Coconut trees and mangroves line the coastal entrance. It’s like a green frame enclosing blue. The southern limit of the bay is formed by a huge peninsula supported by dunes that undulate like a gigantic dhow imitating the sea. The highest dunes, such as Condjane that has a height of sixty metres, are interspersed with low-lying terrain where rainwater accumulates. Over these dunes, forests still survive, and some of them are considered sacred terrain, where the original founders of the place repose. The lagoons below attract flocks of birds, among them the famous “hammerhead” about which legends of witchcraft persist. In nearby trees, one can find the no-less-famous nest of this bird. Unlucky is the person who, even unwittingly, destroys one of these huge, clumsy nests. The punishment is everlasting madness.
The Bay of Inhambane provides shelter for dolphins, whales and giant turtles. The rare and almost extinct-mammal, the dugong, can be found in the inlet at Linga-Linga. It is generally believed that one of the largest populations of this mammal on the whole of Mozambique’s coast survives here. There are also terrestrial mammals such as the rare, furtive, mongoose (vungué in the local language). There are small bush babies (bwanga) and black-faced monkeys (nzoko).
An extensive mangrove swamp rings much of the bay. This marshy forest is crossed by deep channels that are used for fishing. In one of the tourist establishments here, they had the happy idea of building a boardwalk into the mangrove. Tourists can venture along this pleasant pathway and discover the incomparable beauty of this ecosystem. At low tide, millions of tiny crabs carpet the ground, creating the impression that the sands are boiling.
A World of Interweavings
The best thing about Inhambane Bay, however, is the people: their inexhaustible hospitality and their infinite willingness to share their time and their soul with you. On one of the many occasions when I have worked in that region as a biologist, I made friends with someone who left a deep impression on me. It was an old fisherman who showed me the way to a place where flamingos arrived, and he gave me, without knowing it, the title of one of my novels. I met Afonso Nhalane in one of those mangrove channels that are flooded at high tide. He had just finished checking his gillnet for trapping fish. He shook his head: the fish he’d caught would only provide one meal. Nothing more. Dragging his feet, as if he was the one who’d been trapped in some invisible net, the man climbed the dune and sat down in the shade of a palm tree.
Nhalane’s destiny is linked to palm trees. One can see immediately from his name: Nhala is the name of one of those palms from which sura is extracted. Afonso Nhalane recalls that in the olden days, there were more fish, more flamingos. Is this nostalgia for his youth, that time when, according to him, there was more of everything? But the fisherman insists: fishing with gillnets, selling sura (the famous palm wine), selling coconuts, all that was enough. Now, life is like the bay begging for ever more streams. But he doesn’t complain, and is resigned to selling the few chickens he breeds in his large backyard. “What am I now,” he asks, “a chicken fisherman? That’s what I am,” he repeats, “a fisherman of chicken.”
He invites me to go and have a glass of sura at his house. The sale of this beverage was once an important part of the family’s budget. Now, it’s only used to welcome visitors like myself. On the way there, we cross his landholding. He knows each of his coconut palms. He almost seems to greet them, calling each one by its name.
Later, with a glass of sura already half drunk, we sit catching the breeze that comes off the sea in the afternoon. We are leaning against a palisade made of plaited coconut leaves. The fisherman notes my fascination at the intricacy of the interwoven patterns of the palisade.
“Nowhere else will you find these plaits. Only here in Inhambane.”
The word fills me like the breeze: “plaits.” That’s what the fisherman and I are doing with the time: plaiting away the hours, between conversation and the excuse for another glass. As I take my leave, I pass groups of girls plaiting each other’s hair in turn. And I walk away towards the sun as it plaits away the afternoon in the background.
Article published in İndico, October 2003.
Land of Water and Rain
One of my brothers, when he was a child and in a bad mood, would threaten:
“I’m going to run away to Inhaminga.”
What he was trying to say was that he was going beyond the world, to where there were no more roads. He was going beyond the limit from which it was possible to return, and by doing this, he was putting our love for him to the test. It was a game without any risk: our love was greater than any distance.
Inhaminga was situated in some inaccessible fog. It was the farthest place that we, who were born and lived in Beira, could imagine. At the time, the district of Inhaminga, in the province of Sofala, was really remote. Not just because of the time we took to get there, but because of the variety of scenery, and the extraordinary worlds that we passed on our journey. There were still abundant woodlands of miombo trees, crossed by thousands of streams that swelled up with the slightest rain. Lions, buffalo, leopards, the inhabitants of a mystical world, all wandered through the area. To survive, people there said one needed to eat snakes and kill wild and ferocious animals. Forty years later, I make a return journey through this bewitching region. The first impression that strikes us on these incursions into the past is that the world has shrunk. What I remembered as great highways of sand were, after all, what they had always been: narrow tracks. A child’s eyes make the world gigantic. And I am at a loss before my second confrontation with the past: the forest has been pushed out of the landscape. There are still a few patches in the areas that are most difficult to reach. Nor could it be otherwise: these tracks which, after all, cross the savannah were opened up by loggers and the owners of sawmills. It was they who, for more than fifty years, had carved out these roads for their trucks. With the loggers came the hunters. And farmers grew in numbers, forcing the trees to retreat forever.
To the northwest, the famous Gorongosa Park is still a refuge for this canopy of greenery and mystery.
As I went on, I began to feel some unease in my heart. The road between Dondo and Inhaminga is easy to negotiate during the dry season. My car, however, would stop at the slightest excuse. The shacks along the side of the road, the country villages, the charcoal burners’ encampments, the level crossings along the newly reconstructed Sena railway line, all were a reason for me to jump out of my car and get talking to the people of the area. In the beginning, I was able to remember the local language, Chissena, only vaguely. But almost all of them spoke Portuguese. Like those fishermen who use a harpoon with a sharp point to comb through the deep mud of dried-up lagoons. Somewhere there is a tasty fish that lies buried during the dry season, awaiting the arrival of the rains. Further away, the storks with their wax bills compete with the fishermen. Their technique is, after all, similar: to take the distracted fish by surprise, and spear it.
I drive among hundreds of bicycles loaded with bags of charcoal and women carrying fish traps on their heads. The area is very poor, possibly among the poorest in Sofala. The trade in fish, charcoal and homemade beverages is what allows them to eke out a living. Yet there is a joviality in their behaviour, as if the future of the world were within their grasp and hope were at hand. I forget my initial sensation that something had been lost between my memory and the present.