Is it the refrain “I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long” starting to get repetitive? I mean it in all earnestness.
I have been traveling for almost a full month. First, for work, I went to the flood zone along the Zambeze river in central Mozambique on assignment from IRIN.

The resulting articles can be found here and here.

Then, for vacation, I went to northern Mozambique. We started in Nampula and went to Ilha de Moçambique, capital of the country until the 19th Century, one of the oldest European settlements in East Africa, now a decaying backwater cum tourist destination.


The history is dramatic — battles between the Arabs and the Portuguese, then the Portuguese and the Dutch, slave trading and capricious colonial nobility.

The architecture gives it a sort of ghost town charm and the museums are interesting, but I think if USAID were serious about its tourist development programs the priority would be putting some kind of sewage system in place on the island. Taking a sunset sailboat ride just gets depressing when it involves witnessing two dozen villagers taking a crap into the sea. There’s something fully inhumane about watching someone do their business out in the open because they have nowhere else to go, particularly if you’re sitting on some lovingly restored verandah drinking a cocktail with money in your pocket and a well-appointed bathroom back at the hotel. You sort of just want to leave.

We went north to the unremarkable city of Pemba, then to another island called Ibo, another example of the Swahili village- Arab trading post- Portuguese settlement-colonial ghost town trajectory, including sordid history of traffic in slaves and ivory.

Here we participated in a community homestay thing that was kind of awkward. Maybe it’s considered ascetically virtuous for a tourist to spend a night without plumbing or electricity.

You are giving money to the community I guess, but in our case the community was the Frelimo district administrator (surprise) so these things are all relative.

The lady of the house cooked up a pretty tasty fish curry with coconut rice for us on a wood fire though, to her great credit.
Finally we went back to Maputo, bussed to South Africa, rented a car, and went to Kruger National Park. We saw many animals.


The highlight was probably having to drive in reverse for ten minutes while an enormous elephant walked semi-threateningly in our direction,

and seeing three lions sleeping away the afternoon, seemingly undisturbed by the parade of cars and descending electric windows and cameras clicking.

I hope to go back here before I leave.
