March 27, 2007: Maputo, Mozambique

To get to Mozambique, Tessa and I take a relatively uneventful 5:30 a.m. bus from Pretoria. We notice that at the last gas station before the border, everyone is buying massive amounts of eggs (which they don't refrigerate here). Seems eggs are double the price in Mo'bique. Tessa and I consider starting an egg trade but reconsider since we're not that passionate about the import/export business.
Crossing into Mo'bique is pretty sweet because for about a quarter of a mile you're not in any country at all. Your bus arrives at the border and you must get off and go into a building which is split down the middle. Each side is a mirror image of the other-- it is the immigration/emigration building of each country. You hand your passport to some lady in head-to-toe khaki military garb who will then ignore you completely, flip open to a page in your passport, and stamp something while not look-- all the while continuing her conversation with the other officers.
Then, in the midday sun, you take a walk up a dirt road that is no man's land to go to Mozambique. On this road you will find immigration officers sitting together in the shade people watching, as well as some of your fellow travelers carrying their belongings on their heads-- though not everyone seems to walk across. In fact more than a few never seemed to enter the offices and as the bus drove by us to pick us up on the other side, I thought-- are we caught in an illegal egg ring? I've watched enough Sopranos to know when to keep my mouth shut, so we quietly waited on line at the immigration half of the building to pay 17 more Rand (egg tax?) and get an entry stamp (I now officially only have 4 pages left in my passport and still 3 more years till it expires-- high five worthy!)
Back on the bus, I spend most of my time attempting to write but end up producing chicken scratch. Tessa and I play games with two little girls who are also riding the bus (roughly 3 and 4 years old?) I give the older one my pencil and she happily scribbles on and inside my Chinua Achebe novel. I encourage her-- why shouldn't novels be coloring books? If she doesn't mind, then why should I? So we have a lot of fun together--but by 5 p.m. we're arrived in Maputo.
My first impression of Maputo is that this is the Havana of my imagination-- a dilapidated paradise. At some point in time there was a sufficient amount of money invested in this city-- by the architecture, I estimate the 60s or the 70s-- but there has been no investment since. So the structures of the buildings are frozen in that moment-- a kind of optimistic resort architecture in the vision of Portuguese colonialism. But time and history interrupts this narrative-- the liberation occurs, the money leaves, the time passes, the people stay, the buildings are abandoned and sometimes reclaimed by locals but never in their original imagination. The beauty is not in the remnants of the first vision but in the continued use or a faded cityscape functioning as the backdrop for some unintended vibrant life.
And even the action can throw you into what seems like another time-- a couple walks hand in hand through the faded glory of a railway station, old men playing chess on the sidewalk with bottle caps, school kids in wide 70s-style slacks.
We check into the hostel where we bump into Tessa's dive instructor from Tofo, Simon-- who is passing through to leave the country just to return and get a new visa stamp so he can continue working. We also meet Joe-- a terribly funny British guy who does research on early warning systems. We four go to a new Mozambican restaurant and I have a delicious traditional dish "Matapo con carangueijo"-- pounded cassava leaves with peanut flour and coconut milk with 2 crab claws. Yum.
We comfortably walk along the pitch dark streets and Tessa and I realize that there are women walking home alone. It is a nice sight and I realize how relaxed I feel. The moist air, the broken sidewalks, the radiating neon from a corner store-- it envelopes you. We grab some coffee and share two pieces of chocolate cake before heading back to the hostel.