Receipt deceit

I spent the afternoon ambling (at a snail’s pace, due to high temperatures) around the city. I stopped for an orange juice at a café where a big lizard was crawling over some wooden decking, scalding in the sun. When it paused to check for danger I was amused to see it lift as many legs as it could from the hot surface, exactly like a person would on a beach. Outside the café hordes of women, some of them sinking bottles of Corona, streamed past yabbering and hooting. I think there was an event happening close to the beach.

I nipped to a shop to buy some handwash. The system of receipt checking in almost every shop in Mozambique reached new levels of pointlessness. I understand the shoplifting risk and the need for the shop assistant manning the door to perform a quick assessment of a receipt if it displays one pack of mints and someone’s walking out with a flat screen TV. My receipt contained one item: one bottle of handwash purchased for the princely sum of 99 meticais. As I left I verified it was in my backpack and the assistant insisted I showed her. What was the point exactly? If I’d chosen to purchase a handwash and leave it behind, that’s my prerogative. Another chapter in the chronicles of pointless human behaviour.

This was followed by another chapter of ‘despair on the streets of Maputo’. A vendor of nick-nacks trailed me trying to sell necklaces and keyrings, which I simply wouldn’t use. The final sales tactic of such vendors is usually to plead hunger, claiming no sales all day. I am always conflicted as I don’t think foreigners handing out cash is the right thing to be doing in perpetuity, yet as usual it seems completely ludicrous to cling to a personal policy of not donating when someone hasn’t eaten all day and we’re talking about 50 cents. It was around 5pm and I didn’t have change so I bought some pineapples to get some coins to give him for bread. The one positive aspect of the sorry exchange was that the pineapple seller had to ask a nearby disabled guy begging at traffic lights to help split the note, which he did using a clump of bills. At least someone on the streets of Maputo had a relatively successful day. To that list I’d also add the group of women getting trashed on Corona.