The following day, sporting the colours of the most famous team in the universe, I cast my eyes over the spectators from the middle of the stadium. I can now imagine, many years later, how Cristiano Ronaldo feels when he hears the crowd’s engulfing clamour. In my local stadium, the crowd was the whole of humanity. I mainly noticed the girls in the front row, squeezed together so as not to miss a single moment of the game. Suddenly, reality overcame my daydreaming and I looked more closely at the spectators: there they were, the girls. Real, up for the fight in body and soul. There they were, unmistakable in their physique, distracting me in my movements. And in particular, there was Laura, the most beautiful of them all. My instinctive wisdom caused me to turn my gaze towards the coach. Hotshot’s mischievous grin confirmed everything: it was a plan schemed up by him. In the face of the object of my passion, there was nothing for it but for me to score goals. Without goals, no one wins. Yet again, I didn’t score in that game. And much to the sadness of our coach, we didn’t win. I don’t know why I say “we.” For in the end, I won. It wasn’t in the game. Nor in the moments that followed. It was later, when everything assumed the taste of the irreversible. You’ll understand in a minute.
The next day, I got a visit from Laura. Her voice was so full of voices that for many years, I remembered her through that abstract presence. And she asked me:
“Are you sad because of the game?”
“I’m sad because of me.”
Laura was older, she knew of things that I only suspected. She unfolded a piece of paper scrawled on in her own handwriting.
“It’s a poem,” she whispered.
“Is it for me?” I asked.
And she answered: “No, it’s for Ademir.” The other’s name hit me like a blow from a catapult, as if I’d suddenly been dropped as a striker, banned from playing. I put the paper in my pocket and screwed it up angrily. More than our defeat, it was Laura’s interest in someone else that hurt me. And off I went into my solitude. Laura even phoned a few times. I refused to take the call. In due course, she stopped trying.
I never read the poem. I met Laura again years later, when she already bore the burden of being the mother of someone’s mother. I didn’t recognize her. Only her tinkling stream of a voice brought me back to its source. It was she who reminded me how she had tried to get in touch again after her last visit. I asked after Ademir. “Who’s Ademir?” she asked, puzzled. “I’ve never met anyone by that name.” Her reply sounded convincing, so much so that I changed the subject to other gaps and lapses in our memories. When I got home, I looked around for the old bit of paper, which was still there, all screwed up. Laura had even written down the author’s name. It was a poem by João Cabral de Melo Neto, and its title was: “Ademir da Guia.” And it went like this:
Ademir imposes his game/ a rhythm (and weight) of lead,/a slug, a film in slow motion,/a man in a nightmare.//His liquid rhythm infiltrates/his opponent, thickly, from within/imposes on him what he wishes,//controlling him, putrefying him/A warm rhythm, like a walk through sand,/through the brackish water of a lagoon,/ sapping and then shackling/the most restless opponents.
Shackled to myself, that’s what I was after solving the mystery of Laura’s little piece of paper. So Ademir wasn’t “another.” Reflecting upon it, Ademir was me, stuck in the six-yard box, which is the moment of greatest happiness.
I put the old bit of paper away, and overcame a sad smile. Once again, I’d been nutmegged by some poetry. One can be coached in the skills of football. But the only coach for the challenges of life is ourselves.
Article published in İndico, the in-flight magazine
of Mozambican Airlines (LAM), May 2010.
The Waters of Biodiversity
Biodiversity? The translator hesitated. His strained expression translated the effort he was making to find an equivalent for “biodiversity” in Xironga. He translated it by elephants. Then, he corrected himself: animals. Seated on the ground, the country folk couldn’t conceal their doubts. Whether it was elephants or all animals, the matter required more substantial explanation. And what about people? The translator saw a way out and shot back an answer: yes, people, animals, the land, all together. And he reinforced his words with a sweeping, encircling gesture.
This was the message we were bringing the people of Machangulo. The place is near Maputo, not more than fifty kilometres away. But life there isn’t just remote from the capital. It goes on in another world. This other world. Right there on the flank of the great city of Maputo, is one of the most underdeveloped regions of the country. There are few roads, very few schools, and almost no health clinics. In the complete absence of transport, the country folk travel vast distances on foot. The centre of gravity of their lives is not the capital in fact. It’s not even inside Mozambique. They look to the South, to South Africa, to Kwazulu-Natal. It’s there that they sell produce, and it’s there that they go to find work. It’s from there that their ancestors came during the Nguni migrations. Many of them speak Zulu, few speak Portuguese.
The meeting I was engaged in was part of a long project to elaborate a management plan for the district of Matutuíne, the southernmost coastal district of Mozambique. Down there, in the far south of the country, the headlands of Pontas de Ouro, Mamoli, and Malongane shimmer in the distance. Beyond these, nothing else shimmers. Or, if it does, it shimmers in some other hidden dimension. And so there we were, biologists and others, trying to put down on paper the infinite complexity of their daily lives. Our biggest challenge was to find, in biodiversity, reasons to embark on programs to generate wealth, and build bridges with modernity. This was to be done in such a way that biodiversity became a seed, instead of a concept; in the end, it was hoped that development would germinate from this.
The specialists, who had come from Maputo, looked at their schedule with an anguished consciousness of time. The experts, as they like to be called, are always in a hurry. As for me, I took delight in the gaps between work. Sitting on the shore of one of the many lagoons, on one of those leisurely afternoons, I didn’t notice evening falling. I sat there as if in rapture at the extraordinary beauty of the place.The dunes, covered in an intense green, resembled a motionless sea. The bottom of the hollows cushioned the slumbering lagoons with different colours. Van Gogh would be busier here than I. And he would be more productive. It’s here, in Matutuíne, that one of the richest regions of Mozambique can be found: rich in the diversity of its species and blessed with scenery that flirts with the sea, its mirror.
On that afternoon, I let myself cradle myself in the sluggish sensation of a world being born, as if from behind those dunes, gods were still emerging to create the universe. Is it possible the gods might display the haste and pompous air of the advisers from the capital? My situation might not, after all, be so far removed from that of the gods. For the local inhabitants, that lagoon was sacred. Fishing was prohibited there. On its shores, every February, ucanhu, the fermented drink with which they celebrated the harvest, was drunk.
The metallic sound of saucepans clashing together awoke me. What was happening? Women and men seemed determined to undo the tranquillity, which is precisely what they did: they were making noise to scare away the hippos. I caught sight of them, indolently waiting in the long grass, weighing the risks of venturing out into the fields where the villagers tended their crops. One of the men came over to me. He was carrying dried palm leaves with which he lit small fires. Saucepans and flames combined together in the task of chasing away these thick-skinned mammals. The man took the opportunity to accuse me: