Maputo is the capital of Mozambique, and I wrote this about eight months ago while I was living there. It was originally posted on another blog somewhere else, but belongs here.transit
three levels here. the first is the hired driver. this is what you get if you work for the UN or an NGO. you ride around in a land rover or toyota 4x4. your driver has taken a defensive driving course and knows how to avoid being carjacked. dirty little secret of the development world #1 is that native Africans can make more money as hired drivers for NGO's than they can as doctors.
the second level is the cab. it costs between four and five dollars to get anywhere, depending how hard of a bargain you drive. the cabs always have cracked windshields. always. talking to the drivers is a good way to practice your portuguese. really, the cab is only for when you want to go to a party but feel bad about calling your hired driver to take you there.
outside the development world, the main form of transportation are minibuses called "chapas". the only white people who take these are albinos and my sister. they are the size of Ford Aerostars but will frequently carry like 25 people, no joke. they guzzle gas and leave a trail of black smoke wherever they go. they cost 20 cents. the goverment of Mozambique tried to change it to 25 cents in response to the gas crisis, but there were riots.
climate
80 and sunny. always. every week or so it will rain super hard for exactly ten minutes, then be sunny again. you could set your watch to it.
sport
soccer, exclusively. especially euro-league stuff. cristiano ronaldo is adulated like one of the pharoahs. there is also a national team, called the mambas, but they always lose, even to rinky-dink countries like botswana and madagascar. an interesting experience is to go to one of their games. there are two rings of chain-linked fencing around the stadium, both topped with razor wire, but that didnt stop about twelve thousand barefoot kids from showing up and bum-rushing the fence. there was a lot of crowding and I feared that some people would be suffocated. the army showed up, and deputized some of the more thuggish looking kids out of the crowd by giving them tree branches. in exchange for guaranteed entrance to the game, the thugs turned on the crowd with the branches and started swinging with gleeful abandon. I saw this one barefoot kid with a bald head and a 50 cent shirt hit this old lady right in the back, full force. welcome to africa.
art
the art market consists exclusively of second-rate crap sold to tourists. i guess its authentic or something, but it all sucks. my dad bought some. so did I, come to think of it.
government
seamlessy transitioned from marxist rhetoric of the 80s to the third-world development boondoggle of the modern day. corrupt to an absurd degree. cops hit you up for bribes constantly, for no reason at all, even if you are just walking around on the street minding your own business. i've even heard tell of them reduced to begging. fortunately you can always talk your way out of it. the position you hold in government here appears to be directly related to your capacity for venality.
architecture
here is where maputo really shines. there was a construction boom in like the 60s incorporating this weird lusophone/soviet/modernist aesthetic, sort of like if miami beach had been built by Stalin, but lazier. then everything was left to decay for 40 years. the result is crumbling concrete, broken sidewalks, streets lined with potholes, etc, but it looks really awesome. seriously.
demographics
1% white, 1% indian, 1% "colored", 97% black. colored means shared ancestry; in the united states they would also count as black. the "black" contingent can further be divided into about 30 tribal groups, about which I know nothing. also there are a lot of albinos here, way more than you'd ever expect. my sister is friends with one of them.
dirty secret of the development world #2 is that it's possible to live and work here for months at a time and still interact exclusively with white people, excepting for the drivers. due to the insular nature of the development world, I have like 30 white friends here (counting portuguese people, who aren't really white) (or even, technically, human beings) (but I love them), one indian friend, and two black friends. even my clients are white. in fact, they are ex-rhodesians, and therefore racist as hell.
environment
the african big five are the rhino, the buffalo, the elephant, the lion and the leopard. you can't see them here though, cuz the mozambicans have eaten them all. you can see a whale shark tho, which is fuckin awesome.
fashion
fashion is a big deal here, since it correlates directly with income. this means people get suited up for their jobs, even menial ones, just to demonstrate that yes, they do have a job. a guy at my office who deals with accounts receivable can be found wearing a three-piece suit. a security guard outside the bank will wear military fatigues and a beret. my maid (yes I have a maid) shows up to clean my house in a pantsuit and 3-inch pumps. further down the economic ladder, things start to get a little dicey. standard issue togs would be a pair of filthy cut-off shorts, a remaindered nelly tour shirt from 1999, and no shoes.
chicks
pretty hot, with gravity-defying asses. being a white guy here means you get afforded approximately the same level of attention as jake gyllenhall would get if he wandered into the houston street whole foods. over 20 percent of the adult Mozambican population has HIV tho, so getting involved is a pretty serious roll of the dice. not to mention the general indifference to birth control (see "colored" under demographics)
economy
there are three economies here. the first is the development economy, which consists of white people giving each other money for some bullshit project, then congratulating each other, then making sure they take a picture with some black people in it at the opening of the project.
the second economy is the urban economy. this consists of people standing around in the street trying to sell each other cell phone credits. this economy is surprisingly robust.
the last economy is the rural economy. this consists of people harvesting single hectare plots of corn. they plant it by hand, till it by hand, harvest it by hand, then hit it with sticks for 8 hours a day to get the kernels out. the wealthier people in this economy will have a few chickens running around in their yard.
maputo also has a stock exchange. I went to visit it my first day here. I asked the director of the stock exchange to show me the floor, but he informed me it was all done electronically. I asked him if he could point me to the website for the exchange. he told me they didnt have one. eventually he revealed that the "stock exchange" was just an e-mail listserv. it charts the prices of a single stock, which, so far this year, has traded a single time.
