Mozambican faces

As a focus for your lenses old faces are probably more interesting than shiny unlined new
ones. You see a certain amount of a person’s life mirrored in a face. A old fisherman’s
face in a village on a Greek island is an invitation to the imagination. It’s always a weather-
beaten face that you can imagine, its features exposed to the wind and the elements as
the now gnarled and veined hands dragged in the fishing nets dripping with brine and
underwater secrets,. So, why not more old faces on this page? Simply because this page
mirrors the faces I see around me in Mozambique and those faces are, for the most part,
young. Life expectancy here is about 47 years and about 50% of the population is under
18. There may be not so many old faces here but in the ones you find you will usually see
signs of a hard life lived. Most old faces here will have seen difficult times: two brutal
wars, poverty and a struggle for survival. These will have etched suffering into the lines
around the mouth and sadness and maybe suspicion into the lines around the eyes.

realmozambique.org
A personal look at this intriguing country on the Indian
Ocean

The AK47, with the hoe and
the yellow star, pictured here
as part of the national flag,
revives memories of the
Marxist part of its recent
history.

South Africa to the south
Tanzania to the north,
plus Zimbabwe, Malawi,
Zambia and Swaziland.

Mozambican Faces

Taking people's photos can be a tricky
business in Mozambique. To ask
permission or not to? If they say "yes"
they will usually go into some outlandish
pose: if you don't ask some of them will
react angrily to a perceived invasion of
their privacy. Same as everywhere else,
I suppose.

Wonder what she wanted to say

In the poor part of town standing by the side of the dirt road. A
tall, thin stately woman, walking as women who carry loads on
their heads will walk, comes down the road. Dressed in tattered
clothes and with a blue cloth wrapped around her head. Seeing
me she heads straight for me. She seems about sixty. Making a
small genuflection, or what the English would call a curtsy, she
presses the palm of her hand to her breast in salutation. Then
taking my hand in hers she raises the back it to her lips but
doesn’t allow them to touch my hand. She again touches her
breast with the flat of her hand, bows and goes on her way. No
word has been exchanged!

In the land of the young Dilon has
achieved the ripe old age of 83. He is
regarded as one of the founders of
"Marr abenta": urban Maputo music

Rua Bagamoyo - called after a slave trading port in Tanzania which faces the island of Zanzibar- is the red-
light district of Maputo. Coming alive about 11pm it goes on till dawn. Not a long street, it is to be found in the
Port area. What is lacks for in size it makes up for in animation. Some bars, clubs and discotheques compete
to part you from your “meticais”. With often more girls than men, the competition can be fierce. Most girls
drink, many do soft drugs, some do hard ones. Not everybody comes for sex. Some come just to party.

Mozambicans are at their very best when they are where there is music and dance and
maybe alcohol within easy reach. They are spontaneous in their enjoyment and creative
in their dancing. But beware! That “life and soul of the party” over there could very well
be the ogre you will have in front of you on Monday morning when you are in some
government office to request something. Disgruntled, arrogant, testy, irritated, petulant,
sullen. The same person, yes. The same manner, definitely not!

Outdoor music events are popular in Mozmbique.
An opportunity to let your hair down.

Isla da Mozambiçue: A muslim woman watches warily from behind
the heavy wooden entrance door to the family's compound

They drink and dance as they wait for a client's invitation. If
unsuccessful, they wait till dawn when they can get a "chapa", the
min-buses which serve as public transport, home.

Telma drinks almost every night;
often to the point of collapse.

The passion and joy for the music shows on the face of
this singer with an all-girl band, rare in Mozambique, who
play traditional music.

Taking a break from a performance, the faces of
this girl's section of a choir ooze pleasure. Choral
singing is "big" in Mozambique

A hair makeover! In reality it
often turns out to be a face
makover. I have, on more than
one occasion,
embarrassingly failed to
recognize some girl I actually
know well. She has simply
changed her hair style!

Two of Euclidia's many faces

Laughter being the best medicine!

I don’t think that anywhere else in the world have I heard the belly laugh delivered with such gusto as here. I
remember being very surprised by this and asking my students how it was possible for people who were so
poor to laugh so much. One cynic replied that the louder the laugh the unhappier the person probably was.
After some years here I begin to see something in what he said. Because, of course, poverty makes people
unhappy and depressed. It’s an ugly state of affairs to have to confront every day of your life. It has been
shown by the WHO that depression is more widespread in poor countries. That of course seems normal.
What is interesting is how people handle it. Obviously one weapon against depression is laughter. It’s your
armour of defense and defiance. I see that people often need to laugh at adversity. But what is interesting
also is to see them, at times, in their unguarded moments when a certain wistfulness, perplexity or even
sorrow breaks through that collective gaiety.

Normally, in a collective culture like the Mozambican one, you
keep your sadness hidden away-and your anger and your pain
and your sense of injustice and your etc, etc.....