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| A three km long island off northern Mozambique |
History eats away at
the coral rock from which the buildings on Ilha de Moҫambique are made. With its
heady historic mix of Swahili, Arab, Portuguese, Dutch and Indian, this tiny
island off the East Coast of Africa dates back to the 8th century. For such a small island it’s wrought from an exhaustion of sultans and chiefs, explorers and shipwrecks, pirates, occupations,
missionaries, slavery, colonialism and civil war. It gives the island a strange
edge, a restless sleep; a darker shadow to its timeworn passages, a deeper
resonance to footfall on its ancient stones. Take a hipflask!
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| Mystery and history - coral rock |
“Great acoustics”, said
Darling as he took out his trumpet and played some mournful scales. We wondered if
music would drive out the sad spirits. We were staying in an old slave house
with upstairs balconies that looked down onto big interior courtyards – figure it
out. Today it’s a laidback, tasteful guesthouse called Escondidinho run by a
rather forlorn Frenchman. “Louder”, I said. So Darling blasted out What a Wonderful World and we drank some
Laurentina Preta, a lovely dark local beer and considered man’s inhumanity to
man. Then he played Hello Dolly. Ilha de Mocambique is
2000kms from Maputo, up near Tanzania and the trade winds. It’s definitely NOT
your typical Seffrican prawns and beer holiday. This is Taste, Food, History
and Architecture – the entire island is a UNESCO world heritage site because of
its amazing coral rock buildings and building methods.
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| High street in Stone Town |
And Romance too - if you
in a foray to Coral Lodge across the bay. Total blissykins. Watch this space
for special blog to follow. There will be billing and cooing.
We’d landed in Nampula
– Welcome Mr Bridget said the sign – Mrs Darling didn’t seem to mind this, then
a two-hour taxi drive past village mercados
and wild inselbergs (granite outcrops) and finally across the bridge at sunset
to this beautiful old happy-sad place.
The Black Road divides Ilha
de Mocambique. On the one side is the hip and happening chic little Stone Town, where
the tourists stay and there are guesthouses and a main strip, all the attractions
and shops. On the other side is Macuti Town, which has basically been a slave
pit since forever.
Macuti Town is a warren
of a township with squalid thatched
houses sunk below ground level. The people are mainly Muslim, but its pretty much Muslim Lite and there is nobility and history here, amazing mosques and ancient
architecture. The canals have long run dry and people fetch water from wells
and sleep five to a room. The island was a refuge for many thousands of people
during the 20-year Mozambican civil war – its population reached over 16 000,
and the island is only three-km long.
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| Macuti Town baby |
And over the Black Road
in Stone Town it’s Euro Chic, darlings! Buildings are being renovated and upgraded, schools are being fixed up
and there are boutique hotels, new restaurants, galleries and venues. In the
course of our week’s jolling we met Danes, Swedes, Australians, Brits, Italians,
Portuguese; people who have holiday homes here or local interests. And of course
within a nano-second of our arrival we met all the local hustlers and guides, middle
men, street kids, curio sellers and t-shirt peddlers. A haggle and a hustle is buried
deep in the DNA here.
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| Nice ass! |
Stone Town is fabulous
in architecture and style. Think narrow corridors, thick-walled, high-ceiling houses with shuttered double-volume rooms and interior courtyards. Ceiling fans,
long inside swimming pools with mirrors and tiles, Makonde sculptures, local
cloth. Alcoves and rooftop gardens for hot island nights and the stars – oh those
stars that steered the ancient Portuguese mariners, the map that lay within the
Milky Way.
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| Darker shadows, deeper edge |
We stayed at Jardim dos
Aloes (garden of aloes) which is an Afro-Mediterranean guesthouse with Egyptian
touches, run by charming the Italian Bruno Misti, who is married to the
beautiful Judy. Bruno left fascist Italy to explore early socialist Tanzania
and is an intellectual and teller of many tales. He was the commodore of the Maputo Yacht Club
during the civil war. Bruno’s spot is across the road from Ruby, which is the
backpackers and totally fabulous and funky – best affordable option.
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| The lavish lounge at Terraco das Quintadas |
We also stayed at the
bizarre and theatrical Terraҫo das Quintadas, an old house owned by two vets
who live in Maputo – and filled with furniture and objet from Goa, Bali, East Africa,
China and the Orient. The house is over 400 years old and once belonged to a
massive fish trading merchant. It had strange sounds and spirits, mosquitoes
and some damp. But the décor is amazing and we had a massive egg-shaped bath in
our room which was fun.
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| Shivers inside the fort |
On the soul front – we
explored the town and its museums, bistros , churches, alleyways, beachfront
and bars. We went to a night food market, talked to just about everyone we saw
and Darling bought a little boy a soccer ball. Sweet, man. I met the mayor who shook my hand
and then excused himself immediately. I met the port captain, the woman who
runs the backpackers in Macuti Town and a traveller from Cape Verde.
Highlight was our amble
through the old Fortaleza which was built by the Portuguese after Vasco da Gama
checked in here in 1498, in search of the sea route to India. It didn’t take long for the Portuguese
to establish a port and naval base here. The
island was an Arab
trading post from the 8th century.
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| The window of the chapel |
And highlight of the
highlight – a walk inside the tiny, brave church built on the promontory of the
island in 1522, the Chapel
of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, washed endlessly by waves and the souls of the
ancients.
* With many thanks to Bruno & Judy at Jardim dos Aloes, Nelson at Coral Lodge, Antoine at Escondidinho, Antonio at Terraco das Quintadas and Natalie of Dana Tours and veryone else x
