mozambique

Finally after all these years of listening to Bob Dylan's song of Mozambique that the day has finally come to see for myself if Bob's words are true. Are there lots of pretty girls in Mozambique? Are they looking for a little romance? Do they dance cheek to cheek?

We will not be rushing through Mozambique as since we have been on this continent people have said good things about it. Entering Mozambique on the main road
from Malawi there are lots of villages and the dirt road is narrow with many people and animals on it.

Rainstorms and the going down of the sun made for an interesting drive. There was no traffic so we parked up for the night on the road in a quiet place and woke up next morning practically in the middle of
a village. Places look very different with a bit of daylight. As we continued on the next day we were surprised to see so many villages along the road so far from the coast. It appears Mozambique is not like
Australia in regards to the population spread across its land. We picked up more hitchikers, 4 men, their luggage, 2 chooks, a bed mattress and bags of maize and vegetables. After hours and hours of driving we finally came to the city of Nampula.

Mozambique has had a civil war, which ended only 12 years ago and the country is in the process of rebuilding itself. We were told to look out for trees with white marks on them as they represented landmines in its vicinity left over from the war. We ended up driving on to cross the country in two days to Mozambique Island, which has a two kilometer one lane bridge connecting it to the mainland. Mozambique Island used to be the capital up until about 100
years ago.

About 500 years ago the Portugues came and having to compete with the Arabs for trade, built forts along this coast as collection points for gold, ivory and slaves that they had brought (not bought)
from the interior. It must have been perfectly moral to the Arabs and Portugues to do this back then. The result of this occupation was the construction of well built buildings and Mozambique Island has many of these. Its not a big island and walking around it is like stepping back in time as many of these buildings have not been altered or repaired.

The Portugues pulled out of Mozambique about 30 years ago taking with it its skilled professionals and a lot of the infrastructure eg. telephone lines, electricity, water and lots of other materials. Some of the buildings have trees growing out of them and no roof but still have people
living in them. I started taking many pictures of these buildings and had a flashback to our art class at high
school. We would have to sit through class after class of the teacher showing slide after slide of boring European architecture. “Look at those flying buttresses!” he would say with gay excitement. Those of us
that weren’t snoozing would just look at each other and roll our eyes. So I will try and not send you too many of these.

The first building built here by the Portugues was the church which also served as the fort until that was
built. The church walls are two metres thick with the marble ceiling tiles bought over from Portugal. We stayed on the island for a few days playing beach soccer with the locals and going for swims. Its starting to
get pretty warm now.

Our next stop was Pemba, which is a tourist type of place up the coast. With this comes the quality of the locals that’s not great. We arrived in at 12.30am Sunday morning and crashed (slept) on the beach. Woke
up to many locals wanting to do a bit or a lot of business. Ended up finding Russell’s place who is an aussie guy running his own accommodation business. Helpful guy with some other interesting characters including
Billy Connelly and Brains from The Thunderbirds (bottom lip and all).

Even though there is a considerable
amount of tourist development around here, things happen pretty slowly. Went for a trip to Ibo Island from near Pemba, which is a bit like Mozambique Island, so the camera was out again.

We had to catch a dhow, which is an Arabic sailing vessel that’s been around for hundreds of years. On the way back I got an opportunity to sail it. It’s a considerably different designed sailboat mith a shortened mast that’s only purpose is to support a rotating and sliding boom. You can’t tack (change sides 90%) with these boats and must jibe (go around the other way 270%) when you are sailing into the wind.

It points to the wind well but the hull drags through the water and you need someone on bailing out duty as it takes in water fairly quickly. But it was a pleasant sail. The tides on this coast have a four metre
variance which is huge compared to the Australian east coast. So with the tide being low, we had to walk the last kilometer or so through the mud and water but it was ok.

The famed seafood of Mozambique has certainly lived up to the hype with a huge selection of good quality food. You see local fishermen here carrying huge sail fish (which has a long nose like Pinnoccio’s) bent over their heads, holding the nose in one hand and the tail in the other. These fish are over 1.5 metres long. I went to take a photo of one but he demanded money so I said I didn’t need it that much.

Back in Pemba we decided to fly over to Madagascar for a week via Mayotte. When we got back we headed up the coast for Tanzania. One thing Mozambique is known for is the poor condition of the roads.
So far we didn’t think they were too bad. The main coastal road toward Tanzania was a combination of dirt, sand, mud, rock and water being one lane or no lane in some parts. Pushing rates vary amongst the
locals when you get stuck.

The ferry crossing across the famous Rovuma river which is the boarder into Tanzania was truly an African experience. We were getting dizzy because the current of the river was so strong that the ferry was going round in circles to get across. Mozambique is a unique place with the people here confident of development for the better.

There appears to be a lot of international interest and commitment here and time will tell if money will help this place.

As for Bob Dylan’s song of Mozambique (Brain’s had the cd at Russell’s place) well it still is a great song but it has a different meaning to me now. If Bob went across the Mozambique Channel to Madagascar, I think
the song would have been called Madagascar.