I just realized that in all my writings about Mozambique, I have yet to mention the almighty and ever-present Piti-Piti sauce (I also saw it spelled piri-piri and peri-peri)! Mozambique is well known throughout Africa and has a growing popularity throughout Great Britain and Europe for its piti-piti sauce. It is something akin to a hot sauce; a mix of ground up peppers, lemon juice, oil and other secret ingredients, and people put it on everything from chicken to eggs to cheese. Other than piti-piti sauce, what Mozambique is most known for is prawns and beautiful beaches. The southern beaches apparently get quite crowded by locals and South Africans during holidays, but the northern beaches, perhaps because they are more remote or perhaps because of the exorbitant prices of the lodging, are much less peopled. The Quirimbas Archipelago, in particular, has gorgeous, white sand beaches and remote islands. Dad mentioned that while staying in the northern city of Pemba for a business conference, he noticed a steady stream of private jets coming into the city, loaded, presumably, with people who would then be whisked off north by boat or helicopter to the expensive retreats on the Archipelago. Maybe next trip. Maybe next life. For now, we were heading to Nampula, the third-largest city in the country, to jump off from there to Mozambique Island for our last weekend in Africa.
Immediately upon checking in at the Hotel Milenio in downtown Nampula, it was evident that we would be experiencing a very different Mozambique from what we had seen so far. The hotel was new and very modern, with wi-fi in the lobby. Just off the lobby is a small restaurant where we decided to grab some lunch. It is an Indian/Pakistani restaurant, and, judging from the menu and the clientele, we decided it was going to be very authentic and very good food! Apparently the menu had previously been very poorly translated into English, and the owners decided to give it up and just have the menu in Hindi and some of it in Portuguese. As I mentioned before, I am a ridiculously picky eater, so I at least want to know what it is that I am going to be eating, but every time I asked in Portuguese or English what different items on the menu were, the answer was always the same: “It’s good! You try!”. So, alright, we finally just picked a few things … and it was good! And I was glad I tried! Judging from the food, the outfits on many of the people we saw walking by on the main streets and the cheesy Bollywood films on the hotel TV, this part of the country has a much greater Indian and Pakistani population. It also remains strongly Muslim- there are mosques side by side with old cathedrals, many people work only a half day on Fridays, and it is that much harder to find a drink.
The idea was to spend the afternoon checking out the National Ethnography Museum which had been recommended by some of Dad’s coworkers. Inside and behind the museum you can purchase some of the local crafts. The Makonde tribe of the north is renowned for its woodcarving skills, particularly for the busts carved from ebony and often laced with shards of bone, ivory or bits of shell. In fact, NPR recently did a report on how the Makonde are putting their woodcarving skills to good use in the modern market by fabricating hard-to-find parts for everything from stoves to sewing machines to cars! Although I had been looking forward to seeing all of this, I found myself very tired and weakened from days of struggling to breathe through my asthma and wound up spending the afternoon resting and trying to regain some energy. Meanwhile, Rory took advantage of the wi-fi to answer work e-mails and Dad went off to the office. When we reunited later that evening it was for a leisurely walk down to Café Atlantico for a salad and pizza dinner. We were joined by two gentlemen who have been living and working throughout Africa for decades now, one for CLUSA and the Gates Foundation, and the other for CARE. As usual, these expats had fantastic stories to tell, and, being far away from their own families, were happy to adopt us for the evening. In fact, Phil, who works for CARE joined us again the next morning for breakfast. As it turns out, he is somewhat of a local legend. He writes his own weekly bulletins for many of the expats and businessmen, keeping everyone up to date on projects going on in the area, who is where when, and what the deal is with it all.
Friday morning we were up early (although we somehow managed to sleep through the 4am calls to prayer over the muezzin). Pedro picked us up at the hotel for a two-hour drive on smooth, well-paved roads past old cashew groves and newer pineapple plantations to the Island of Mozambique. It seems that wherever I find myself in the world, I can always feel when I am nearing the ocean. The vegetation changes to more scrubby bushes and palm fronds. Usually it seems that something changes about the architecture, too. In this case, the villages we sped past were still made up of mud and stick huts, but they had palm roofs now instead of grass , and, for whatever reason, people had actually staked out their land a little more, whether with grass reed fences or just with stakes shoved into the ground creating something of a fence. I have heard that the north of the country, because it is still so much more remote and unpopulated, has more wildlife, including lions and hyena. Maybe these fences were an attempt to keep children and chickens in and predators out. Soon the air itself changed as well, losing some of its smokiness and getting crisp and salty. YES! It was not long before we came around a bend in the road to see the one-lane bridge stretching across about two miles of clear turquoise water to the island. Along the shore on the mainland there were some tents dotting the beach (maybe all the lodging is not high priced!) and some local fishing boats.
Ilha de Moçambique itself was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site some years back. In 1498 Vasco da Gama landed here and soon thereafter the Portuguese were booting the Arabs off the island (although, even more so than on the mainland, the Arab influence is as strong as ever, with about 90% of the island’s residents being Muslim, and the majority of the boats we saw streaming across the waters looking very much like Arab dhows). The Portuguese built the massive Fort São Sebastião on the north end of the island from which to defend the entrance to the bay. As was to be expected back then, they built the chapel before building the fort! Later on, they would take their prisoners out of the cell in the fort, have them pray in the chapel, and then take them to the firing wall. If by some miracle they survived the firing squad, they were set free. The island remained the capital of Portuguese East Africa well into the 19th century. It was the seat of government and a major port of trade; with strong ties to places as far away as Macau and Goa (a lot of the antique furniture and old doors still on the island reflect this to this day). Sadly, it was also a major point of departure for many of the slaves brought from the interior headed for the sugarcane plantations of Brazil and Cuba.
It was sad to see how much of the fantastic and historical architecture of the place had crumbled. It has the potential to be very much like Antigua, Guatemala. Instead, a great deal of the old Stonetown looks like scenes out of a WWII movie, with bombed buildings that have walls falling in and no roof left. Through the rubble, you catch glimpses of old blue and white Portuguese tile in the walls and great, thick beams of African leadwood that once sat atop four-foot thick stone walls and held up the roofs of very grandiose old homes. The place we stayed, Terraco dos Quitandas, had taken nine years to restore! The owners, a couple from Maputo, did an amazing job. They hired Mozambican carpenters to reconstruct many of the old doors that had been so beautifully detailed, and artisans to carve the designs into the mortar around the doorframes, much the way it had been done originally. Each and every piece of furniture was absolutely gorgeous and yet, with the history of the island being that of a trading post on this side of the world, they also stayed true to what may have been available back then from India, Bali, Zanzibar, China and, of course, Portugal. The place became my refuge and my sanctuary, and we had it all to ourselves all weekend! This is not everyone’s cup of tea, I know. Some people want to be where the action is, maybe stay at a place that has a restaurant or offers tours. These too can be found on the island, but for me, at this point in our journey, I was glad for my quiet and zen sanctuary.
From the moment we stepped out of the truck we had guys swarming around trying to carry bags, sell jewelry or boat rides, give us directions, anything they could, and they would not let up. Pinto, the lodge’s manager, recommended we start with a tour of the old nautical museum, so we walked over with our unwanted entourage following us, still trying to sell us anything under the sun. For a reasonable price, you can get a tour of the old museum, the governor’s cathedral and the governor’s palace (they are still discovering secret tunnels that connected these to the old fort and the state offices within). At the time, the palace was closed for renovations (glad that they have found some funding to do this) so we were only able to ogle over the outer façade and entryway.
The moment we stepped back outside, the guys were back. They were like flies that you swat at but they keep coming back to buzz in your ear! Once we retreated into the Escondidinho for some lunch, we were again left alone. The Escondidinho is another lodge with a restaurant. It was originally a holding place for those unfortunate people who would then be taken to the fort and loaded onto the slave ships. After many years of being washed clean by ocean breezes, there is no haunting or negative energy remaining, and we were able to enjoy a quiet lunch of chicken with piti-piti, fish, prawns, and South African wine while watching a group of kids playing in the hotel pool.
Back out on the street, Dad headed back to our lodge for some rest and, to our relief, all the guys followed him, apparently under the impression that the big man was the one with all the cash flow. Lovely! Rory and I were now able to wander around Stonetown, checking out some of the little stores (my favorite was the little one with wine and used books), talking to the shop owners, and exploring the market and the side streets. We slowly made our way back to the northern end of the island to wake up Dad for our tour of the old fort. This was given to us by a young local man named James. James spends his days giving tours of different sights on the island, trying very hard to learn the appropriate words in English and Portuguese (like most of the local people we came across in rural areas, his first language was an African one), and spends his evenings taking classes at the recently restored secondary school. While the school was being restored, classes were held in the old fort. When the island hosted a big festival a few years back, the fort’s old barracks housed hundreds of visitors and overnight guests. The entire roof of the old fort is designed to be a giant water catchment system, channeling rainwater down through gutters and spouts to I believe three enormous cisterns below. As there are no freshwater wells on the island, nor have there ever been, these cisterns still function as a major source of water for the northern end of the island (there is another large cistern at the old hospital and water is now piped in from the mainland to keep up with the growing population of Makuti Town on the southern end of the 3km-long island). The fort may seem like an old relic, but it is still very much a useful member of this island’s society! As we left the fort, the soccer match that had been going on nearby ended and people came flooding out of the little stadium, filling the streets with singing, dancing, cheering.
As we rested back at the lodge, lounging in hammocks and cushioned couches in the shade, taking in the perfume of the flowers on the vines that seemed to creep up over all the walls and doorways, listening to the waves lapping the shoreline, we could still hear off in the distance the cheering and singing, now accompanied by drums, as the party for the triumph in the soccer match carried on down in Makuti Town. Rory and Dad headed off for dinner at the nearby Ancora d’Ouro while I stayed behind to enjoy this peaceful setting. Later on we would head up to the roof for sundowners (Bar Flôr de Rosa was closed so we made due with our own little roof and a bottle of wine from the store I mentioned earlier) and called it a night.
The next morning arose beautiful and calm, with the mixed echoes across the island of the muezzin and the church bells, calling their faithful to prayer. The ocean was glassy and inviting. The waters off the island are not very clean or safe to swim in though (mostly due to lack of proper sewage systems), so we decided to call up Yoyo (a German man who has taken up residence here) to reserve a boat to take us to the nearby Goa Island. We had a quick breakfast of just-out-of-the-oven coconut bread, fresh fruit and eggs whipped up by the wonderful Fatima at our lodge, lathered on some sunscreen, and headed to the dock to meet our boat. The trip over took half an hour going at a VERY leisurely pace with a sputtering engine. Once there, we wandered around checking out the old lighthouse, the fishermen in their dugout canoes just off the rocky eastern edges of this much smaller island, and taking in the sun on the white sand beach on the west side where we had pulled in. There was a very lively group of about forty to fifty young girls on the beach with a handful of chaperones. They squealed as the waves pushed them around in the shallows (actually, even Rory and I were surprised at how strong the waves and the currents were here), ran up and down the beach kicking a ball around, played a bit of volleyball or just rolled around in the sand. They were having so much fun and it was contagious! We assumed it must have been some kind of a day-long retreat for some of the local girls to get away and play around. Our time was up before we knew it, so we hopped and flopped back into our little motorboat (I hesitate to call it a speedboat) and headed back to the big island.
For dinner that night we went to the very chic and modern Villa Sands and sat out on the deck overlooking the bay and the setting sun. We walked there the long, long, long way, looping up and down the streets of Stonetown, seeing how the homes are slowly being bought up and restored, and how people manage to live and find shelter even in the ones that have not yet been repaired. The town was oddly quiet and there was a heaviness to the air. Sadly, that night we would find out why. After dinner while chatting up the hotel manager, she informed us that there had been a boating accident after our return to the big island. It seems that the Captain of the other motorboat we had seen at Goa that day loaded thirty of the young girls onto his little boat (that could not have been more than 17 feet long) for his first trip back to the big island late that afternoon. By some miracle, they made it! But, by the time he went back for the last twelve, the winds had picked up noticeably, the tide was shifting, and the swells were quite large. Somehow, the boat was swamped, causing it to submerge. None of the little girls knew how to swim. A boat going by with some tourists managed to pick up and save three of them, but were not able to help any of the others who all drowned – two nuns and seven girls. It turned out that they were all students at the local catholic school who had been taken out by the nuns for a day of fun. It was so strange to think that we had just seen them, romping around and being so playful. We never heard any signs of panic in the town. We never heard the bells toll. But apparently every boat went out to try and find them. All but one body was recovered. Very sad.
After something like that, you can’t help but reflect upon life in general and yours in particular. It is a reminder to all to enjoy life. Every day of it. Talk to the people around you. Listen. Ask questions. Explore. Try something new. Read. Do something you have always wanted to do. Do it again. Laugh. Share. And when you are out there in the world, remember that you go as an ambassador - an ambassador to your family, your friends, your town, your culture, yourself. Whether you are exploring museums in a far off country or in your own hometown; whether you are on an exotic safari or camping at your local boy scout spot; whether you are teaching English to Tonga in the bush or teaching curse words in Spanish to your neighbor; and whether you are on vacation on the beach or just taking an extra long lunch break from work, live every minute of it with everything you have got. Be kind. Be curious. Tread lightly on the path … but leave a footprint.
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