Inhambane, Mozambique

(Notes from a journey to Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia, Sep/Oct 2015.)

Inhambane, a coastal town in South Mozambique, was once a port of call on the Indian ocean trading circuit. For hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans on the East African coast, Arabs, Persians, Indians, other Africans, Indonesians, and even the Chinese came to these shores, trading textiles, silk, porcelain, spices, pearls, and more (a Chinese explorer, Zheng He, returned with a live giraffe as a gift for the Ming emperor). All this created a cosmopolitan and syncretic culture, still evident in Inhambane. Vasco da Gama visited in 1498 and he loved the area so much he called it Terra de Boa Gente ("Land of the Good People"). At least since then, the people on this stretch of the coast have held a reputation for being polite, gentle, and laid back, which seemed to me still apt.

In the 18th century, after the coming of the Portuguese, the dominant economic activity shifted to trading slaves and ivory. Thereafter, as the global economy moved on, Inhambane fell behind. Today it’s a quiet town of tree-lined avenues, mosques and churches, colonial architecture, and an overall aura of faded splendor. At the mosque we had a long chat with a young Muslim doing a Ph.D in human rights at a university in Portugal; he had returned to his home town to do field work. He spoke vividly about his difficult transition from this backwater town to life in the metropole, a story at once bittersweet and universal. [—Namit Arora, October 2015]