“Mind the Landmines!”
Driving North from Maputo, Mozambique, Africa
By Joan Sevigny
The weather was “Africa” hot and humid; the skies mostly
clear with fluffs of white cotton clouds floating in the pale blue atmosphere.
The road ahead of us was in poor condition, potholes everywhere. The two lanes
were not crowded, but a few cars and those overcrowded buses and trucks raced
along the main road to and from Maputo, Mozambique’s capitol city.
My husband John, my brother Tom, sister-in-law Elizabeth
and I were entering this southern African country near the lower end of Kruger
Game Preserve in South Africa. The road was dry and dusty, and when the car
windows were down, we could hear the buzz of flying insects, feel the hot air on
our faces and the warm sun on our arms.
Tom and Liz lived and worked in Africa, Zimbabwe (the
former Rhodesia), for over 10 years. They enjoy showing visitors some of the
highlights of this amazing continent .John and I made our home in Liberia and
Kenya in the 1960’s, so these trips with Tom and Liz brought back our strong
love for Africa and its people.
This was our first trip to Mozambique, so Tom warned us
again that when in the countryside, we need to stay on well trodden paths and
not wander in the bush or sand dunes. Land mines are a fact of life in this
country. No problem! We had no intension of walking anywhere but safe places; we
liked our fireworks way above our heads.
The situation is not very encouraging for tourists visiting
this southeastern African country. The truth is that there are unexploded land
mines or personal explosive devices still planted throughout the country.
Political strife kept the different parties fighting for 17 years. These are the
groups that planted the land mines. The war has been over since 1992, but
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the mines are still buried. Literally all
tourism stopped during and shortly after the war, because of the danger of mines
and other war activities.
It doesn’t seem to end! Just recently, a depot storing
rusting armaments in a densely populated poor neighborhood in Maputo suddenly
exploded, killing at least 100 people and injuring about 500. Apparently the
depot contained old weapons from the past civil war and the high temperature set
them off. There may be other depots around the country that are also in bad
condition. The army has been removing thousands of rockets and artillery shells
from the depositories around the capitol. We assume that the military is
destroying the weapons.
It is unlikely that tourists will ever come upon these
dangers if they stay on the main roads and trails and spend their time only in
the business and hotel areas of the cities. Most cities are said to be safe and
the capitol, Maputo, is bustling in spite of the depot explosion. This country’s
government is becoming very interested in tourism and is promoting holidays in
the seaside areas and on the nearby islands. The fishing, snorkeling and diving
on the coast and on the islands are fabulous. Well! We are tourists, and here we
come! We will be very careful!
The month was March; the heavy rains and flooding of the
past December and January were done. The country was drying out and attempting
to return to normal. This recent flooding was not as bad as the worse ones in
our memory, in the years 2000 and 2001. At that time, people clung to trees to
avoid drowning and watched their homes being washed away by the churning waters.
Lives were lost.
 Highway #4 meanders by small villages, dusty open fronted
shops and occasionally a small school building. We see young children standing
in the dirt yards, smiling and waving enthusiastically to the occupants of the
moving cars, we smile and wave back. Children are usually happy wherever they
live.
As we approached the city of Maputo, the roads and
buildings seemed to improve perceptively. A lot of construction was going on and
repairs seem to have been completed on most of the damaged buildings. There are
a lot of new cars on the roads, noticeably expensive Mercedes and other high end
autos. Business seems brisk. The population appeared relaxed and confident, as
they went about their business. The air was warm and humid; there was the scent
of flowers and the slightly salty odor of the sea, mixed in with the usual
petrol and dusty concrete smells of a tropical city.
The numerous cafes and restaurants, as well as shops and
small department stores were everywhere in the central part of this city. We sat
at a small table with coffee and pastry at one of the sidewalk café-bakery shops
and gazed at the passing crowds. Crowd watching is always fun, and it adds to
the enjoyment of traveling. The local population is what a city is really all
about. One can learn a lot by observing the passing crowds. Well dressed men,
women and children walked about, no one seemed in much of a hurry. Most of the
passersby were light skinned and probably of Portuguese decent. The children,
who mostly wore school uniforms and carried backpacks, laughed and chattered
with one another as they skipped along, probably returning home from school.
It was difficult not to notice one well dressed woman
crossing a busy intersection, using her crutches; she was missing a leg, perhaps
the victim of a mine explosion during or after the war.
Maputo is a lovely old city, one of Africa’s most
attractive capitols. It’s set on a small cliff, overlooking Maputo Bay. Wide
avenues are lined with flame and jacaranda trees. Maputo reminded John and me of
our first visits to several cities in Central America, decades ago. Here also
was the old style stucco Portuguese churches and government buildings, worn and
slightly dirty looking, but with a certain charm, perhaps because of the bright
colored flowering trees and plants almost everywhere. This is a city to explore
while walking, one can saunter about and discover Portuguese era villas,
churches, small hotels and cafes throughout the bustling city. We were sorry
that we didn’t have the time this trip to visit some of the many museums and
churches.
In the middle of Maputo is the large native market, called
the Municipal Market or “Mercado Municipal”, where you can browse and check out
the crafts, foods, spices and woodwork. The smells can seem overwhelming,
imagine the dusty odors of different woods; the sharp smells of fresh foods,
spices and cooking meats, of the many humans and the occasional live chickens
packed tightly in small stalls or roaming around this huge building. Room after
room of stalls, packed with sandalwood, ebony and other exotic wood carved into
figurines, bowls and furniture of all sorts. There is every imaginable type of
fruit, vegetable, spice, meat (some hanging from the walls and ceilings) and
rooms of fresh roasted cashews. The wonderful musky salty smell of these nuts
led us right to tables filled with mounds of them. Of course we needed to buy as
many bags as we could carry. At least one bag was empty by the time we got to
our hotel.
Our treat to ourselves this trip was one day and night at
the five-star Paloma Hotel, overlooking the Bay of Maputo, directly on the shore
of the Indian Ocean. The hotel is pure luxury in this third world country. Our
rooms were in the ocean side annex, a short walk past the outdoor restaurant,
the pool and the beautifully manicured gardens. John and I took a few minutes
before dinner to sit on our balcony to gaze at the smooth water and the streaks
of salmon, yellow and blue of the sky as evening approached. Night comes quickly
in the tropics, in no time the dark closed in around us, the ocean and the sky
above shimmered with gray and silver reflections. By the time we returned to our
room for the night, the black sky would be filled with zillions of stars and
planets.
 Dinner was downstairs in the roofed, open air dining room.
We were served on tables set with impeccable white cloths, napkins and a
sparkling array of flatware and crystal. The food was superb, white gloved
waiters and attendants took care of our every food and drink request, from the
wine through all the courses to the rich coffee and dessert. A small band played
Portuguese songs while the four of us worked our way through the food and
several bottles of good wine. This was certainly old world service at its best.
The warm ocean breeze wafted over us while we thoroughly enjoyed this long
relaxing interlude. We don’t know how they did it, but there were no mosquitoes
or other annoying insects buzzing around us. This is probably why it is a five
star hotel. Who needs mosquitoes!
We returned to our rooms ready for showers, but we couldn’t
resist returning to our little balcony and sit for a while to count the stars
and to search for familiar constellations in the tropical night sky. We wanted
to securely capture the ambience of this place. And still no little pests in the
night air! Amazing!
This day and night were very special, so nice after four
nights sleeping in the thatched roof rondawels in Kruger Game Preserve. The next
couple of nights would also be spent in rough cabins of fishing camps up the
coast.
Early the next morning, we watched the sun rise over the
shimmering silver sea. The big pale orange ball slowly rose in the light haze.
This was a sure sign of a bit of airborne pollution over the sprawling
metropolis. Nevertheless, it was very beautiful, and probably less polluted than
most other cities in the world. We inhaled the warm, damp ocean breeze and
allowed ourselves to sit and enjoy this scene for a short while. We needed to
meet Tom and Liz for breakfast, then to move out. It was very difficult to leave
this haven of luxury, and of course, we planned to return some day.
It was goodbye to the thriving capitol city of Maputo. Once
again we were driving along, this time on Highway #1. The long road north seemed
much the same as that we passed entering this country. But the further north we
traveled, the worse the potholes became and we soon came across bridges that had
been washed away in the flooding. Fortunately the rains were done and the
country was drying out. To enable vehicles to drive past the destroyed bridges,
the highway department had graded the roadway into the dry creek bed and up
again on the other side, allowing vehicle traffic to proceed. We wondered if
these bridges were rebuilt between floods.
 Traffic was steady, mostly ramshackle trucks and buses
filled with adults, children and large cloth wrapped bundles. We expected to see
some of these vehicles broken down further along the road, but somehow they all
seemed to get where they wanted to go. The drivers were not too careful to stay
on their own side of the road, but then, they also had to avoid the deep
potholes. And they were always in a hurry, or they just liked to see how fast
they could move along.
It was interesting to watch individuals and small groups
walk along the roadway, mostly black Africans, carrying bundles or baskets on
their heads, even some of the children carried their share. One young girl
balanced a huge bunch of ripe bananas, another man carried a small TV on his
head. These people were not smartly dressed, as those in Maputo. Most of the
women wore colorful cotton tops, head wraps and long skirts. The men had on well
worn pants and shirts. The girl children wore cotton dresses, and the little
boys shorts and shirts, usually tattered and slightly dirty - no neat school
uniforms here. But almost everyone smiled and again the children waved, it was
impossible not to smile and wave back.
 We often found makeshift outdoor markets along the roads.
All sorts of articles, clay pots of all shapes and sizes, clothing, fabrics,
carvings and especially food were offered.
There were villages and huts along the main roads that
didn’t look very different from those we observed in the southern part of this
country, South Africa and Zimbabwe. We passed by small fields of produce, mostly
maize. Small dusty villages and/or settlements, made up of a single general
store, sometimes a bar and the groups of small cement homes with tin roofs or a
group of thatched roof mud huts. Colorful clothes washing dried on bushes or
hung on lines. Barefoot children played in the dusty yards. Dogs, chickens and
an occasional goat wandered about or pecked at the ground, ignored by adults and
children. The air was hot, humid and a light haze covered everything, probably
fine sand, we were only a few km from the ocean.
 Tom’s 4-wheel-drive truck was equipped with extra fuel
tanks, so we needed to stop for petrol (actually diesel fuel), only once while
in Mozambique. The electricity was out at this filling station, so the young
attendant pumped the fuel with a hand crank attached to the pump. He
energetically turned the crank until the requested amount of fuel came through.
It didn’t seem that this was an unusual situation. This was not your automated
Shell or BP station, where you self pumped, then swiped your credit card in a
place on the pump.
 We stayed in fishing camps or lodges along the Indian Ocean
for the two nights of this three day drive. The first camp was “Guinjata Bay” in
Inhambane (about 500 km from Maputo). To reach it we needed to drive off the
main road for almost two hours, along a deeply rutted sandy trail, late in the
afternoon. The shorter road had been washed out recently and we were directed to
drive to the camp by way of this track through a forest of tall coconut pine
trees. It occurred to us that the coconut trees may have been part of a
plantation at one time – the planting was in fairly orderly rows and we noticed
piles of the harvested coconuts near some of the huts along the track. The few
people we passed, did not wave – but just stared at us.
 We didn’t know how long it would take us to reach the camp,
and we were feeling a bit nervous. One doesn’t want to be driving around a
strange road in the middle of nowhere after dark, especially in the backwoods of
a third world country. Occasionally three of us needed to help push the truck
out of deep ruts, while Tom did his best to pull it out of the holes in second
gear. The lessons about the land mines were uppermost in our minds. Dusk
approached rapidly and our nerves were pretty much on edge by the time we pulled
into the camp, over the sand dunes.
Guinjata Bay was very rough and basic, but clean and the
food in the small restaurant fresh and plentiful. This fishing camp was located
far from the nearest city, so electricity was powered by generators and shut off
between 11 pm and 7 in the morning. After dinner it was lovely to sit in the
dark, on the high deck of our cottage. We were on a high sand dune, looking over
this quiet part of the Indian Ocean. We seemed to be doing a lot of sky and sea
gazing on this trip. The quiet was complete. Campers in other cottages were
probably asleep, in order to be up early in the morning to dive or fish from the
charter boats.
 We had two more days to drive and another fishing camp to
stay in the next night, before arriving at our destination, Tom and Elizabeth’s
home in Mutare, Zimbabwe. We’ll all look back on this trip with enjoyment for a
long time. And we hope to return to this part of Africa soon.
Destination: Africa
Mozambique is a former Portuguese colony, which achieved
independence in 1975. The long civil war began soon after, terrifying the
population and preventing the economy from growing. Except for the larger
cities, it is a very poor country. Most people eke out a living as best they can
with subsistence farming or selling new and used items.
The population totals about 16 million, about half in the
northern part of the country and half in the south. Only about 1% of the local
inhabitants of the country are Portuguese or of Portuguese decent and most of
these live in the cities and run the businesses. The balance of the population
is made up of 16 different African tribes, and there are small numbers of
European and Asian inhabitants. All of the people we met spoke at least a little
English, and all were very friendly and helpful. Sadly, HIV/AIDS has taken a
tremendous toll on the people of Mozambique.
Sidebar: The Paloma Hotel can be found by searching
Polana Hotel Maputo Mozambique or e-mail res@polana-hotel.com
The Guinjata Bay Fishing camp can be
located at
www.scubamozambique.com/acequinjatabay.htm
All photos by Joan Sevigny |
