Strangely familiar

After a great weekend up in Tofo, we now drove down to Maputo for the work part of this trip.

Like Inhambane (closest town to Tofo), Maputo is an ex-portuguese colonial town of stunning beauty. It is strange to have travelled half way around the world and to come across cities that look vaguely like home.

It’s not exactly the layout or the setting but something does bring back memories of Porto, Setúbal or Lisbon. But unlike their European counterparts these two cities now have nature taking over. Here green is green, and is slowly creeping up on the entire city. This gives these places however a certain charm that is hard to explain…

Back to the reason of the trip, “Meninos the Moçambique” a Mozambican counterpart of street child Africa.

In early 2006 A4A got involved with them to design a new childcare unit and training centre for younger mothers and children. This new centre will be in the Bairro Luis Cabral, one of the most impoverished neighbourhoods of the city.

Since that date both organizations have been waiting for a “parecer favorável” (authorization) for construction on the site from the Urbanization Department.

Due to my knowledge of Portuguese and willingness to visit the country it was agreed that on my trip I would stop by and meet with both Sr. Abdul Faquir (Menino’s Director) and the Director of “Urbanização”.

So today I met Sr. Abdul Faquir, and from him I discovered not only that Menino’s have been trying to pull some strings so that the process can move faster and that it now seems to be paying off. I also learnt more about the organization and their plans to expand.

We then visited the site and some alternatives, close to the original one. Although the Bairro is in quite bad state, one of the materials used, reed, gives it a much nicer look. This reed is available all over the country and is used in many different ways , from walls to roofs. A good example of it, in the same neighbourhood, is an abandoned school. If I had know before I might have thought of trying to import some to Lesotho, as we are having a bit of difficulty in finding some.

After this we went to a builder’s merchant, the available materials are much better than what we can find in Lesotho. Here the industry is divided between what is imported from South Africa, the natural (local materials) and the materials that remained in the Portuguese tradition (the factories are still the same only the ownership changed). The array of materials is therefore “huge” and A4A should be able to find a bouquet of materials that will suit the projects needs.

The last meeting of the day, and probably the most important of the day, had to be re-scheduled for tomorrow as the responsible architect was unavailable.

I hope to meet him tomorrow and to know from him something new (it’s been a year and a half so far and no progress), to see if his 3 week long promise for a “Despacho” (decision/document) will come through.

more photos of mozambique click here