Mozambique

We were digging around in the back of a little-visited cupboard the other day when we came across these two wooden bowls, each about 10" across but one slightly deeper than the other. They brought back a sudden flood of memories. We had bought the bowls on an expedition, probably in 1969, when we were staying with good friends in Umtali, the town which stood almost on the border between where we worked, in what was then Ian Smith's Rhodesia, and the Portuguese colonial possession of Mozambique.

Mozambique at the time was suffering in a bitter civil war between FRELIMO, which was fighting for an independent Mozambique, and the Portuguese colonial power, yet the strategic importance of the road and railway line linking Salisbury, the Rhodesian capital, with Beira, the major port on the Mozambique coast, was such that we felt quite happy to take a day trip from Umtali into Mozambique.

There was no purpose to our expedition, which took us to a Mozambique town not far from the border, other than to find a small hotel which had a swimming pool beside which we could enjoy a few beers or glasses of good Portuguese wine, and a pleasant meal. In this we were very successful, the Mozambique currency being weak against the Rhodesian dollar; and, while we were there, we bought the two bowls and some bottles of wine.

That wine was to rather mar our day because, when we tried to cross the border back into Rhodesia, we were charged a huge import tax, which suddenly made our pleasant day out an extremely expensive one.