A snort at the fort

View from a chapel

We looked out through an alcove window in the old capela (chapel) onto a cross-shaped patch of sky. Outside, the eternal crash of Indian Ocean waves, inside, sacred gloom. We’d taken off our shoes and walked into vaulted heart of the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte - a stoic little chapel built by the Portuguese in 1522 on the promontory of Ilha de Moҫambique, a tiny island off Africa’s east coast. Underfoot, through the cool marble, we felt the presence of ancient souls, and in the salty walls and faded inscriptions, heard their whisperings.

“Let’s have a drink!” I whispered to Darling perhaps a little too quickly. And I don’t know why I was whispering either. Our guide was outside talking loudly on his mobile phone. This little chapel had stirred me - I was imagining a desperate shipwrecked Portuguese sailor, for some reason, upon bended knee, or a sea leg perhaps, praying hard to God, with nothing left but his faith and the stars above him and well, all the Arabs, the Goans and the Swahili sultans who were here before him. Like #missinglisbonalot.

Inside the fort 

I had intended to bring a bottle of beautiful red to the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte.  What else would you take to a Catholic church? I’d imagined a wistful cab sauv - perhaps we’d even remember to chill it to capela temperature – to go with the spirit of this tiny church and its island - only three kilometres long –all strung out by occupations, missionaries, slavery, colonialism and civil war.   

But I was giddy with travel and love and I had forgotten the wine never mind my own name, so here we were, Darling and I, slugging on a couple of ice cold Laurentina Pretas that we’d bought from a beachfront barracas near the fortaleza, It’s a lovely rich dark beer and I immediately felt better about the poor sailor and all the other lost and hopeful souls in the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte.

And since we were in a Catholic church I confess we’d also had a beer before this one, we’d had one up on the ramparts of the fortaleza, overlooking the ocean and its mysteries. Fort São Sebastião was built after the church, from around 1560. Famed sailor for the Portuguese crown, Vasco da Gama first landed here in1498, in search of the sea route to India, and it was not long after that the Portuguese built this vast and powerful space. The light was falling in glorious ways as we’d browsed the fortaleza and its empty rooms, its corridors and cavers, its prison and chambersr. Here and there an outburst of graffiti.  We stopped talking and left as the sun was going down, silent in the presence of history.