Mozambique

We made a relatively early start though it took some time to make it through the Maputo traffic to the road out of town. In town the roads are crowded with chapa's or mini buses of varying degrees of roadworthiness and stoved in frontage. The sliding door for the passengers on one of the vans we passed had come off completely and was being held up by passengers. As the Bradt guide to Africa Overland mentions, driving is theoretically on the left but in reality vehicles come from all directions. When Portugal pulled out of Mozambique in the 1975, the newly independent republic reached out to the socialist eastern states for assistance to rebuild infrastructure and political guidance. The street names in Maputo reflect that history - our hostel was on Avenida Mao Tse Tung, just off Avenida Vladimir Lenine.

The main highway we were following was sealed and in excellent condition until we reached Xaixai where it degenerated into a series of potholes strung together with a little tarmac. Not much further on we encountered still more roadworks although the Mozambique road workers technique of working the stop/go sign for use of the single lane was more erratic than South Africa. Several times traffic was coming straight at us from the opposite direction. I was curious to see Chinese workers at the surveying tripods at several points and at one point we were following two trucks full of dirt with Chinese numberplates so I guess the road is being constructed by China. I read recently that China had recently leased large swathes of land in Mozambique (and other African nations) for growing food crops to import into China and wonder whether the upgrade of the road is so they can transport the goods to the port.

Around 80% of the population of Mozambique engage in subsistence farming at least part of the time and the land along the roadside reflected this. Instead of the enormous fields of grain or cattle pasture we saw in South Africa (or right by the border, banana and sugarcane plantations), here it is a little more haphazard with small plots of corn and tomatoes with coconut and banana palms and other fruit and nut trees growing in the middle of them and the odd cow or few goats tethered nearby. As we drove north it became greener, rather than drier. It must take a lot of effort to keep those gardens green. Driving through villages we would see a parade of local women with 20 litre plastic containers carefully balanced on their heads enroute to or from the local well.