Mozambique

This past year has been a tough one, especially for my partner Megan, who had to deal with the culture shock of the diminished freedom of inner city Cape Town after the freedom and safety of two years in Japan. We lived, and she worked and studied, in Woodstock, South Africa's oldest suburb and one of its most notorious for gangs and associated crime. After eleven months of living in high security contexts and street life reminiscent of downtown Detroit, the dirt and depravity of the area had put an unnecessary strain on our relationship. We needed a holiday, and with a bit of gentle persuasion from Megan, I arranged for us to spend three weeks in Mozambique. I had been there before in 2004 and piqued her curiosity with my stories.

We took the train from Cape Town to Durban and only found out on the first morning that it was a two day trip, rather than overnight as we had expected. We hunkered down for another 24 hours, grateful that we had access to a dining car. We stayed with my parents in Durban for a few days and then took the Panthera Azul coach to Maputo via Swaziland, where a customs official on the Mozambican side was bribed to abandon the search he had embarked upon for that very purpose. Despite our best efforts to avoid it, we were swindled by the taxi operator who took us to our first point of call, Fatima's Rest Backpackers in Maputo. It was election day on our arrival, so nothing was open, meaning we had no chance of changing money. We went for a walk in town and came across an agitated group of people. Two policemen had stopped three South African travellers who had just arrived and demanded to see their passports, which they didn't have. They refused to accompany them on the short walk to the backpackers to fetch them and threatened them with arrest. After showing the cops our passports, we said we would fetch the travellers' ones for them. I went to Fatima's and told the receptionist what had happened. "Those bloody cops!" he exclaimed and marched out to give them an earful. They duly abandoned their harrassment of the travellers. From Fatima's we had to get up at dawn the next morning to take the chapas (minibus) taxi to Tofo. We had to wait for several hours in a throng of people and vehicles for it to fill up with passengers before we could depart. One of the things I was happy to see on the arduous and uncomfortable journey was the field before the bridge over the Limpopo on the way into Xai-Xai had been cleared of landmines and was now under cultivation. After several hours of bone-jarring journeying, we were dropped off at Fatima's in Tofo, relieved to be done with all the driving and happy to complete the last kilometre of the journey on foot. We finally made it to Bamboozi, the lodge I had booked at and were shown to our hut. It was made almost entirely out of natural materials and was better than I expected, with electricity, beds and mosquito nets. We made our way up to the bar to be shocked by the prices. They were about double South African prices, close to quadruple the prices I paid the last time I was in Mozambique, four years ago. This may have something to do with the fact that this country has experienced an incredibly high growth rate since it was a bit of a Zimbabwe case in the nineties, having suffered two long debilitating wars which only ended with the collapse of Apartheid and the drying up of South African funding for the right wing terrorist organiztion, RENAMO. Several zeros have been knocked off the Metacais which also seems to have propelled the currency to its present value.

Mozambique has been run by FRELIMO, a socialist party, since independence from the Portuguese. The colonialists' language is still the official language, a unifying factor for the many different tribal and language groups which inhabit the country. The ruling party is a kind of benign kleptocracy, if you'll excuse the oxymoron. Mozambique has a functioning democracy and FRELIMO is always voted back into power, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that the style of government is distinctly African, running on favours, gifts and commissions, a system known to hoodwinked westerners as "corruption". The lodges had to pay a kind of tithe to the government through a convoluted process of compulsory donations.


Tofo itself is a small seaside village which derives most of its income from, and even owes its existence to, tourism. The centre of the village is the marketplace, close to the main beach, usually a quiet tropical idyll, but come mid December, a noisy playground for drunk Gautengers on jetskis and quadbikes. Luckily we escaped the worst of it by going home before most of them arrived.

Our typical day was waking up with the sun at around 6am then walking into the village for coffee and to buy food for breakfast at the market. We'd then take it back and prepare it in the most rudimentary kithen I've ever used. There were two pots and a broken plate... that was about all the cookware. A blackened gas stove, a dodgy sink and a fridge we christened the 'Black Hole' for its inability to store food, were the only amenities. We bought a knife at the market which we had for a while but then that was stolen too. I blame backpackers for this rampant kleptomania, since the locals would have had a hard time hiding all the stuff.

Unfortunately, due to the ridiculous prices and the impotence of American Express travellers cheques, we were unable to experience any of the ocean tours or scuba diving on offer, so the only sealife I saw was a gamefish that streaked underneath me when I was surfing one day. The area is famous for whalesharks, which I saw last time I went, and turtles, manta rays and dolphins. The wildlife tasted good tough. Our favourute dish was grilled barracuda.

Altogether, we stayed just under three weeks at Tofo and in that time found out which were the best beers and how much one should pay for them without getting ripped off. We learned how to get rid of the legions of little boys who tried persistently to sell bracelets made out of seashells and beads (Mimicking their sales lines and saying we weren't from Gauteng usually worked). We found the best place for coffee and breakfast when we were doing well with our budgeting (The Waterworks surf and coffee shop), made a few friends and received an offer for a job in Japan over the internet at the village's only internet cafe. It was a happy ending to the Southern African chapter of our international journey together and a great place to rest before we started the next chapter; in Shikoku, Japan, where I am writing this from!