Potholes and cream pastries

While yet another upsurge of political chaos brings my country one step closer to separation, I’m quite frankly content to find myself in the other hemisphere. It is comforting to know I have a safe place to seek asylum should things explode in Belgium. So let me introduce you to my potential foster home.

Maputo is a quaint little town, and strangely endearing. Not very large, not very lively, not very dangerous (though crime has picked up since the xenophobic attacks in South Africa that drove thousands of illegal Mozambican migrants back home). One descriptive adjective that is a perfect fit, though: very dilapidated.

Scattered around town, you’ll find disused tram rails that stopped leading somewhere a while ago, abandoned public mailboxes from which no letters were picked up since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975, once-gorgeous Mediterranean-style villas in ruins and crumbling communist residential high-rises flanking Maputo’s bustling avenues, and sadly underfunded museums with rather awkward displays, as kindly demonstrated by Georgina.

But amidst these reminders of colonization and the infrastructural decay caused by the civil war that ended in 1992, Mozambicans muddle through. When the Portuguese bus company that ran public transport in the country went bankrupt a couple of years ago, a complex system of privately run mini-buses emerged in its place. At first, I was quite delighted with this smoothly running system. Until I got my foot stuck in a rust hole in the floor of the bus while it was driving, and on another occasion was charged double the government-fixed price.

‘Is it because I’m white?’ I find myself thinking angrily – and then I smile. Privilege, social handicap… things are not very clear-cut in Mozambique’s multiethnic society. There is a large presence of Indian and Arab traders, Chinese (whose presence dates back to the 1500s), South African investors, ‘white Africans’ (mostly Portuguese who stayed after 1975) and heaps of expats, so one more white girl goes largely unnoticed. Except perhaps in my traditional Mozambican dance class, where my unmistakably un-Mozambican muscles refuse to twitch in more elegant ways.

Other local delights include:

- all-you-can-eat seafood fresh from the source

- the most fabulous cream pastries

- good South African wines for really cheap

- shopping for African-print textiles (often manufactured in such un-African places as India, Pakistan, the UK and the Netherlands)

- relaxing on the beach (polluted around Maputo, gorgeous and pristine further up)

- making weekend excursions to South Africa and Swaziland.

The cute little kingdom of Swaziland is a story all by itself. HIV rates are the highest in the world (40%), courtesy of His Royal Highness, private-school educated in the UK and married to some 16 Swazi ladies, and the Queen Mother, who recently admitted to having been on antiretroviral treatment secretly for many years. From time to time, in a traditional ceremony the king picks another lucky Swazi virgin to join the royal family – though kidnapping is another, be it less ceremonial method if your next under-age bride of choice does not consent. To stop the alarming spread of HIV, the king announced a five-year ban on sex in the country, which of course only led to an increase in prostitution and abortions. Read more about how the king handled the HIV crisis here.

As to my work, I’m negotiating quotes with an express mail courier for driving and flying blood samples and HIV test results around one of the most remote provinces of the country, designing a poster to teach nurses and parents about HIV symptoms in children, and interviewing HIV+ kids on how they like using pillboxes to take their daily doses of antiretrovirals. From a certain perspective, the Clinton Foundation’s work here may seem quixotic. As I have been reminded by several locals, a life is cheap in this part of the world.

Especially a child’s.