Home » Mozambique » South African Adventure 1999, Part 10: Mozambique -- symbolising the best and worst of Africa

After a game drive in the park, we crossed the border to Mozambique and drove to the capital Maputo. The country immediately seemed very different from Swaziland with the climate being much more tropical and the living conditions apparently much worse. This resulted in people being very aggressive in their efforts to sell us things and despite us being very careful, there was an incident where a group of people tried to steal from us. However, Mozambique was also a place where we experienced extreme generosity, and in retrospect I think our short visit was the most interesting experience on the whole trip.

South African Adventure 1999, Part 10: Mozambique -- symbolising the best and worst of Africa

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 20:33:32

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stay and watch after it while we looked around inside. According to Gunnar, it was absolutely necessary to have someone look after the car. An unguarded car would almost certainly be broken into, he said. At that point we thought he was probably exagerrating the danger a little bit.

After getting out of the car, we were immediately surrounded by people who were selling various stuff. The place was also crowded with beggars. By walking very fast into the market itself, we managed to shrug them off for this time.

Judging by the area covered, the market wasn't really that big. However, the "shops" were put up really close together and it turned that almost anything could be bought here, ranging from food to ivory, body lotion or hair. Shopping here was not really cheap, though, even by Norwegian standards, and it was very expensive compared to South Africa and Swaziland. For example we bought a two liter bottle of coke for 30000Mt (approximately 15R). Anyway, it was fun just browsing without buying very much as the market was full of people and was very lively.

When we left the market a lot of things happened very fast. As we came out into the area where our car was parked, we were again immediately surrounded by beggars and the people who were selling stuff. We headed straight for the car, which we could see was still there, with the crowd following us.

One guy who was selling watches seemed to be concentrating on me. According to him he had a very good offer: 250R for a watch. I wasn't interested. He was not a very tough bargainer, though, because the next moment he was selling it for 150R. "Citizen! Citizen!" he was shouting, waving the watch in front of me to prove that this was a quality watch, not just some piece of junk. On looking more closely at the watch I noticed that it was a "Citezen"(!) watch, not "Citizen", so I still wasn't interested.

When we reached the car he was selling it ...