Images

While rain continues to bash other parts of the globe, Mozambique appears to be out of it for now. There has been a fair share of destruction, most of which passes us expats by, since the news is largely relayed in Portuguese. I have heard (via Al Jazeera) that 40 people died in these last rains and that hundreds have been displaced. My empregada has asked that I give her any old clothes and shoes as her church is collecting for those who have lost everything. Of course, the irony is that, for the majority of Mozambiquans who have `lost everything', their `everything' is far less that the `everything' that is lost to a family in the UK or Australia. Equal in devastation, but not equal in material possessions. There's a strange sort of equalising morality in it all.
Meantime, a neighbour has nasty food poisoning after eating prawns (shellfish not recommended after a flood) and road repairs are in full swing in Maputo. Graders have just about ironed out the bumps on the dirt road and cement has been chucked in the larger holes of the erm, `tarred' roads.
And the local population of colourful street people are out and about.
Any large city has its share of tramps and the dispossessed. I have no real idea how much social security exists for the Mozambiquan people. An extended civil war displaced people and resulted in a large number of amputees. There seems to be very little support for the physically handicapped and most street corners have their share of beggars, often children guiding a blind elder or pushing an amputee in a wheel chair. Begging is ostensibly illegal, but I cannot imagine how else many of these people would survive.
And then there are the out and out nutters: the results of too much cheap alcohol, mental disorders and blatant catastrophe. Every city has them. While there is a human tragedy in every one, they do add to the colour of this hot and raw land.
There is a man who walks down the main tourist street in an open shirt and the remnants of a capulana, , his willie blowing in the breeze. I have to assume he is an institution, since the locals don't seem to bat an eyelid.
There are other colourful characters who pop up in town, usually on the Sunday of a pay-day weekend. They have usually been drinking A LOT. A couple of weeks ago, as we drove back from Matola, a man strode into the middle of the four-lane traffic and proceeded to direct it with a swagger and dancing arms. When the traffic lights changed, he would tuck himself onto a corner and then saunter out again when the traffic began to flow. He carried with him a strange air of misguided authority.
But he had nothing on the two old men who strutted their stuff on the main drag into town on Sunday. We were driving back from South Africa and were stopped at the corner of Rua da Angola when a man of extraordinarily odd proportions leapt out amongst the cars. He was throroughly padded with plastic bags - even to the point of a cloth stuffed with plastic bags tied about his head. Combined with his dreadlocks, and a number of plastic bottles tied to his waist, he initially appeared to be some sort of strange tropical yeti, decked out for a private celebration. He marched through the cars, cut-off water bottle in hand, loudly demanding a re-fill. (I don't think it was water he had in mind...) while his equally inebriated side-kick danced with a large umbrella pole and harrassed young women in their cars.
As is often the way in Maputo, we and the other drivers watched the antics of the two, watched the pedestrians walk past them like any other obscure roadwork - and drove on.