Street Scenes

Just a couple of observations made while driving around this town on any given day.

Saturday

A wedding here is an event by itself. Not anything like a generic Dutch wedding, where people dress up in their daily outfit, get married on Tuesday morning because it is cheaper and the guests are provided with one coffee, piece of cake and a single drink ("please leave your gift/envelope on the table"). No sir! Here it is done the third world way.

First of all, Saturday seems to be the only wedding day in Maputo. The chapel is quite close to the hotel so we get to enjoy it all. First everybody gets seriously dressed up and I mean everybody! No matter how poor or young you are, no matter how hot it is, you are dressed up. The place is crowded with 4 year old boys wearing 3-piece suits. The guests arrive in cars with the license plates covered. The front license plate will have the name of the bride and the back of the groom. Quite a cool touch!

After the ceremony and the mandatory pictures on the stairs of the chapel, the entire entourage sets of on a journey to take more pictures. Not just the couple with the photographer. Nope, everybody! First stop, the park. On any given Saturday afternoon there will be at least 3 large groups of people following 'their' couple. It looks something like this. The couple is being directed by at least 3 photographers providing conflicting instructions. Behind them the bride maids (and there are at least 6) stand and look at the scene. Around them the guys are just being guys. They stand with their hands in their pockets, probably talking sports and wishing they were in a bar. All other women (and some of the older men) position themselves in a circle and sing tribal songs of celebration while doing some slow ritual dance steps. A fantastic scene!

After the park, everybody gets into and onto their rides (many of the guests are sitting with their best suits in the back of a pick-up truck) and head for the coast for photo shoot numero 3. Here the scene repeats itself, but instead of grass there's sand. If you drive along the coast line on a Saturday afternoon, you will see a marriage mob every 200 meters. Of course, the entire thing ends with a big party where there's food and, more importantly, booze for all!

Sunday

On Sunday entire families pack their Tupperware storage containers filled with meat, self-made salads and corn, drag along a few coolboxes (i.e. ice cooler of 'jug') filled with ice and beer, and then heads off to the beach. There you swim, BBQ and drink beer. Similar to a Sunday in Curaçao. There is one major difference though. In Curaçao the men drink beer and operate the BBQ. Here, the men just drink...

On any weekend night (and on Sunday evening) most cars on the road are operated by male drivers that have enjoyed a bit too much moonshine (and I don't mean a night of stargazing under a full moon with your fixed or floating partner). As I mentioned in a previous post, traffic police over here is very fanatic. However, there's one thing they cannot check because of the lack of means. Yep, you guessed it! Cheers!

Any day

There are car park attendants everywhere! Well, actually it concerns mostly dudes hanging around parking areas, claiming they have guarded your car whenever you are getting back in your car to leave. Of course this is is a very valuable service which deserves an equal valuable reward. And for just a little bit more they will "wash" your car, leaving it almost as clean as it was before you parked there!

Just like on Curaçao, there are mini-buses all over the place. In most western countries, public transport in the city is mostly taxis and buses. Larger cities have trams and subways (i.e. metro, i.e. tubes), but third world countries have mini-buses. It is basically a modern version of a VolksWagen bus (yes, as in Little Miss Sunshine) with small handwritten signs behind the front window saying where they intend to go to. They are very flexible in many ways. They do not necessarily need bus stops and can therefore pick you up and drop you off anywhere along the route. If you're nice to the driver, he might even do a little detour to drop you off exactly there where you want to be.

Now in Curaçao these mini-buses (or "autobus" as these are known locally) seat 9 persons. This number is determined by law and stated explicitly on the bus. In general, all drivers stick to that in order not to be fined and not to practise some sort of unfair competition with your colleagues, the other mini-bus drivers. In Maputo, these slightly larger buses seat 15 people and that is also explicitly stated on the Chapa (as their known here), but that is exactly where the comparison ends. Every Chapa here seems to be competing for a mention in the Guinness Book of Records, specifically in the section on "How many people can I fit in...". A British student I met the other day, shared a Chapa with 26 (!!!) other people. Okay, I will not exaggerate, one was a baby...