In Search of the ‘Real Africa’ in Mozambique
I
assumed it was luck that within two minutes of clearing customs in
Maputo, I found myself sharing a cab with Darcio Arsénio Novela (stage
name Mr. Arssen), one of Mozambique’s top hip-hop personalities. And
that he gave me his cellphone number, and a rundown of the top cultural
hot spots in town. And that we went out that night for beers with his
friends at Núcleo de Arte, a bar and fine-arts work space, and that the
next night he texted me about an event at the Mozambique-Germany Cultural Center — even though he wouldn’t be making it himself.
But
after three days and three nights in the chaotic but manageable coastal
capital once known under Portuguese colonization as Lourenço Marques, I
realized: If it hadn’t been him, it would have been a guy named Mário,
who led me to a jumping performance of the band Xitende at the Gil
Vicente Café Bar; or Isaura, whose job at the Base Backpackers hostel
seems to be to care for the social life of guests.
In other words, in Maputo, connections come easily, even for outsiders —
perhaps because most non-Africans around the scene aren’t tourists but
nongovernmental organization workers or diplomats or health consultants —
and the few tourists who are there really want to be there.
I
was one of those travelers, having heard from a friend who had lived in
the region that if he could live in any African city, it would be
Maputo. I was further egged on by several people I had met in South
Africa and the quirky mountain kingdom of Swaziland — both of which
border Mozambique — who said Maputo was “real Africa.” Always
budget-minded, I was concerned by talk of high prices caused by a
growing economy and increased foreign investment. But only lodging
turned out to be a challenge; unless you’re O.K. with a hostel or a
dump, you’re going to pay something like $70 or up a night. I stayed in a
stuffy but friendly and dirt-cheap hostel, the Base Backpackers, for
400 meticais ($12.70 at 32 meticais to the dollar), and the Guest House
Moderna (dengderek@hotmail.com or 258-8-2411-0230), a spick-and-span
operation run by a friendly Chinese couple.
The
guesthouse was geared to Chinese travelers but very welcoming to
others, as long as you don’t mind dumplings for breakfast and hard
mattresses. It was more expensive — 2,700 meticais ($85.50) a night —
but included good air-conditioning and Internet access on request. (The
latter was especially welcome; after a short stay in the city you’d be
forgiven for thinking Maputo was the term in the local Changana language
for “land without Wi-Fi.”)
After
lodging was paid for, all I had to do to keep costs under control was
avoid expat haunts and dive into the messy Mozambican crowds.
Those
crowds are everywhere — on the nearly destroyed sidewalks around the
decaying colonial buildings of the Baixa neighborhood, and on broader
avenues named (with Portuguese spellings) after leaders presumably
admired by the Soviet-allied, viva-a-revolução-style government that
ruled the decade after independence, in 1975: Avenida Ho Chi Min,
Avenida Vladimir Lenine, Avenida Mao Tse Tung, Avenida Kwame Nkrumah.
There
are the standard visits, like Feima, a market of outdoor restaurants,
art and crafts in the Parque dos Continuadores, a leafy, refreshing
break from the city’s bustle. And, less successfully, the Mercado de
Peixe, the fish market by the beach — did I mention Maputo had a beach? —
where you buy your seafood and pay one of the restaurants at the back
of the market to cook it up for you. It sounds great (and my tiger
prawns were huge, fresh and delicious), but from start to finish I was
mobbed by salesmen hawking not just fish but key chains, toy
helicopters, camera lenses and sunglasses.
There’s
also the Feira Popular, a square block of poignantly aging amusement
park rides alongside midrange restaurants, and the Mercado Municipal, in
a grand old colonial hall that is a replica of the original built in
1901, where fruit and vegetable, fish and nut vendors were chatty and
ready with at least basic English. One passed an indirect marriage
proposal to me through her neighbor; I declined. But I did pick up a
hefty bag of cashews coated with peri peri chile powder for 100
meticais.
But my most memorable market experience happened by accident. Walking
along Avenida Ho Chi Min, I was drawn to an opening in a rather grim
concrete wall plastered with political posters. When I peeked around the
women standing at the entrance, I caught sight of a claustrophobic,
smoky den of food stalls. What was this, I asked them? And was it safe
for a camera-toting foreigner to go in?
It
was, they said, although that did not stop them (or several others
inside) from requesting that I buy them a beer. I declined all around,
and set out looking for the least unclean looking of the cagelike stalls
built of wood and chicken wire, with roofs made of corrugated metal
sheets that were collapsing in more places than not — although rays of
sun passing through caught the smoke from the stoves, like sun streaming
into a cathedral.
Hearty
meals sold for the standard price of 80 meticais, and Bartolomeu, a
friendly construction worker, convinced me I’d be safe at the stand
where he was eating a whole fried mackerel and a heap of spaghetti. I
asked him why he ate here and not, say, in the Feira Popular. “This
place is for workers,” he said.
The
stand was run by a starkly beautiful woman, with a more professional
air that set her apart. She was in a sharp white blouse with squared
embroidered neck and a purple head scarf. I sat down near Bartolomeu,
ordered what he was having and lived to tell the tale. (I have a strong
stomach; your results may vary.)
At night I retreated to the arts and music scene, including the Associação de Músicos, an organization that holds concerts by the bar in its back patio. That’s where I discovered the singer Sizaquel Matchombe.
After her set, I asked what the first song, “Tivoneleni,” was about.
She explained it was a warning to young girls to not let themselves be
swept up in fantasies, lest they give up their dreams.
For
a different type of culture, I visited the National Museum of Art (20
meticais), which houses a small but extraordinarily spirited collection
of distinctively African but otherwise diverse styles of art and
sculpture — most notably the hallucinatory work of Malangatana Ngwenya, a national hero who died in 2011. And at the Museum of Natural History
(60 meticais), I breezed by dioramas to get to what seemed to be its
most prized possessions: a collection of real elephant fetuses. They
were both fascinating and disturbingly adorable, like extraordinarily
realistic toy elephants, albeit with umbilical cords.
I
did not find them on my own; in fact, I had been speeding through the
rooms in order to check off the museum on a busy final day. But a young
staff member, sensing, I think, I was rushing, told me I should be sure
not to miss the elephant display and directed me to it. By then, I knew
that was not a lucky break — it was just another Maputan clueing in a
visitor on the best of his city.
A version of this article appears in print on March 9, 2014, on page TR2 of the New York edition with the headline: In Search of the ‘Real Africa’ in Mozambique.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/travel/in-search-of-the-real-africa-in-mozambique.html?_r=0
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