Article published in İndico, October 2000.
A Sea of Exchange, an Ocean of Myths
The indian ocean isn’t just a geographical landmark: it is the guardian of the history of diverse peoples. Voyages of old didn’t just exchange genes, merchandise, languages and cultures. Identities were forged as well as a common history for peoples who could nowadays well be termed “Indianic.”
Adepts of genetic and/or cultural “purity,” don’t delude yourselves: our identities today are the results of ancient hybridities, so old and complex that we can’t always trace them. This mixture of mixtures is, of course, common to all humanity. Around the Indian Ocean, however, where a dense web of exchanges began seven centuries ago, this mosaic is absolutely unique.
The coast of Mozambique bears witness to these navigators. In specific localities specific memories are preserved: the departure of slaves, the presence of traders, the establishment of a military presence. To these territories endless processions of ships and sailors arrived. Chinese, Indonesians, Arabs, Indians, Europeans all passed through here. It was through the coast of Mozambique that the coconut palm and the banana tree penetrated the entire continent, bringing change to the lives of whole communities. It was through these exchanges that the Indian Ocean bathed remote lands which its waters never touched. More than bringing products, the visitors from distant places left an ability to establish trading relationships and negotiate conditions. And it wasn’t just clothes, ships, seeds and fruits that the “others” brought (items which we nowadays simplistically believe to be ours in origin). What we were left with was a capacity for cultural hybridity, to create identities for ourselves that function like import-export enterprises. it was also an undoing of identity that we ceded to others who, in this way, gradually became less other.
Other Globalizations
The sailor who helped Vasco da Gama navigate from Mozambique Island to India wasn’t aware of the extent to which he was participating in what we now call “globalization.” Nor did he have any idea how much he was repeating an act that had already been carried out almost a century before.
In fact, in 1403, the Chinese admiral Zheng He commanded a fleet of ships that called in along the East African coast. He was sailing in the opposite direction to the Portuguese, but he too was helped by a Muslim sailor who was familiar with the routes of the Indian Ocean. Zheng He himself converted to Islam and occasionally went to Mecca to fulfil his spiritual obligations. The seas were becoming highways for men and for gods.
Between 1403 and 1435, Admiral Zheng He crossed the Indian Ocean seven times. During this period, a total of 350 great junks sent by the Ming emperor transported people and goods between the different regions that bordered on the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese junks weren’t small ships. Some of them rivalled modern ocean liners in size. They could carry a thousand passengers and hundreds of tons of merchandise. They sailed aided by currents and monsoons that blew sails fastened to bamboo spars. Unlike Portuguese ships, which had three masts, the Chinese ships were equipped with nine. Neither Vasco da Gama at the end of the century nor Zheng He at the beginning inaugurated new routes across the waters of the Indian Ocean. Both of them followed routes already pioneered by Islam and by Arab traders.
Unlike the South Atlantic, which, in the fifteenth century, had not yet witnessed intercontinental voyages, the waters of the Indian Ocean had already seen many a ship. The islands that the Portuguese discovered along their route were uninhabited. The same was not true of Africa’s east coast.
Other Passengers
It is difficult for us to imagine how much trade took place in the 14th century between such distant places. We assume that such difficult journeys require modern, sophisticated nautical instruments. But the challenge of crossing oceans has long stimulated the art and ingenuity of human beings. We never accept our destiny and to the place allotted to us. We have always shared the miracle of journeying across waters with the gods.
The ships also brought mistakes and misunderstandings. When Columbus disembarked on the American coast, he baptized the local inhabitants “Indians.” He believed that he was encountering people of the Indies, in the Indian Ocean. The name, the fruit of an error, was never rectified. The name stuck forever and for everyone (including the barely baptized “Indians”). Other influences survived for centuries. The ships didn’t only bring riches but furtive stowaways known as rats. The rats were notable spreaders of disease and plague. The history of these voyages is not one consisting only of courage. European navigators brought with them illnesses against which the inhabitants of the Americas had not acquired any resistance. Epidemics killed millions of these “Indians.” It is believed that within a century of the arrival of Columbus, some of these peoples had been reduced to one-tenth of their original population.
The voyages generated trade in foodstuffs. Much of what we incorporate in our daily diet comes from the Americas. The Portuguese navigators were largely responsible for this dissemination. Many Mozambicans believe that products such as manioc, sweet potato, cashews, peanuts, guavas and papayas are genuinely African. They were all imported and arrived in Africa in the hold of some little Portuguese sailing ship.
A Cloth of Many Threads
Rather than an obstacle, the Indian Ocean was a route, a cultural crossroads. Navigators from other continents, other races, and other religions, arrived over its waters. On the coast of Mozambique, the ships were the needle that stitched together this huge cloth, which even today is covered with an immense number and variety of different prints. For centuries, it wasn’t just trade in goods, languages and cultures that took place. Nations were built. Mozambique was woven together from the coast towards the interior. The thread that gathers our country came from water, from travel, from the desire to be others. The flag that covers us is a cloth of many, diverse threads.
Article published in İndico, January 2000.
The Sweet Taste of Sura
The dhow crosses the waters, undulating over a liquid mirror. The little boat is a narcissist. Arab in its origin, the sailing craft contemplates itself with the slowness of a time that no longer exists. It’s the Bay of Inhambane, and its vocation is that of all bays: its waters rue not being the open sea, allowing themselves to lull in the earth’s embrace. This curved bight is crossed by the fishermen, traders and travellers who link Inhambane and Maxixe. People who still have the same feeling for time as that which witnessed the place’s creation. One of the most beautiful places in Mozambique.
Geologists, who know how to read landscapes, look at the bay’s configuration somewhat skeptically. At some far-off time, the Bay of Inhambane may have been something else: for example, a closed lagoon, like the ones at Quissico or Poelela. The lagoon got tired of existing all by itself, so it opened one arm to the east. Nowadays, dhows comb the placid waters of the bay, but they know they have to obey the intricate design of the channels. Some of these underwater valleys are deep and reach depths of twenty metres.