Mozambique

Mozambique is a country lulled by the slow rhythm of the tides that constantly reshape its coastline, by the meandering of the dhows that sail between the banks of sand as pale as talcum powder, by the sinuous gait of the women who carry baskets laden with shrimp and octopus on their heads, on beaches fringed with palm trees and red earth tracks, on the edge of the forests.

Mozambique is a natural paradise overlooking the Indian Ocean, with crystal-clear waters that fade into a thousand shades of blue, turquoise and cobalt blue, a tropical picture of mangrove forests and lush jungles, framed by pristine beaches and colourful seabeds, protected by coral reefs bursting with marine life. Tropical fish of all colours, whale sharks, schools of dolphins, families of mysterious dugongs and remote archipelagos of primordial islands, where the golden sand congeals into magnificent dunes, or slopes down to white beaches, surfacing here and there at low tide. The marvellous pearl of Bazaruto, the treasure chest of Ilha do Mozambique, the precious nature reserve of the Quirimbas archipelago, the wild hinterland of the national parks and a capital, Maputo, in constant turmoil, characterise a country in the making, where more than thirty different peoples maintain their ‘African’ traditions and identity, challenging a future that timidly appears on the fiery horizon, and a past that is not always rosy, of colonisation and Arab-Portuguese influences, of which the decadent colonial legacies remain, as well as the occasional veil to cover a woman’s head and frame her face painted white with musiro clay.