Mozambique, Mozambique

While many Americans gobbled their turkey dinners, I headed to Mozambique, a neighboring country to South Africa.  Before traveling, I knew that Mozambique played an important role in supporting the anti-apartheid struggle and South Africa’s ANC political party.  I also knew that Bob Marley wrote named a song after the country.  I traveled however, seeking relief from the hot southern African summer at Mozambique’s beaches along the Indian Ocean. 

After a long ride through South Africa’s green, mountainous countryside, I arrived at the Mozambican border. Although the landscape didn’t seem much different, the closer I came to Mozambique, the hotter and more humid it became.

A former Portuguese colony, Mozambique is a Portuguese speaking, socialist country.  While conversing with an Angolan man on the bus, who also spoke Portuguese as a native language, I remembered how expansive the Portuguese colonial empire was, and the active role it played in the transatlantic slave trade.

Across the border in rural Mozambique, I passed by many makeshift tin homes with grass roofs built alongside the road. As we drove into Maputo, Mozambique’s capital city, it seemed much poorer than South African cities I’ve visited. The streets were less clean, and many of the brick buildings had chipping paint. Above the tree-lined streets named after socialist revolutionaries, clothing hung from the windows of pastel-colored apartment buildings. Surrounded by signs written in Portuguese, tall palm trees, and what looked like Spanish colonial architecture, I thought of Brazil.

I spent Thanksgiving in Maputo having pizza at an inexpensive, outdoor restaurant. I noticed that Mozambique is quite racially diverse and its’ residents seemed more easy-going than South Africans.  On the streets, I watched descendants of Africa, Europe, India, Pakistan, and mulattos of African and Portuguese or African and Indian heritage—many who looked like mestizo people in South America.

The next day, I headed to a museum that housed distinctive gun sculptures made from remnants of Mozambique’s civil war, which lasted from 1986 to 1995. Outside the gallery, I conversed with a group of local artists in a mixture of English and poorly spoken Spanish.  As I listened to stories about their travel to the U.S., a large object fell from the tree above me, almost hitting me in the head.  Stunned, I looked up and laughed, as I realized its was literally “raining mangoes.” 

Simione, one of the Mozambicans artists, joined my colleague and I on a tour of the city.  In a beautiful botanical garden, we ate lunch at a restaurant that specialized in tasty local seafood.  Over lunch, Simione told me about life growing up in war-torn Mozambique.  To avoid being drafted by the army, at 14 year old, he fled the country, and spent four years as a refugee in South Africa.  In Johannesburg, he lived on the streets for months, washing cars, repairing shoes and doing other odd jobs, to survive.  When the civil war was over, Simione returned to Mozambique and began his career as a sculptor.  His work is now internationally regarded.

            After lunch, we visited a number of galleries, and craft shops.  Maputo is truly home to the best African arts and crafts I’ve ever seen. At a woodcarving cooperative, I watched nearly a dozen men carve intricate wood and ivory sculptures.  At the Modern Art Museum, I enjoyed jaw-dropping paintings by contemporary Mozambican artists.  And, at the opening of a new art gallery, I met some of Maputo’s talented artists, and interested international art collectors. 

Later on, I went to the Franco-Mozambican Cultural Center, where I saw Mingas, one of Mozambique’s most popular singers perform.  Inside the hot, crowded theatre, I sat elbow-to-elbow on a bench with fans of all colors and nationalities, while listening to Mingas’ melodic Afro-pop.  Almost everyone around me danced and sang along in Shangaan, a language spoken in both Mozambique and South Africa.  Although I didn’t understand the lyrics, I enjoyed her spirited performance, awesome band, and fantastic dancers. 

            After the concert, we headed to a crowded jazz nightclub down the road. Home to a rich music culture, the jazz band played “straight” jazz to a crowd of young, attentive listeners.  Surprisingly, much of the music I heard in Maputo sounded like Afro-Latin music and the dance I saw resembled many Latin American dances.

Leaving Mozambique I wondered why it seemed so much different from South Africa. However, as soon as I stopped a bus station across the border, I heard a sly, racist comment and immediately felt conscious that I was traveling with a white person.  In Mozambique, I wasn’t conscious of race nor did I experience any racial discrimination.

Perhaps because Mozambique forcibly gained its independence from Portugal many years ago, race relations did not seem as rigidly hierarchal. 

Although it rained most of the weekend in Maputo, and I wasn’t able to visit Mozambique’s illustrious beaches, having a break from South Africa’s tense racial climate was a vacation in itself.