Our Town, April 27, 1953
Into Siesta-Land
Lourenco Marques, Mozambique, Portuguese East Africa– The DC-3 on the tarmac of Johannesburg's Palmietfontein airport bears the red and green flag of Portugal on its tail fin and is one of the small fleet of– deep breath– the Divisao de Exploracao dos Transportes Aereos.
When you step inside, you're already in a different world. There is the familiar unpleasant smell of the heavy disinfectant sprayed through every plane of the tropics. A placard at the front of the cabin gives the name of Piloto and co-Piloto. The escane hatch beside you is labelled Suida de Emergenca. The stewardess in gabardine is heavy-hipped and splendidly narrow waisted, olive-skinned and almond-eyed and precarious in black patent-leather pumps with a heel five inches in height.
Later you will find that the tiny tootsies of every Portuguese gal who cares for an audience –whatever her beam –are shod as entrancingly. The old, reliable Dakota climbs through cloud and levels off at 5000 feet, leaving South Africa behind. An hour and 50 minutes later you're in the far-flung corner of a dictatorship, a hot and apparently happy little place where men dare have no opinions of their own, the bars stay open until 4 a.m. and every vista reminds you of a grade "B" movie starring, perhaps, Hedy Lamarr...
If the name Lourenco Marques sounds to you only as something vaguely remembered from a book about elephant hunters, it may surprise you to find it a busy little port with Coca-Cola signs and Pepsodent toothpaste in the drug stores. It is the capital city of Mozambique, the Portuguese colony on the right hip of Africa.
Mozambique astonishes you, itself, by its size, for it has a coast line of more than 1500 miles. To the left of that line lies a sweltering green country containing cashew nuts and crocodiles, cotton and elephants and a commendable number of olive-skinned, almond-eyed Portuguese girls in high-heeled pumps. To the right is the blue Indian Ocean, which contains man-eating sharks, saw-fish and the tenderest prawns you ever deep-fried. (You will swim on a white sandy beach behind a fortress of barricades to keep out the sharks, all too aware of the advice that the barricades don't always work.)
There'll be a number of vivid first impressions after you've stepped from the DC-3, but the one that will remain longest is the temperature. This is pith helmet and siesta country. Only mad dogs and Englishmen are abroad between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. when everyone closes up shop and heads for the nearest available shade. If you want anything between those hours like a toothbrush or an obstetrician you will just have to wait. And the best place to wait is in one of the innumerable bars, which remain open pretty well all the time and where the punkhas whirl in the ceiling to stir up a breath of air. It may or may not cool off at night time and it is hard to decide whether you want it to, because the only way it will cool off right now is with a breed of electrical storm that puts strong men under beds.
After the bustle and tension of Johannesburg which Vernon Bartlett describes in his new book as "that vulgar, exciting city" Lourenco Marques has a quiet and "continental" charm.
In the main square, the pavement is mosaic, black and white stones to make designs that give at least an illusion of coolness. Flamboyant and umbrella- shaped Jacandia trees cast a thin but welcome shade on the boulevards and businessmen, talking with their sallow hands and caressing their little moustaches with their index fingers, sit at the tables of outdoor cafes.
You may drop in for a drink at the Marialoa bar, home of the bull-fighters, and admire the posters and pictures on the walls of the famous Manolete, who died on a horn in pain and embarrassment at a very early age.
On the edge of town is the circular ramshackle bull-ring where imported stars from the home land of Portugal fight the bull, but never administer the mise a mort. (No bulls have been killed in a Portuguese ring since 1765.)
Police and government officials are everywhere strutting about importantly in funny hats and funny uniforms, the native police in red fez and barefoot, and you will see thousands of native Africans laughing and lighthearted.
But that's a story for another day.
