Mozambique

Africa - June, July 2008

The road and events had all passed remarkably smoothly the morning we pulled up to the remote border post of Milange, Mozambique. We (Scott, Tim and I) had rented a small 4x4 back in Blantyre and set off for Mozambique before sunrise. Despite the early hour, many people along the way were already hard at work, carting their produce and wares to local markets. By now I was used to seeing lines women carrying large bundles of whatever on their heads, babies strapped to their backs, heads bobbling indifferently.

The countryside in eastern Malawi is quite serene in the dawn light. Thin lines of white smoke highlighted the groomed valleys of green tea plantations that were slowly unveiled behind the receding shadows of Mount Mulanje, the country's tallest mountain.

Having been dependent on others' language skills, I was excited to be using my (now rusty) Portuguese skills, greeting the Mozambican immigration officer with a cheerful "Bom dia". He replied accordingly, but less enthusiastically, and asked where we were going and for how long. He then asked to see my passport.

"You do not have a visa?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"No. I need to get one here," I replied.

Sliding my passport back to me he said, "That is not possible.' (Actually, "Não é possível") 'You have to go back and obtain one in Malawi."

My heart sank. I sensed Scott's doing the same (he understands Portuguese as well as I do). While Tim already had a visa from previous visits to Mozambique, we were all stuck in the same boat, or car rather.

This problem would be costly. Being Sunday, we would lose at least two days in trying to get a visa from a consulate back in Malawi. The car rental would have been a waste. And with gas at roughly $8.00 a gallon, well ... costly.

I persisted: "Our friends got their visas here." (Actually, I lied)

"Não é possível."

I went into bribe talk: "Surely there must be some way we can pay for one here?"

"Não é possível."

Losing patience, I insisted: "We cannot go back, it is Sunday!"

A blank stare. (I wasn't even sure if I was using the correct word for "Sunday" remembering that weekdays are "Segunda", "Terca", "Cuarta", "Quinta", "Sexta". But Saturday and Sunday are just like Spanish: "Sabado" and "Domingo".)

Meanwhile, another man appeared behind the counter. Overhearing the discussion, he finally chimed in. "Vou perguntar o chefe" (I'll go ask the boss). Of course! Why hadn't it occurred to me to use the standard American line: "I want to speak with your manager"?

Several minutes later the second man returned. Evidently the "boss" said okay. We slid our passports back to the immigration officer. Visas were issued with no extra questions and, surprisingly, no extra money. After a commanding, decisive, ground-shaking, full-armed "whomp" from the Immigration officer's rubber stamp on our passports, we were on our way.

We rattled along the silty, wash-boarded road leaving trail of orange dust a mile long in the wake of our little Suzuki Jimny 4x4. We passed small villages of much huts with straw roofs out of which children would pour, waving at us until they were covered in dust. Some villages were built around the empty skeletons of formerly grand colonial structures; structures that were abandoned after a bitter
independence in the mid '70's and looted after many bloody years of civil war into the early '90's. Such struggles left Mozambique a hauntingly empty countryside, with only improvement in the future for things could not get much worse.

For me, driving on the opposite side of the road (as most Sub-Saharan countries do) was the real treat. This joy alone was perhaps worth the cost of quintupling our daily expenditures as renting a vehicle to cross an international boundary is not cheap! Taking turns driving, we would remind each other to keep on the left, though, to the amusement of local bystanders, several unchecked traffic violations were made along the way.

We briefly stopped in Mocuba and Nampula -- two dirty cities with many stoic, Soviet-esque and Art-Deco buildings built along formerly grand boulevards, now reduced to dusty paths.

Our destination was Ilha de Moçambique, place of that eludes most travelers being far too from most overland routes in Africa. Called just "Ilha" by locals ("Island" in Portuguese), its significance was related to its location along trade routes in the Indian Ocean. The island is also thought to be the origin of the country's name, derived from the name of an Arab sheik who controlled the it until the Portugese arrived: Musa Mbiki.

Ilha is now a small island-town that thrives on sporadic tourism and fishing, having been usurped as the trade center by the costal town of Nacala to the north. If not for the one-lane causeway connecting it to the mainland, Ilha would have been long forgotten by the rest of the world as a colonial relic. And despite a UNESCO "World Heritage" designation, only a few buildings have been restored to their original grandeur. The rest have decayed beyond recognition as Mozambicans do not seem to be terribly nostalgic about their colonial heritage (emphasized by the symbols on their new flag: a machine-gun crossing a hoe overshadowing a book all outlined by a single star--a fair summary of their recent history: war and agriculture trump education, all in isolation), which is understandable because much of that heritage involves slave trade and exploitation. "But the Portuguese
made such nice buildings..."

Walking along the crumbling streets and battered structures, one gets a sense of the sense of the strife Mozambique has gone through. A conversation with a local confirms such a sensation.

"I hate politics," stated Luis unsolicitedly before embarking on a lengthy political diatribe about the disparity of the Mozambican people, especially on Ilha, which he says is deliberately neglected by the more prosperous capital much further south, Maputo. He also had opinions about Reagan, the Bushes, the Clintons and Obama (though he thought Hillary was born in Mozambique, confusing her with John Kerry's wife ... an understandable mistake).

Luis, owner of the guest house we found, had seen and experienced a series of power struggles in his life. The result: Luis was only beginning to get ahead in his late forties despite his savvy entrepreneurial abilities (abilities we experience in negotiating a negligible discount in the cost for a guided sailboat ride to another
island).

"The problem is corruption," he concluded. This statement I heard more than once in every country along the way. It all seemed to be the same story with different names, a formula for poverty: abusive colonial rule, bloody independence, unruly despot, cruel-socialist regime, rigged elections, foreign-aid...

Neglect and poverty aside, Ilha does maintain a lively atmosphere with the charm of something "undiscovered", all surrounded by the pristine pale blue-green waters of the Indian Ocean. Aside from the speeding scooters, the place was as safe as can be. We walked around day and night with minimal pestering, just the ogling of children who had seen few fair-skinned people. The Muezzin's regular blasting of the adhan (Muslim call to prayer) from speakers mounted on a Mosque's minarets
reinforce the distance we had come: a place somewhere between the West and the Middle East, yet still recovering from having gone so very far south. (ha!)

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