Two chapas

Some days ago now, I was riding to work on a chapa (minibus - pronounced shapa), as I do every day. To set the scene for those who have never had the pleasure of using third-world share-taxis, the joke is that being on a chapa (or bemo, or matatu, or whatever the beast is named in other parts of the world) is like being at a disco: it's crowded, hot and sweaty, you sway and slide about as the vehicle swerves all over the road, and there is invariably deafening music playing.

For various reasons I was going to work around 10am, so the chapa was less crowded than usual. I had an aisle seat, and the first thing that struck me as odd was that the man strap-hanging at my elbow didn't take any of the empty places. I didn't think much of it, though, until the chapa pulled up at my usual stop, and the straphanger didn't move aside for me. My "com licenças" became more and more insistent until I realised that his hand was inside my backpack (which I was holding on my lap). The hand was quickly out again, but my cellphone was in it.

It so happened that I was between the idiot and the door (a classic opportunistic theft made with no exit strategy in mind) so it was no great effort to wrest back the phone, while shouting Ladrão! Ladrão! (Thief! Thief!) in his face. Absolutely no response showed in his expression. Nor was there any response from anyone else on the chapa. I complained to the cobrador (the man who stands at the permanently open door, shouting the chapa's destination and taking the fares), but he ignored me too; one paying passenger's the same as another. Nothing for me to do except stuff my phone back in my bag and stalk through the market on my way to the office, glowering over my shoulder at every step and fuming at the pit of sleaze that is Maputo.

The very next day, as the chapa on which I was resentfully riding to work pulled away from a stop, a woman across the aisle from me called out to the driver to wait. She waved a silver bracelet which she'd just picked up from the floor and which she said had been dropped by another woman who had just alighted. The cobrador asked the women waiting on the pavement, but none of them laid claim to it. A debate amongst the other passengers ensued, and the general decision agreed on that the woman who had found the bracelet should take it home and give it to her empregada (domestic servant). Very hesitantly, with a very recognisable middle-class need to have her reluctance noted, she put it away in her handbag.

That happened between 7 and 8am, my usual time for catching the chapa to work, when many of my fellow passengers are salary-earners like me, dressed up for the office. It's relatively easy for such people to be delicate about other people's property. The 10am crowd is more likely to include men running errands for very temporary employers, or travelling between markets in search of what work is available that day.

Mobile in Manica

I promised to go through my notes on the mobile bank's debut, but that's just more pain than it's worth. My fortnight in Chimoio consisted mostly of worrying about hardware and software. I felt that my shortcomings as a project manager were on very public display. I shan't attempt to revisit that nightmare now; here you will get only a straightforward commentary on a few of the photos.

North of Inhambane, the EN1 - the main north-south highway - moves away from the well-watered coastal strip. The landscape dries out and the vegetation gets shorter and thinner, with a lot more of that dull olive-green which signifies drought-resistance. The soil turns red and, after you cross the suspension bridge over the Save river, you start to see huge granite inselbergs dotted about the plains.

The road to Sussundenga in Manica province, one of our mobile bank locations. One of the unforeseen problems we had to deal with was the large amount of dust that crept into the work area whilst on the road.

An abandoned house, built into the side of a granite cliff along the road to Sussundenga. Most likely the Portuguese owner abandoned it at independence, or perhaps during the war of destabilisation which followed. The war was extremely hard-fought in Manica province, with Renamo trying to cut off the Beira corridor, the main transport route from Zimbabwe to the coast, on which much of the local economy depended. When the war was at its hottest the Mozambican government controlled only the towns and narrow zones along the main roads.

A view of Manica town (not the capital of the province), one our mobile bank locations.

My colleagues Magalhães and Belmira, just before opening the bank on the first day of operations. I pulled out the camera to pass the time while we waited for the local authorities at Sussundenga to give us the final all-clear.

I spent most of the time in the work area with the tellers, waiting nervously for problems to arise and pouncing on any that did. The result is that I have no photos of the bank with queues in front of the windows; I only ventured out during slow moments, like this one in Sussundenga.

The consequences of producing a camera in a public place in Mozambique - all the men want to pose for a photo. Women are less forward, even when a woman has the camera. It's rare to see Mozambicans smile in a photo. I have heard it's because they fear people will think they've been up to something bad if they are caught smiling.