Charles Onyango - Obbo
5 May 2008
column
Nairobi — It's late Wednesday afternoon in Mozambique's capital, Maputo. So your columnist does what most restless scribblers would do - get out the running shoes; slip into something resembling sportswear; stick an iPod in the ears; hit the streets of Maputo; and get hopelessly lost during the exploration.
In the pocket there is reassurance in the form of a photocopy of the passport, a hotel card and a taxi service number picked up from the reception, and enough change to hop a ride back. As a good East African, I am checked into a hotel on Julius Nyerere Avenue.
My old man never tires of saying that if you don't want to stop marvelling in your life, travel. I have roamed the world and Africa, but had never set foot in Mozambique.
When I was younger, I was in a Frelimo solidarity group, a Samora Machel fan club really. Every night before we went to bed, we prayed for misfortune to befall Renamo, the apartheid-backed rebel group that brought so much pain to this land.
So, even though in recent years Mozambique has had among the highest growth rates in Africa, at one point reaching a mind-blowing 20 per cent, it was still difficult not to imagine that Maputo was still only slightly better than war-wrecked Mogadishu.
Nothing prepares you for Maputo. For three hours, I wandered the suburbs, crossed the city's boulevards, and walked along the beach.
Invariably, one of the things an East African would look for is if they have matatus. They do, but the drivers are not insane like the ones in Uganda, Kenya or Tanzania.
Here is where the brotherhood began to be truly felt. I was reminded of a profound statement I heard during the post-election bloodletting in Kenya. Prof Wambui Mwangi travelled upcountry, and on the way back she saw that matatus were beginning to return to the roads.
DURING THE VIOLENCE, SHE SAID, KENYA became a strange country to her. She couldn't recognise it. But when she saw the matatus, the country started coming back to her. The matatu, she realised, was the most quintessentially Kenyan thing and, it seems, it was the one thing that had survived the crisis.
Matatus are a symptom of the failure of our cities to build mass transport systems. But at the same time, they are the arteries that lead you to the soul and heartbeat of a city. If you follow that artery, it can lead you to very interesting places.
Maputo has the telltale signs of the country's years of war, and your common wear and tear that post-independence African rulers brought with them.
Like everywhere, economic liberalisation has created a very wealthy class and, unfortunately, many poor people. The beach is breathtaking. Along it is the inevitable prime real state. You can see which villas and classy apartments represent the old Portuguese colonial-era money.
AND THE NEW MONEY THAT THE brothers and sisters have brought to the beach is obvious too. They build bigger and closer to the water. African revolutions have a strange habit of throwing up very bourgeois liberators.
Parts of Mozambique are stunningly European. Unlike Kampala, Nairobi, or Dar es Salaam, you still find posh homes along what would be Kampala Road or Moi Avenue!
At my age, these things are not supposed to be happening. But after 20 years, I think I fell in love again - with Maputo.
Pity Mozambique is not a member of the East African Community. It is a reminder that we can't have all the good things in life. After all, even Machel, who deserved the best of Mozambique more than most, left it behind too.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's managing editor for convergence and new products.
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