Relic

We always refer to buildings like this as ‘faded colonial grandeur’. In fact it’s really just grime and semi-dereliction with little evident grandeur. This market building dates from 1940 when the Portuguese were running roughshod over all corners of Mozambique. Now it’s pretty deserted except for a couple of vendors flogging phone credit and boxer shorts under a lean-to. It’s true that a market of this size couldn’t now serve Pemba’s ballooning population and businesses but we could probably make the same complaint as we would in the UK about the heart of towns being ripped out when convenience and vehicle access are favoured on the expanding edges of towns. Here this means developing swamp and mangrove areas and the loss of important habitats, and wildlife here doesn’t have the same protections as great crested newts do in the UK.

Wim drove me around Pemba so I could understand the layout better for future visits. It’s certainly a hodgepodge of old colonial customs houses (important port here), sparkly new branches of Shoprite, beachfront hotels in various states of disrepair and hawkers selling shell trinkets. With its old hilly centre and ocean air, it brought to mind a Mediterranean town, but with more traffic police hoping that by testing motorists’ indicator lights, they’d discover non-functioning ones worthy of a fine.