City v Bush - life in Pemba on the Indian Ocean

I thought I would try to explain the Pemba side of existence here, I will attempt to paint a picture of the urban counterbalance to Mareja.



Festa and Amigo - guard dogs, off duty!

Our house in Pemba is a bunker behind a high fence.  Dominik has two dogs Amigo a bouncing collie-cross and Festa who I call the ‘Boiled Carpet’ – it is meant as a term of endearment, but she does really look like she has been put accidently through a hot wash.  She has some Alsatian and a manner of other things in her heredity.  She was a rescue dog and carries the scars of maltreatment.  They are quite different – Amigo greets you like a child hyperactive from fizzing drinks and Festa wobbles towards you very slowly and meekly.  They are wonderful guard dogs, playing quite different roles and our companions.  They cheer me hugely.  On high days we all take a trip to the beach and they are washed in the sea (which they don’t greatly like and they particularly hate D’s love of exfoliating using sand, well in my view, but either way they enjoy the attention). 

The house has always been near the hospital but last year they changed the position of the entrance and now the large concrete facade with its sweeping approach for ambulances is bang opposite our door.  We are shielded by a thick fence of bougainvillea – but sadly it is not a defence against the fat malaria ridden mosquitoes that visit and the night wailing. However, our Guards love it, as it has bought the city to our door step.  They now have cigarette sellers, women with pastries and many family members just there – visiting hospital is a long-term commitment you have to be prepared to wait and wait and wait.

Shielding the hospital facade

I used to dislike bougainvillea – too brash and clichéd, of holiday villas in Greece...but now I LOVE it.  As well as lurid pink, it comes in orange, pale pink, deep red and refreshing white - it is so predictably happy and robust despite the surroundings.  In the ramshackle yard around the back of the house, which is mainly a graveyard for Landrovers past, we also have two frangipani trees, one pink and one white.  These are the most wonderful thing, their simple shape and sweet smell spells indulgence (reminds me of sunny Australia) – and they lift the less than indulgent surroundings considerably.

 

Pemba is hard to describe.  The eyes of a new comer see grass rooves, casing mud houses, stretching to a bright blue sea. Colourful people everywhere, vehicles clumsily meandering about until they are parted by a noisy bus - that is so loaded with all of life that its metal bottom in inches from the tarmac and you wonder a lot how it got from there to here.  There are crustacean of small shops ‘baracas’ lining every turn and these shops all sell the same bright packets of cigarettes, stale biscuits, bags of rice and imported sweets  - the only thing that differentiates them is the ‘magic’ they have bought to aid their sales.  And these small bamboo shops are encased by a layer of street sellers sitting on the ground with mangoes or peanuts or beans or baskets. 

Then you go into the ‘centre’ and see more concrete and start learning about the market with its profusion of thin plastic wares imported from China, again being sold in different combinations by every seller, of which there are many...  Of course there are the odd retail giant who imports all sorts and charges hugely to the expats and Mafioso, such as Osman the Indian seller who has a huge glass facade and sells everything within reason – party hats, Baby belling cookers, plastic thermos flasks, bicycles.

 And in the middle of Pemba and along various bits of the huge bay there are also remnants of its crumbled colonial Portuguese past, sudden features of grandeur – a domed leaded window, imposing doorway, ornate column no longer attached, a decorated concrete moulded fence, then a mysterious but beautifully simple art nouveau bus station now behind a barrier of ‘chapa de zino’ – corrugated iron, one of the greatest symbols of progress.  (If you can replace your grass and bamboo roof with a chapa de zino, you may boil but you won’t be damp in the rainy season and mainly you will be seen to be  .)

Taking a stroll into town with baby and umbrella

Once you venture off the main road you stumble across mounds of rotting rubbish, meet street dogs and enormous pot holes.  In between this there are aid agencies such as the Rainbow Church that runs a huge school, the Microbank run by Aga Khan Foundation, Humana for second-hand clothes –  to mention but a few of many.  (At a recent visit to Humana, it was surreal to discover Boden striped shirts, a vintage pair of Beeba shoes and an elegant pashmina scarf, items obviously discarded in Kensington!  I bought the scarf for 100mt, $3, more useful for the frozen north.) 

Then on the outskirts and at the port, there is another world, hidden unless you can read the signs.  Large unmarked temporary buildings obscured by rickety fences with adjoining yards. Cruise liners linger waiting for ‘resources’ to freight to Asia – timber, sea cucumbers, cotton seed, cowry shells...ivory.  It all happens behind high metal gates, so you can only wonder.

My favourite Pemba photo -
all sorts to notice, inc. a wonderful hat

For me Pemba is confined and hectic, either in a hot room or a hot car or a restaurant drenched in mosquito spray and everywhere there is a plastic pace and endless busy humanity...however it does also hold sudden surprise images of humanity and the wonderful glow of human spirit. 

And there are a few other highlights... the pastry shop where I can get Pastel de Nata, an amazing unexpected sugary treat, Starfish a new venture run by a South-African couple who have found a spot slightly outside town with an uninterrupted view of glittering sea where you get proper coffee and can buy mince for Mareja. Then (when I have stopped thinking about food) the hidden layer of sellers behind the market – here the shops are full of materials – and as I have never been allowed to spend hours and hours sifting through the strange, graphic, colourful designs, it has formed a thrilling inner layer in my psyche, like the mysterious smear of cream in a jam roll, (food, even as a metaphor, is hard to escape).  One day I hope to slip away, alone, for excessive Mozambiquian material shopping fun.

 Dominik’s favourite place is Mare Sol which is on the beach front and he has been frequenting it for 15 years  now and gets a very warm welcome.  Unlike much else it has not changed - the service is slow, very slow but they do simple seafood and boiled potatoes with cold beer and while you wait you can watch all sorts of life on the beach.

 The beach front harbours the only real signs of tourism – and in my three years of visiting I have already seen great changes.  The one large hotel built by an Arab still looks enormous and polished and starkly designed for a floundering world tourist.  But now there are more hostels and lately a large Indian restaurant on the beach road to Russell’s Place – the backpackers hang out that attracts all the expats as it has TV and wireless connection, clever Russell (Australian).

So that is it a snap shot of Pemba but I must just add, it is of course surrounded by the Indian Ocean, and sits on apparently the third largest bay in the world.  And the sea is a whole other story...dotted with Dows, occasional home to breading humpback whales, with a steep coral shelf not far from the shore and once a refuge for the adorable and rare seacow, Dugongs, now hunted out...and it is all fished to pieces with mosquito nets. 

And the big news... recently they have found large gas deposits within the marine protection area.  Indeed a whole other story.

There is good and bad everywhere here, in blinding, sun-drenched contrast.