The Ministry of Fabulousness: From a hotel room

The Ministry of Fabulousness: From a hotel room: I have spent an inordinate amount of bed hours at the Southern Sun in Maputo. That’s because general manager Bruce Chapman - s urely o...

From a hotel room

I have spent an inordinate amount of bed hours at the Southern Sun in Maputo. That’s because general manager Bruce Chapman - surely one of the continent’s finest hoteliers - was kind enough to host me once upon a time while I researched and wrote a guide book to Maputo and beyond. 

Low tide walker 

It led me to witness extraordinary spectacles across that delicious city, but also some extraordinary spectacles just from my window. An urban beach, a palm tree, a window frame -  what a fabulous composition aid for the framing of the clam pickers, the lone wanderers, the capoeira dancers, the lovers and very late at night, the traditional healers who bring their clients to the seafront to cleanse them or heal them or put them in touch with their ancestors. Which involves a great deal of loud prayer, sometimes weeping and wailing, unnerving at 3am for those who are not familiar with Africa’s religious customs. You hear it better, or worse, from the right hand wing of the Southern Sun. Often this was the time myself and my fearless street guide Phil Baker would be arriving back at the hotel after many satisfactory evenings of er, research. 

Sunrise

In the old days, before the $30 million dollar refurbishment, sigh, Bruce used to routinely book me into the Presidential Suite. It was his idea of a joke and I loved it and found it most funny, especially when one of the waiters started calling me Mrs President. Oh those were the days. Since then, Maputo has had an Economic Miracle - although it’s increasingly shaky and dubious - and I have been bumped from my perch by more important people such as those building bridges, importing cars, setting up banks and exploring coal and gas deposits.

Dear Bruce made sure it was been a very gentle transition down to the Superior Executive Princess Suite Extraordinaire on the floor below, although I do miss the big lounge of the old Presidential Suite, its two flat screens TVs and two bathrooms, vast lounge with leather couches. There was more space to shoot pictures while lying on the floor too, although my new suite has a stricter frame for composing pictures and perhaps it has made my eye more disciplined. 

The new refurbishment of course has made the Southern Sun even bigger and better and Bruce is still ever generous with his champagne and hospitality and friendship and I now have this fabulous collection of photos from the window of my hotel room. 

*  Check out www.tsogosunhotels.com/hotels/maputo

Reserved for the Ministry of Fabulousness 

The Ministry of Fabulousness: The Unbearably Bad Architecture of the Afro Parado...

The Ministry of Fabulousness: The Unbearably Bad Architecture of the Afro Parado...: The most luxurious apartments in Africa It is not in our power but in our paradox that we should search for the essence of humanity...

The Unbearably Bad Architecture of the Afro Paradox

The most luxurious apartments in Africa

It is not in our power but in our paradox that we should search for the essence of humanity - so said Robert Ardrey, Canadian playwright and palaeontologist in the 1930s.  And so it struck me recently, as I put on a hard hat and steel-toed boots and went inspecting the site where the most expensive, luxurious apartments in Africa are being built, as we speak. 

And sigh and wonder why the rich and the foreign in the poorest of African countries still go for über bling and zing instead of going for sustainable poverty alleviation and socio-eco development. It’s like , ok, you had a 20 year civil war, millions died, it’s over now, now you’ve found oil and gas and multinationals, wanna spread the love? Hell no, let’s build luxury apartments with remote controlled curtains and heated towel racks. As that iconic South African expression goes: The rich get richer and the poor get Khayalitsha. 

Over the road, women picking clams to make a living 

And as I wander, dumbfounded, there they go, up into the Mozambican skies, twin towers, one block apartmentos, the other a luxury office “park” as they say in nouveau Afro-MICE-speak (MICE being Meetings, Incentives, Conferences). 

Team Cynical 

Here you can step out of the humidity and into your uncapped, touchpad fluffy white dressing gowns with pop-up whisky in crystal glasses, and anything else you want, just call room service, darling. And next door, the rapidly rising Golden Peacock 200-plus-bedroom hotel, conference centre, shopping mall and décor ala Chinese kitsch extraordinaire. 

It was the same thing in Lilongwe, Malawi earlier this year. We visited Umodzi Park with its similarly indescribably odd architecture. Umodzi is a Chinese-built five-star hotel – puffily called The President Walmont – that also features an Afropolitan Terrace Bar as well as a conference centre, banqueting halls, wedding decks, über cocktails and dinner venues and the apparent capacity to do anything from summits of heads of state, to weddings, banquets and concerts. Just not build a clinic, a school, a wildlife centre, a food garden, an AIDS orphanage or a hospice.

It's yours for a few bar x

We toured the Umodzi like we did the luxury Maputo apartments, hungover and cynical, oohing and aahing at the expensive-expansive views over the ancient koppies of Lilongwe and surrounds, over the melancholy Indian Ocean, over the invisible poor people, over the imported suede couches and the minimal ergonomic lines of the desks and the builders asses and the sheer bizarre Shakespearean spectacle of it all.

Book now for your Malawian banquet

Dreaming of Snow

Snow poetry 

There's nothing like a heatwave to make a girl dream of snow and gosh have I been dreaming of it! I’ve only ever seen the real thing a few times, and the first proper-proper time was this year in February in New York. 

Vanessa, hot in the cold 

We were upstate near Ellenville, a few hours from NY city. I’d landed that morning at JFK - one of the coldest days in living memory - and my childhood friend and china bean Vanessa Solomon and her man Tim, and I set off into the snowy foothills of the Catskills. It started snowing as we left the city and by the time we arrived at their cabin, it was - gasp! - proper snow. Vanessa and Tim were very patient as I frolicked around laughing and patting the stuff, licking it, kicking it, patting it, rolling it up, lying in it (not such a good idea). 
We made a fire and cooked food and drank wine (we left the second bottle in the snow by mistake, not such a good idea either) and listened to Frank Zappa on old vinyl records and laughed about the weird old days. 

Toasty house 

Vanessa comes from the farm next to our family farm in Limpopo and will always have a special place in my heart for throwing a glass of cane, lime and lemonade at a racist hotel manager in Tzaneen in the 80's when he asked her to leave because he thought she was a so-called coloured, and this was a net blankes (whites only) hotel, jy weet, you know. She is now a famous sculptor in New York, so make that an extra drink thrown in that stupid oke's face haha. 
That night, fluffy, silent, sexy snow fell and draped everything in tiny crystal poetry and by morning it was thigh high and was the most enchanting thing I had ever seen. 

Fake fur to go 

I was on my way to Hawaii to see Darling - going from NY in deep snow to the balmy beachy Pacific, which presented a few minor wardrobe problems for one small suitcase, but despite my excitement I got the right wardrobe for the snow - fake fur and leather - and Vanessa was in her retro silver cat suit  looking completely hot and not unlike something off an old James Bond movie set.
In the morning I woke up and went walking into this strange snowy landscape, giggling and shivering and falling on my mielie a few times because of the ice. We sent messages of love to Darling on the frozen car window and drank more wine and the world seemed such fun and full of possibility but mainly it was cold! Sigh. 

Snowy message for Darling 

And remember this snippet from Too Darn Hot by Ella Fitzgerald:

“According to the Kinsey Report, ev'ry average man you know
Much prefers his lovey-dovey to court
When the temperature is low
But when the thermometer goes 'way up
And the weather is sizzling hot
Mister, pants for romance is not

'Cause it's too, too, too darn hot
It's too darn hot
It's too, too darn hot”

The Ministry of Fabulousness: Escape to Mother Fuckers Bar!

The Ministry of Fabulousness: Escape to Mother Fuckers Bar!: You'll find Mother Fuckers bar in Catembe My journey from Phuket in Thailand to Maputo in Mozambique is hell. There is no business ...

Escape to Mother Fuckers Bar!

You'll find Mother Fuckers bar in Catembe

My journey from Phuket in Thailand to Maputo in Mozambique is hell. There is no business class blingy-blingy, sweetie dahling this time, just two days of non-stop awfulness travel - on minibuses, planes, trains and taxis and trains, planes and minibuses and somehow at the end of it all I eventually wake up on the other side of the world at dusk, listening to the sighing of the same Indian Ocean I just left in Thailand. I have travelled some 8000km and lost five hours and large parts of my sanity.

Now I am in Maputo on business, alongside Sawubona - official magazine of our national carrier SAA - to find out about the building of the biggest suspension bridge in Africa that will link Maputo mainland with Catembe spit, and link Ponta d'Oura with Kozi Bay in northern KZN. It’s big news, big bucks, the figure of US$ 700 million is bandied about. The Chinese, the Germans, the South Africans, former Mozambican president Gubuezza - everyone is involved and the circus is in town.

Maputo skyline from Catembe

The bridge building has already begun with the dropping of 90m concrete shafts into the bay and Catembe is already pimping its ride. even though the country's economic miracle is somewhat less miraculous than last year due to coal price drops, political violence and a complete bottom out in the leisure tourism market.

Nonetheless the talk on the cocktail circuit is tough, the whiskeys are big, the wine is flowing. Construction okes, financiers, the banks, the developers, the key players, they're all there talking MICE market and global finance and positive outcomes. The Chinese-funded Golden Peacock is being built up the road with rooms for hundreds, the Radisson is building twin towers for offices and top end rentals (the most expensive in Africa) next door to the Southern Sun where I am staying (always do, always will) and the deals are going down, the alcohol levels are going up, there are even rumours hat King Mswati of Swaziland also wants a deep sea harbour....  

Thank heavens for Mother Fuckers Bar.

We spill off the passenger ferry from Maputo to Catembe 

Phil and I escape – he’s my Man in Maputo –jump on the passenger ferry and head out of Maputo across the bay to Catembe, whose entire landscape is soon to be rearranged due to The Bridge, which in some ways is a pity really, since it's quiet and charmingly dilapidated. We spill off the ferry and head to the eastern end of Catembe and up a lone sand dune at the top of a sparse village, where it’s almost impossible to reach even in the butchest 4x4 (naturally Phil pulls it off). And here we are at Mother Fucker’s Bar where no one can find me and the beers are ice cold and the views are fine. I can hear the sounds of chicken and children, and Muddafak himself is there, giant bodybuilder that he is, holding a baby of all things. It’s all so blissfully surreal and far away from airports and air-conditioning and the rich world’s portly and pompous. Phew. Bring me a Laurentina por favore. Make it a quart.

Maddafak and his bebe 

Mudda grew up on the streets on Maputo and now has a wife, two children, a chapas (minibus) and his bar. I danced with him once in one of the Rua Bagamoya clubs. All you could see was blonde fluff, my hair,sticking out of his arms. Through Phil, I have known Mudda for years, and he proved to be an invaluable connection when I was researching my guidebook on Maputo. Everyone on the streets knows Mudda. Mention his name in the right places and people treat you with much reverence, especially in the less salubrious places our research took us. He lost the mobility of his knee in a scooter accident  years ago but continues to pump iron and just recently appeared on local television talking about the importance of gym. But he’s happiest up here at Mother Fuckers Bar and we chat about his confidence in the future because of The Bridge and the prospects of expansion although God alone knows how anyone will actually get here.

Right now that’s why I love it so… 

Maddafak and his fabulous bar