells the story of the liberation movement and the heady days of socialist rule after independence in 1975, but is as much neglected these days as the idea of equal distribution of wealth. The salary of a United Nations employee such as Graca Machel, who is the UN Secretary-General's Expert on Children, is beyond the wildest dreams of a subsistence farmer, who gets by on less than a dollar a day.
In Mozambique, at least in the countryside, all Westerners are millionaires, given that the rate for one US dollar is 25,000 meticais - and a bucket of papaya, avocados, sugar bananas, beans, corn cobs, or tomatoes can be had at any of the roadside stalls for 30 cents. Such opportunistic sales were rare, however, until the ceasefire of 1994, as there was so little traffic, ambushes being common and mostly fatal. Soon after the war, my sister and I drove 700 kilo-metres north to the pretty seaside town of Vilanculos using the speed-like-hell-over theory of pothole driving. We stayed a night in the old Dona Ana hotel, right on the seafront and on its last legs. There were two occupied tables in the vast dining room, and in the morning a maid brought up a bucket of hot water.
We radioed nearby Benguerra island to see if there was a spare chalet at the Lodge and hitched a ride on their speedboat the next day. The island is one of five in the Bazaruto Archipelago, which is a national marine park on account of its coral, dugongs and turtles. Benguerra Lodge is a delight and expertly run. Each chalet is built from local materials, with a thatched roof and a little veranda overlooking its own patch of sea, sand and garden. We settled in with gin and tonics to complain about the indignity of the obligatory communal dinner that night and a waiter was sent to cajole us into going to the beach. There, by the light of the moon, at a table decorated with palm fronds and shells, we had one of the most sublime dinners of our lives.
Islands are important in Mozambique's history and to its tourist economy today. The euphonic name that Bob Dylan celebrated in a song of 1975 ("I like to spend some time in Mozambique / The sunny sky is aqua blue / And all the couples dancing cheek to cheek / It's very nice to stay a week or two") is thought to come from a sheik called Musa al Bique who ruled over a tiny island off the northern coast, until ousted by the Portuguese. Vasco da Gama reached what is now Ilha de Mocambique in 1498 and it became the capital until 1902. It is a UNESCO world heritage site because of the jumble of Arabic, Indian, African and Portuguese architecture, though it may be too late to restore some of the buildings, which are near ruin.
There are smart new South African-run resorts springing up along the coast, but my sister's husband does not always feel comfortable in such places. On my last trip, earlier this year, we drove two hours north of Maputo to the beautiful blue lagoon at Bilene, fast becoming the weekend hang-out of jaded city folk. The hotel on the beach is run by Mozambicans and is commensurately laidback. Among the peahens tootling about the front garden and a macaw screeching a sardonic bom dia, a group of beer-bellied Portuguese recounted dirty stories in a creole of Portuguese, Afrikaans and English. They were probably among the thousands of Portuguese who fled over the border into South Africa when Machel became President.
Their exodus is legendary, for whatever they could not take with them, they destroyed - except for their pets. Mozambican friends recall bewildered pooches on every street in Maputo. Overnight, or so it seemed, South Africa's "Continental Holidayland", as it was billed in a tourist brochure of 1932, had vanished.
Yet a whiff of those long ago days can be caught in the narrow streets and double-storey buildings of the baixa, or downtown area of Maputo. Here, close to the port, were the bars with their heady atmosphere of the forbidden. In the 1960s, Ricardo Rangel, who was to become Mozambique's most renowned photographer, recorded black prostitutes in hot pants, with beehive hairdos and chunky bracelets, smoking cigarettes.
The railway station where holidaymakers arrived is just round the corner, and must be one of the most gorgeous in Africa, if not the world, a baroque fantasy on an endearing scale, painted mint green and white, with Romeo-and-Juliet balconies, a Roman numeral clock that is stuck at nearly eight and a dome reputedly designed by Gustave Eiffel.
Also downtown is the old trading fort, which is in good nick because the Portuguese rebuilt it in the 1850s. On Saturday mornings, the square next to the fort fills with handicraft sellers, wooden artefacts having long replaced the original trades of gold, ivory and slaves. There are boxes inlaid with mother of pearl, bowls, combs, picture frames, painted fruit and the contorted figures traditionally carved by the Makonde people from the far north.
A well-known Makonde sculptor, Reinata, works from a studio at the back of the Natural History Museum, which is a fanciful concoction of Portuguese Gothic architecture housing a famed collection of elephant foetuses, purportedly showing each stage of the 20-month gestation, though many of the later examples look like plaster casts. Much better is the antechamber devoted to ethnography, which shows the various tribal groups of Mozambique and their implements, a poignant reminder of a heritage many of Maputo's sharp-suited urbanites would rather forget.
There are more suits, cars, hotels and renovated houses each time I visit. It's not surprising that Mozambique enjoys one of the highest annual growth rates in Africa. Earlier this year, I had plenty of time to admire the city's new billboards during its new traffic jams. The most enormous of them features the runner Maria Matola busy listening to a mobile phone. Winner of Olympic Gold in Sydney for the 800 metres, she continues to be the only sporting hope of Mozambique in both the Olympics and Commonwealth Games.
Three years ago, I again sought sanctuary with my sister's family. It was, as in 1991, not a holiday, but a respite from difficult decisions and imminent change. I was heading home to Australia after 16 years in London. We drove north to the picturesque old port of Inhambane and the beautiful beaches beyond, where the diving and fishing attract many South African campers. There is a well-organised camp ground with chalets on Morrungulo beach, but we decided to try our luck at a ramshackle hotel, run by an Englishman and his Mozambican wife. Breakfasts were haphazard. The maid offered eggs one morning, but patiently explained they were not available the next; items came and went mysteriously. The shower smelled of fish, and towels were threadbare. It was Mozambique's Fawlty Towers, only with a glorious view and cold beer; and, like an episode of the series, our stay there lifted the spirits. Maputo is fast becoming a modern city, but I suspect Mozambique will always be a haven on the African East coast.
First published in the Age in 2005.
Interior hotel image © Nicola J Walker.