What I Love About Maputo..

After several blogs, a friend of mine asked me why I didn’t share my experience in Mozambique that calls for a reflective blog post?. I was not that sure about what to share as it’s been longtime since my last visit and stay in Maputo but once we had a good experience, actually a very good experience, in any place then always we will keep the good memories. So below are my reasoning for writing a blog article about my oldfound love for Mozambique and Maputo. Here’s my Top Ten what I love most about the city and its people.

1. Let’s start with something simple, the weather. As most readers know by now, I enjoy the red-coloured leaves in the autumn, and perhaps even the first snow. But after that I grumble every time I need to put on a thick sweater, a hat, and an enormous winter coat with scarf, big boots and gloves. The days your nostril hairs freeze are just uncool. Maputo’s weather on the other hand is very sunny, with the ocean breeze picking up every day at 4pm sharp. Rain comes every couple of days to moisten the land and keep it green and lush. With an average temperature of 27 degrees, you just can’t go wrong! I’m told it’s very different up north and inlands, but I can’t speak as I couldn’t experience.

2. My reason for being in Maputo is to work with a global Telecom vendor, Ericsson SA, for a new innovated Telecom project with Mcel. And I must admit, again, that I do love working overseas with passionate colleagues. We worked on an very challenging and innovative program to present the first 3G network and fastest internet experience in Mozambique; it’s just so exciting! I value constant learning, being creative with such project, creating new opportunities and my work, as a Solution Customer Manager, is just that!

 3. Mozambicans love to dance! You hear music, influenced by Latin grooves, everywhere and anytime. In the middle of the street girls (and the good looking one) will start wiggling their bodies to the rhythm if they fancy the song. Men truly know how to move their bodies on the dance floors. Dancing in Mozambique is flirtatious; I have seen women practically giving men practically lap dances unabashedly. At other times you can see children performing traditional dance in front of a restaurant. Pedro Sa Da Bandeira is one of the experience that you can try online.

4. The stands in the street are handy and you are assured of fresh fruit and vegetables at all times. Typically you see a young girl or boy walking around selling peanuts or cashews. Women roast cashews and corn on the street with a tiny charcoal set. 

5. This leads me to my fifth favorite in Maputo: the creative side of people in ways of making a living. If you have an old typewriter and can find a wonky desk somewhere, you have a job. Place it in a neighbourhood where people need letters (for example, in streets with government buildings) and you can make an honest living. We see a man on the corner of the office street working hard every day trying to sell pen drives to car drivers.

 6. The smells of  fresh ‘pão’ (bread) and pastries. Mozambicans have delicious Portuguese-influenced baked goods that are too good to be true for my free diet (which is never truly free!). I had developed a real addiction to some of the custard-inundated pies. A waft of this in the morning and I suddenly find myself wanting some fresh bread! I had found a Brazilian pastry shop in our office street, and believe me they had some damn dangerous goods…

7. And then there are the chapas. I recently wrote this on my Facebook timeline: “Imagine waiting at the “bus terminal” with hordes of people for just one chapa to go home. Wind is picking up and rain is soon to come. A chapa is a mini-van built for about 10 people plus driver for Western minded people. A chapa in Mozambique is built for about 20 people. I used this one and I sat in a chapa with over 25 people with one of my colleagues asking me if he needed to say the words. Take your imagination a little further, there’s more to it! Now, imagine my face glued to the front window while the rear-view mirror was poking in my back. I was considered lucky, a quarter of my bum found a seat between the driver and the front seat passenger. Whenever the driver needed change he asked me politely to lift up my ass’ quarter. That was my 30-minute chapa drive. It was an experience!!!”

8. The sense of community is a wonderful experience. People appreciate our outsiders mumblings and often they smile when we used to ask an ignorant question. Few times we went to Xipamanine, which is a local market just outside the city centre. It was dirty, smelly, with butchered animals, huge piles of all sorts of dried beans and a maze of small winding alleys. We had fun figuring out what some vegetables were. So we decided to buy a few and check it out. The fruit lady laughed when asked how to prepare the vegetable and said it was good in salads. Another shopper then mentioned to cook it. How, we weren’t sure.

They’re full of seeds and pretty tasteless. The next day some green ones had turned yellow. Of course we had no clue whether that was good or not. Curiously, I cut one open and found that the white flesh and seeds had turned blood red! Later my friend asked a waitress what to do with this interesting vegetable. She told him to fry it up and that the yellow ones are definitely not good. Chopped some up per instructions, fried it and it was quite bitter. How different our experience was when we tasted passion fruit!

9. I hinted at it earlier when I spoke about dancing – the nightlife in Maputo is good! With a large expat community, tourists and plenty of young Mozambicans, the night scene is well developed. There’s always some music somewhere or a festival going on. The only downside is that it is mighty expensive and so we go out sparingly.

 10. And then there is cappuccino, my latest addiction. Regular coffee isn’t good enough anymore. Not only do Maputo’s pastelarias have delicious pastries, they know how to make a good cuppa and actually the best you will ever taste.