Every street tells a story
An article on Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, published in the UK Telegraph, 2007
Visitors to Mozambique’s Bazaruto archipelago tend to be in a hurry to reach its marine park, which brims with fish, coral and idyllic beaches. Too much of a hurry to tarry in Maputo – which is a shame, because in this capital city the country’s past and present are on vibrant display.
“The Portuguese did two things unique to European colonialism in Africa”, noted David Lamb in his book, The Africans. “They built beautiful cities . . . and they intermarried to such an extent that their former colonies today are among the most multicultural countries in Africa.”
Of nowhere is this more true than Maputo, once Lourenço Marques, a cosmopolitan bolthole for South Africans tired of tea rooms and starch.
Acacias and jacarandas shade the broad streets and the houses are a glorious hotchpotch of tiled and pink-painted follies and simple art-deco curves with a maritime twist.
There are classic Manueline features on the lovely old Natural History Museum, and the Meteorological Institute has been newly restored to its unnerving original as a Portuguese château with Grecian touches. The most gracious hotel, however, is British to its foundations.
The Polana, at 90 years old, is the grand old lady of Mozambique, with fine views of the sea, the best pool in town and a breezy café-terrace. Mozambican life starts just outside its impressive gates on Avenida Julius Nyerere, shared by Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel, who live up the road, and an array of polite craftsmen who lay out their art on the pavement early each morning, opposite the flower-sellers, basket-makers and batik clothes-traders on the other side of the road.
All the hotels offer comprehensive city tours that will give you a good idea of the cultural fusion that is Portuguese Africa today, from the magnificently baroque railway station to the teeming central fruit and vegetable market. There is also the dinky iron house built by Eiffel (hopelessly ill-suited to the steamy climate) and the Museum of the Revolution, showing Mozambique’s struggle to shake off its Portuguese regime.
Some tours include lunch at the sea-front Costo do Sol, which should not be missed. It is a Maputo institution, favoured by everyone from government ministers to backpackers for its seafood and easy-going ambience.
A local travel agency, Dana, has put together a shopping tour that takes in Artedif, a craft shop which is another Maputo institution, and Nucleo de Arte, a funky exhibition space which features Mozambican painters and sculptors, many of whom work in the sheds out back. But for variety, the Saturday morning craft market in front of the fort cannot be bettered; where once ivory and slaves were traded, now there is a huge assortment of work from all over the country: colourful tableaux, instruments, masks, figurines, boxes, jewellery, ceramics, batiks and capulanas, the Mozambican equivalent of the sarong.
That fewer women now wear capulanas is a good measure of Maputo’s modernisation. Once they played a pivotal cultural, even political, role. When Mozambique issued its own currency, the metical, the notes were reproduced on capulanas, while others sported the hoe and rifle that were the emblems of the republic created in 1975. Suits and flash mobiles are the urban totems of today, but are beyond the reach the peddlers selling everything from live crabs to knickers on Maputo’s streets. Stop at any pavement café for an excellent coffee and Portuguese custard tart (another colonial legacy) to watch Maputo’s citizens and you’ll see the vanishing past, the jaunty present and optimistic future walk on by.
First published in The Sunday Telegraph, 2007
Interior hotel image © Nicola J Walker.