Maputo

The capital of Mozambique, and Harry’s whole trip, with Kieran.

His first impressions are better than he expected and he keeps saying so: a really nice city for a developing African capital, clean, with good people — and, the thing he flags hardest, a place where nobody shouts at him for filming. He is careful to add that you shouldn’t arrive expecting Cape Town.

Arriving

• Immigration in five minutes, which he credits to preparation rather than luck: visa approval obtained online beforehand, cash ready, documents printed, and being first off the plane.
• The ATMs are the problem, not the border. One swallowed his card on the first night, and the next four he tried were all dead — he concluded the whole city was having the same problem.
• A taxi to the hotel: 1,200 meticals. He notes in advance that arriving at a luxury hotel tells the driver everything he needs to know about what he can charge.
• He and Kieran share a room at a beachfront hotel and split the cost.

The centre

• Portuguese colonial architecture throughout, including a church dated 1936 in Portuguese lettering. His verdict: say what you like about the Portuguese, they built beautiful churches.
• A statue made by North Korea, which sends him off on the fact that North Korea exports monumental statues — the tallest statue in the world, in Dakar, is another of theirs.
• New buildings next to very old ones, a good park, some rubbish and some dilapidation.
• A wooden fridge magnet with the flag on it: asked 500, or $8; Harry offers 100 and pays 200. He then pre-empts both halves of his own comment section — half will say he was scammed, half will ask how he could haggle a man down over a fridge magnet — and says he doesn’t mind which side you take.

The train

The best section of the video and the reason to come, for Harry, who says he’s a big train enthusiast and gets it from his grandfather.

• Maputo station was built in 1910, celebrated its centenary in 2010, and has four platforms. He calls it genuinely beautiful.
• The line was colonial infrastructure built to move goods from the Portuguese colony to the British one in South Africa. It now moves people — commuters who can’t afford or don’t want to live in the city, in each morning and out each evening.
• A ticket costs 120 meticals, in first or second class.
• It’s better than England’s trains, he says, at a fraction of the price — his comparison is £50 for Birmingham to London.
• A lot of the windows are smashed, there’s no air conditioning, and it is hot. You can hang out of the side, like an Indian train.
• Buying the ticket is the hard part. No English at the counter, and staff who he suspects are just trying to get rid of him.

He gets off at a random stop with no idea where he is, which he describes as the kind of travel he lives for — and immediately concedes it might have been a mistake.

The hitchhike back

There are no taxis at the stop. They put a thumb out and a man stops for them.

He speaks perfect English, works hard, and holds a passport — and has never left Mozambique and expects he never will, because of the state of his country. He would like to go to Europe and says he can only dream of it.

Harry’s reaction is the most serious thing in the video: that he is jetting between countries barely registering them, and that this is a slap in the face for a Westerner. He gives the man what spare cash he has and says he doesn’t really know what else to do in that situation.

Mafalala

A township on the edge of the city, walked on a Friday night — deliberately, and with a local guide, which Harry says out loud is because of what happened to him in Douala.

• The entrance was a Portuguese bullfighting arena, disused since they left.
• Predominantly Muslim, and the religious buildings are the detail worth keeping: the mosques and madrasas are built to look like houses, with no minarets, because under Portuguese rule no religion but Christianity was permitted and they had to be hidden.
• The tufo, an Islamic dance which Harry is told was performed to welcome the Prophet, is performed in the street.
• Rent is payable and cheap, precisely because the housing is bad — which means even the unemployed can rent here. People come from all over Mozambique for that reason.
• The core problem, per his guide, is jobs. Not government employment — that isn’t the state’s role, in his view — but the weakness of the private sector.
• Amapiano on enormous speakers, which Harry is delighted by.
• It smells of peri-peri everywhere, and he calls it the best-smelling slum he has been in.
• Charcoal-grilled corn, which he rates above any corn he’s had.
• A football pitch inside the settlement, painted in bright murals — common here and across Maputo, which he calls a very colourful city.
• It functions as its own ecosystem: food, groceries, healthcare, clothes, all inside it.
• Drugs are marijuana and little else. Cocaine, his guide says, isn’t a factor here.
• Children are around unaccompanied, which he notes without filming or describing them further.

The moment he keeps: buying one man corn leads to a queue of people wanting the same, and he stops. His own phrase for it — you give someone your hand and they take your arm — and his flat admission that he can’t help everyone.

Harry’s tips

• Do the paperwork before you fly. Visa approval online, cash counted, documents printed, and be first off the plane — five minutes at immigration. See prepare before you land.
• Bring more than one card, and expect the ATMs not to work.
• Get the commuter train. 120 meticals, better than England’s, and the best hour of the trip.
• Don’t get off at a stop you haven’t chosen unless you’re prepared to hitchhike back. He did both.
• Take a local into the township, and he says why: Cameroon.
• Eat the grilled corn.
• Learn some Portuguese. He says it repeatedly and means it.

Source

• Madness in Mozambique’s Maputo! 🇲🇿 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Imq-hamRZM