umbelúzi, boane e namaacha

do you remember when at school your teachers or your little elementary school friends would ask where were your dad and mom born? strangely enough i never said "they're from mozambique", my daddy has always been from UMBELÚZI.
wierd huh? well i never got positive reactions like "so is mine!" or "wow", i got mostly things like "huh?!", "where?" or just blank faces. while all my friends on holidays would go away "p'rá terra" i could only do that on one side of the family, but on my dad's side, things were mostly reduced to Lisbon, fine with me, but why couldn't i go to Umbelúzi?
"well bicuka, it's very far away, and our house is probably gone by now." i always thought it's be gone because they'd use it as a battle field!
my dad was born in Lourenço Marques, but on his 2nd day of life he moved straight to Umbelúzi, my grandfather was the director of the IIAM-estação agrária de umbeluzi for a long time, in two different times, the first of which my dad grew up in a colonial house, did his primary school in a colonial building, watched plants grow, gigantic trees become his hideout, a far away horizon... it would have been the best place for summer holidays.
the house was in every picture, every album. my grandmother has always had in her front hallway, as soon as you walk in her house, a big drawing of this house hanging on the wall. noone is indefferent to it, no one cannot past by it without looking twice, and i was always jealous that i had never seen it. my grandfather used to tell stories about it, of course to make us scared he told us about every bug, insect and disgusting squishy animal you could find in their garden... it'd scare me, but he would always say "if you had been there like your daddy and played with all these things you wouldn't be scared" and i'd cry because i didn't like being NOT from Umbelúzi.

the house just takes your breath away, it was there in front of me, big, huge even, restored, still standing with the beauty i always imagined, if not more, it's still part of the IIAM, noone lives there, just offices, the garden is so colorful, the trees are bigger than i thought possible, the imbundeiros are just too big to discribe... but what i couldn't stop thinking about, thinking that i would even end up crying with emotion, instead i couldn't stop smiling, i was standing on the veranda of the 1rst floor where my dad would ride his bike around the house. which kid wouldn't love that? a veranda that would turn into a highway for your bike? of course there seemed to be enough land to bike on, but especially when the river would flood out and the helicopter would pick up my daddy to go to the city, then the veranda seemed big enough. actually it's huge!
a bit later in his childhood after a year or so in Lisbon, where the kids at his school would make fun of him because he'd wear shorts and my grandmother wore pants, they came back to Umbelúzi but this time to another house, a very portuguese looking house from the 60s.
it was the cutest thing! so adorable i wanted to buy it... i never thought of buying a house, of course if i had the money i'd buy the big one, but i could make that one my library/coffe shop/baby school/movie theater/architecture studio project and this one my little hide away. this house felt mine. i looked into every window, every door, didn't find one piece of furniture, no tables, no beds, nothing... I HAD A CHANCE!
wrong again! this very smiling couple poped out of nowhere, and scared me sooo much.
at first i was a bit jealous. they couls live there. they said they had no money to buy anything so they slept on the floor, had a few clothes, no electricity, no warm water, but their smile was bigger and whiter than i'd presume people could have living on so little.

o Sr. Teixeira garanteed me that even without much, the house was still up and running. he has taken care of it and to him it looks beautiful. with a lot of love and care he reasured me his kids would run around like my daddy once did.
i didn't have the courage anymore to tell him i wanted to buy the house, i thanked him, asked for a photo to give to my grandmother and i left on my voyage knowing that that doll house will always be in good hands.
Boane, (which by the way A.T. has already chosen as the second name for his first boy child... sometimes i hope it's not with me :/) is a little village right next to Umbelúzi where my dad was baptized in the chapel you see in the picture, it's very very cute. but all it had was the chapel!

Namaacha, for those who are thinking of going to Mozambique is a waterfall location, that is if you go in the african summer, known as the wet season... because we didn't see any water falling from the hills, we only saw all the swazi children trying to get money from us by diving into, what didn't seem so clean water, and showing how uninhibited they are. we didn't give money but they loved how we kept taking pictures. i'll go back one day just for the waterfall and maybe then i'll dive myself!

...there are also photos of a huge dam we passed on our way back to Maputo, i can't remeber the name, but i'll remember how i had to duck beside a wall when the wind picked up and tried to take my skirt and eyeglasses out of my body...

to be continued

maputo... or still lourenço marques?

01.10.2007 - 03.10.2007 and 18.10.2007-20.10.2007

I guess my expectations of the country of Mozambique were really based on a past, a past that wasn't mine, a past that belonged to those very close to me, a past I had wished I had belonged to... a past long gone.
Or is it?
It didn't dissapoint me. As the plane landed, it not only felt like I was landing in a different country, almost on a different space in time, but for me it was my first glimpse of this great continent, Africa. Everything changes scale. Why are rivers so wide over there? Why is it that every house has so much space around it, why is it that here children still play in the streets? Why is it that time seems to stop as you land?
The heat took me by surprise, I could breath but I started getting stuck to my own clothes... 10h in a plane from Lisbon didn't help. Heat, humidity and that so anxiously awaited for smell of dirt... red dirt.
That was it... I was definetly Africa.

And the best thing of all, we had family friends waiting for us, cousins, a surprise birthday dinner for A.T. (organized by me and friends in Maputo!) a huge plate of shrimps, hmmm my favorite and a HUMANGOUS chocolate cake for A.T. with "tanti auguri A" on it!!! There were even 28 candles on the right and 1 candle for Maddalena in Palestine for her 1rst birthday, to let her know her uncle and "aunt" were thinking of her!
Maputo... a big city with millions of people. It looks so busy, it feels so full of life, there isn't one single open space in this city, or better, empty spaces, because they'll ocupy every m² they can get their hands on. You may find strange that I would still allow myself to call this city Lourenço Marques, I don't want to start a political discussion, but for a lot of people who had to leave after the independece, who chose to leave, it's still Lourenço Marques and that's the name I grew up to love.
I personally think it's impossible to forget it was a colony until 30 years ago. Proudly, as an architect, and as a protuguese citizen I loved seeing that the best kept constructions are of portuguese architects, or ar least done in the colonial times.
(for those who are already getting nervous, this isn't political, and it doesn't mean I'm against Mozambique being independent)
There are constructions in Maputo that you cannot ignore, be it for their architectural detail, or the fact that nowhere else in the world, except maybe Brazil, things like these were built. In Portugal there was no freedom of speach let alone freedom of building things so modern, in Mozambique there was space, modern architecture had a white canvas, for good or for bad, the colonists built to last.
I can't hide how proud I was when people would tell me that it's impossible to get good architects in Mozambique, how they'd love to still have the same "masters" as in colonial times, schools are not as good, they lack in what you could call "school of thought", there is no search for esthetics, no search for a line of thought. Of course in the middle of the Sofala desert I won't expect buildings to be built by a famous architect with it's own recognizable design. There , architecture is built out of necessity, schools, medical center, AIDS info centers, churches are built with the same plan, same construction method, things need to be easy, fast and efective. But I had expected to see Maputo come out of this horrible 16 year long war with the urge of making thins better, with the will to fix what was destroyed so that it would rise from the war with glory. No.

A lot depends on the government, if not everything, and everyone knows in the rest of the world, despite all the campaigns to send money over there, that corruption is part of the deal. I won't name people or situations, but it is so obvious in certain things. It is so ridiculously in your face that at first you are astonished, but you become easily angry. The only way to be able to fix Maputo from it's degration would be if the government helped out those who want to but can't afford it, to be able to restore a building you need to be foreign and filthy rich, because not only will you pay for it but you'll probably end up paying someone to allow you to do it! Or maybe you're South African and then it's ok, if you're from South Africa you can do anything.
Along this trip our feeling towards Mozambique kept changing, kept evolving let's say, sometimes wonderful, sometimes dissapointing, fustrating, cheerful and even caring... but you can't get away from thinking that somethings are just ridiculous. Hygiene, education, manners, driving, garbage, and just some of the examples of things that to the naked eye of someone from Europe look shocking, because you'd think it would come naturally to not throw things on the ground, to be polite to others, to drive without wanting to kill the small children who cross the street, dirt and dirty water don't go with eating... this is what I felt for Maputo, somethings just didn't make sense (in the middle of Mozambique I don't expect the same behavior and sometimes it was even better than in the city!), but on the other hand...
I found my past.
Churches where people were married, baptized, where my parents met for the first time when they were in university, where they would have coca-cola with shrimps, or Manica beer and tremoços.
Of course and I had already told you this, this trip wasn't to make me analize life in other continents, it was basically to relive, or try to imagine step by step the lives of those who I love and who lived they happiest years, their childhood here in such a wonderful, peaceful place.
This trip made me excited, made me very happy as you will probably recognize in my smile, it also made me cry, some moments made me think there was where I belonged, some made me understand that... not anymore.

In the silence within the Church of Sto.António de Polana I thought of what this city meant to me, I presume it's hard to understand what I mean but I wish I had been born there, I'm very much an alfacinha, I am one with my heart, but I hate to think that the happiness of my family was cut short by people who never thought of their consequences except of their glory. I was the first to be born in a new place, so I always felt I had missed out on something.
Going to Mozambique allowed me to understand I am not from such a place, but this place is part of my home.

I hope you enjoy the next posts...

from this

this...

to this...

it's fu***** cold and I am too tanned to cover myself up.
as you can see I didn't update you on anything from my trip, I will soon, now in europe it's easy to get access to a computer with internet... which in the middle of nowhere in Mozambique I had a hard time finding.
let me just get a grip on this cold, and pretend I will survive.