sketches of nampula

Nampula is a smallish African town in the northern part of Mozambique, and it serves as the capital for the province of the same name. The population hovers around 300,000, but it's still the largest population center for like 1000 km in any direction. I worked there for a while last year, which is also when I wrote most of this.

geography
the view from the airplane is breathtaking; a flat, green landscape punctuated here and there by these enormous, incongruous stone monoliths. they're called inselbergs, and they're like ayer's rock in australia, except there's dozens of 'em. I climbed one once, and met a holy man at the top. ask me about this sometime; it's a good story.

transit
there are two main roads, which cross at what amounts to the center of town. one of these roads is paved. strangely, traffic lights have been installed, courtesy of the u.s. taxpayer. before this the biggest traffic problem was goatherders; in fact, the city government passed a law making it illegal to bring more than one goat over the road at a time.

climate
sunny and warm, with the occasional eastbound thunderstorm rolling off the indian ocean 150km to the east. these are worth it for the rainbows afterwards.

sport
there is such a thing as the mozambican premier league, and as a pro mozambican footballer you make about $1000/year. in the more remote provinces people actually go to the games. I guess this makes sense, since in a one-goat town like nampula there is just not that much to do.

architecture
hardly worth mentioning. there is an abandoned colonial-era train station that I visited one day. I give it 4 out of 10. there's also a large, underused catholic cathedral and a number of handsome mosques.

fashion
they had this community fashion show at the rec center one night, which was a bizarre experience. they'd recruited like 5 teenaged girls to serve as models, and they mostly looked the part. but their muscular, rail-thin bodies had less to do with fiji water and pilates and more to do with improper nutrition and machete hack-work in the field. they would come out and pose in halter tops and minis which their friends had designed. at the end of each set, they'd do a little dance number, then curtsey, then go behind the makeshift curtain that acted as a changing screen. after a short break, the same girls would come out again, in nearly identical clothes, and the process would repeat. in between sets a boy band would perform. boy bands are not really my thing, but I'll say this: those fuckers could *dance*

government
I actually met the governor of this province a couple months later at a nightclub in Maputo, the national capital. he was arguing with my roommate's boyfriend, a frightening argentine "importer" who wore a pinky ring and reminded me of john gotti. the argument was over who should pay for the next bottle of cutty sark. the governor looked to be around 30 and dressed like a club promoter. if you want a 99-year lease on a vast tract of virgin mozambican farmland, this is the guy to talk to.

demographics
black, of course, with a 1% south asian minority that owns every single business in town. this causes a certain level of friction, but the community seems to have united in their hatred of "outside influence" (i.e., nigerians and ex-rhodesians)

media
there is one newspaper, whose production values are lower than a teenage girl's zine. the quality of journalism is ghoulish; the paper once accused one of my (white) clients of running a secret organ-trafficking scheme, accented by a splash quote from a local nun who claimed that she'd seen him harvest the testicles of a 12-year old boy.

religion
a three-way tie between muslims, christians, and non-aligned traditionalists. the muslims seem to have the most influence, or maybe just the loudest megaphones. hearing the muezzin every morning gets routine after a while, even comforting. anyways, nobody takes it that seriously; most of them probably just converted to avoid being enslaved. that guy in the funny hat and the robe might still buy you a beer, if you're nice enough to him.

crime
there were rumors of bandidas armadas, which I dismissed, until the attempted assassination of my friend's fiancee's dad, who was a police officer and a father of twelve. they shot him in a nightclub, reportedly for refusing to accept a bribe. he survived that attack, only to be poisoned to death in the hospital a fortnight later. this lead to one of the most bizarre scenes of my life, when, as a houseguest for dinner, I was confronted by his grieving widow waving his autopsy papers in my face and demanding justice. she asked me to bring it up with the US embassy, which I never did.

economy
95% of the population is involved in some form of subsistence agriculture, although the GDP impact of these activities is negligible. the only other notable economic activity is people selling you stuff on the street. this can be an annoying hassle sometimes, but other times it's invaluable, like when you need you leave your cell phone charger in maputo. just talk to the woman on the street with a plastic bin full of mangoes balanced on her head; she'll refer you to the guy selling stolen running sneakers, who'll send a text to his cousin João, and the next thing you know there's a guy sprinting down main street with 15 different kinds of cell phone charger draped on his left arm and adaptors for every conceivable voltage bundled in his right. it's like craigslist, but on pavement.

chicks
sigh. nampula is a conservative town, and female modesty is very well-preserved. pickled, even. if you see a woman alone on the street after dark it is a 100% certainty she's a prostitute. you could try the bar scene, of course: twenty-two drunk african males arguing over whether ronaldo is better than messi. I spent a total of three weeks here and don't think I saw a single single female (excepting the models at the fashion show, but they were like 15.)