Friday, July 18, 2008

Maputo, Massaca, Mahanyani MOZAMBIQUE

From City to Town to Rural Village

There has been so much movement in my life since January, that I feel as if I awoke and found myself in Maputo, Mozambique on the east coast of Africa.

Africa. The word itself inspires majestic imagery. And even though Maputo is a city in disrepair, there is an essence of sturdiness in the briny air that breezes in from the Indian Ocean.


Once considered a rival to the luscious Cape Town, trash billows down the wide boulevards broken apart by the unceremonious Portuguese departure almost 50 years ago and an ensuing civil war. The remnants of this port jewel are certainly sad to behold, but Mozambique has retained the pride of its countrymen, and the government is progressive, moving to eradicate AIDS, empower women and educate every child through the eighth grade. It's an impressive agenda that seems to have caught the enthusiasm of the people.

The first night my roommate tells me she watched "Out of Africa" before she left her home in Florida. It's hard not to smile at this innocent confession because after all, Kenya is not Mozambique and Robert Redford is definitely not here. We are housed near the bus station, a makeshift stop at a rotary where small minivans cram passengers traveling to destinations written on cardboard displays in the windshield. It is a similar bus that takes us to Massaca, the township in which we will be staying.

Massaca 1 (there are six) is a former refugee camp with a population of 1000. The township lies in a simple grid system with the camp's military gate in tact at the entrance. Driving in, we pass a dusty field where kids play with makeshift soccer balls and a market of tin sprawls into dark passageways. Houses of brick, stone, thatched bamboo and tin spread out on four sides from the main road until a flourishing cabbage patch greets you at the end and directs your attention to a view of the countryside.

The village is supported by a Spanish Mission which also runs the clinic, school, miller, bakery and lumber yard where the first day we see children's coffins bing roughly hewn from odd ends of wood. These are early mornings, at 7:AM, the miller has already begun grinding his corn for the baker's bread and for villagers who can afford his service. The meal will be made into a dish called "Shima", a south African staple.


It is quite cold South of the Equator, and the evenings darken quickly but we are blanketed by the Milky Way and a host of constellations I have never seen before. The moon in its sliver visits us three nights in
a row. The main road is very dark, electricity being uncommon, but I hear people laughing and walking up and down the streets when I step outside the Mission House wall to have my evening cigarette.

Somewhere in the market of tin roofs and displays of chips & hair extensions, a shopkeeper with a television sets out plastic chairs and plays movies for paying customers. WWF and karate films are favorites and kids love to strike action poses for us.


One would think in the darkness, evenings would bring a thoughtful repose, but the nights are noisier than New York City beginning with loud party music blasting from somewhere in the town until about 2:30. At 3:30, the baker's apprentice arrives to chop wood for his ovens. At 5:00 AM, what sounds like thousands of roosters screetching and howling jolt you out of bed. I imgine they are passing on a secret warning, something like "Today it could be you! Take heed!" It is a most disturbing sound. When we depart for Mahanyani at 7:30 AM, the roosters are still squawking out their credo.


Shameless Crushes...

find life experiences and swallow them whole.
travel.
meet many people.
go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys.
try everything.
exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.
-lawrence k. fish

Yoga For Peace

read much and often

Cleopatra: A Life
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Never Let Me Go
The Angel's game
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Bel-Ami
Dreaming in French: A Novel
The Post-Birthday World
A Passage to India
The Time Traveler's wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Kite Runner
Eat, Pray, Love
Slaughterhouse-Five
Les Misérables
The Lovely Bones
1984
Memoirs of a Geisha


read much and often»