Ihla de Mocambique: Photo essay without photos

An old Mozambique hand (aged 20-something) tells me that bandwidth here fluctuate uncontrollably. Another told me that not long ago, an illegal Chinese trawler had cut the fibre optics cable across the bay and all communications was down for 5 weeks.

So rather than struggle (so far without luck) to upload the 12 photos I’ve selected to show everyone the beauty of Ihla de Mocambique, I will paint a few word pictures. When I get to Tanzania, I’m hoping I’ll have better luck with the photos.

So imagine this:

- 3.5 km off shore, in the open waters of the Indian Ocean, is a long narrow island city, only 3 blocks across at its widest point, and built up from seawall to white sand beach.

- At its north end, a hulking Portuguese Citadel, made from black square-cut coral stone from quarries at the south end of the island and transported here on the heads of slaves.

- Crowded in the lea of the Citadel, an old Stone Town – narrow, winding streets of loose red sand lined with the ruins of an ancient colony.

- The centre piece is the former Governor’s Palace, an immense red villa built in the 1600s and still full of the exquisite suites of furniture left behind when Mozambique moved its capital to Maputo a century ago. I’m the only visitor this day, and removing our sandals to preserve the carpet, my guide and I pad barefoot through the reception rooms, dining room, ballroom, and bedrooms poking 400 year old beds to see how comfortable they are.

- The Jesuits were here – a large, whitewashed and barrel vaulted church with the Barrocco gilded altar they plant in all colonies to display their wealth.

- Then there are two parts to Stone town. The first is the Unesco projects - reconstructed, painted and polished to near Disneyfication – including the Slave Regisry and the Telecom building. The rest of town forms the second part – ruins and near ruins, many of them displaying the proud remnants of once grand homes and shops. Some are inhabitable, and show signs of human presence. Others are open to the sky, crumbling walls of black coral stone and red earthen mortar. Plaques proclaim them heritage sites, awaiting a benevolent buyer to save them.

- Beyond Stone Town is the Hospital, a massive stroke of ego built over a hundred years ago in style clearly inspired by the plantation houses of the Mississippi – massive temple steps leading up to giant porticoed porch, two stories of proud square windows, and a urn-topped cornice. But broken windows and crumbling walls leave it open to the elements. The amazing thing is that it is still a “functioning” hospital. Wandering around back we see people lying in beds, attending to by family members.

- The final element of this odd place is Makuti town, five rough and tumble villages of mud and thatch huts, each built into one of the deep quarries that produced the stone for the citadel. This is where most of the city’s population lives, many Mancua speaking locals but also a number of people from other regions to fled to the island’s relative safety during the post-independence Civil War. Unlike stone town, these villages are full of life, with children playing, vendors selling food from their doorsteps, seemingly everyone with a cell phone in their hands.

- At the south end, the island ends in an enclosure of Hindu cremations and 3 cemeteries, one Christian, one Indian Muslim and one African Muslim.

But that is just the physical city. I have vivid images in my mind.

Walking home from dinner one night, I see a young mother and her child sitting quietly in a darkened doorway to a half-building. As if a bomb had hit it, half of the front wall and most of the second storey are missing, but there’s enough of the roof left to provide some shelter and a lit candle inside suggests that this is home to the forlorn pair on the stoop. Next to it, a polished 2 storey “Central Café” is said to be the completed renovation project of a European couple hoping to capitalize on a growing tourist trade. It is a war zone of sorts.

Every morning and every evening, the main north-south street sees a steady stream brightly wrapped women and ragged children carrying huge water containers on their heads, making their ways home from some tap in Stone Town. I’m approached by children in the streets, generally to smile and wave at me, and occasionally to give me a hug. But sometimes, they point to my water bottle and then to their lips. The well water tastes salty.

In the heat of the day, everyone seems to wilt. Young men …everyone here seems young … sit in the shade of big trees, slumped in unison side by side. Looking in doorways of the half-structures, I often see women sitting on cloths on the floor, holding children or plaiting each other’s hair. There are a few places in town, where I have to step into the street because a family is taking a nap on the broken sidewalk, to catch the stirring of air off of the ocean.

As the afternoon fades into a golden sunset, the turquoise water beyond town, the white sand and the soaring palm trees conjure images of a south sea paradise. It is an odd, ruined, promising town desperately in need of a saviour.

For now, it is a town for adventurers. In the hotel pool one night, while white winged bats skim the water near our heads, I meet a 67 year old Parisian woman who has only 2 more African countries to check off on her list. Her last trip was to Iraq where she felt very safe. “A woman is of no consequence there”, she tells me. Then, as the light fades, I spend an hour talking to the new ED of a European charity who took up his post only 3 days earlier and has little optimism about his task to curb the spread of HIV, malaria and cholera among a population that has no written form of their language. The Walkers are a delightful, older couple from Arizona who are successful business people but seem to have spent much of their lives doing things like trying to back-pack into China over the Himalayas. He has written a book about their adventures. Right now they are doing consulting work on Agri-business (him) and HIV/AIDS (her). .

I hope I’ve created some image of this place. Keep these images in mind and when next I get a broader band-width, perhaps in Northern Tanzania, I will publish those 12 images.

Next stop, a few hundred km up the coast to the Pemba, the beach front capital of Cabo Delgado province.