Boas festas

Happy holidays.

I woke up mega early. It was reminiscent of those Christmas mornings where we’d wake up when it was pitch black and will our parents to stir so we could get on with opening presents

I went for an early morning walk which took me to the Jardim da Memória, the Garden of Remembrance. This commemorates the thousands of slaves who were captured and passed through Ilha de Moçambique, mostly in the direction of the Mascarene Islands, where they were probably used on sugar plantations in Mauritius and Réunion. There is a stark gateway in the garden which evokes what it must have been like to be herded onto the platform and boarded onto ships towards an unknown and petrifying future.

I lolled and rested all day, alternating between the room and terrace, reading in the sun and relaxing on the bed. It was blisteringly hot. Cold showers were needed at various points. A fellow guest had the same idea in his shower and belted out the song Hallelujah whilst in there, which reverberated through the building.

My Christmas dinner was a hamburger and chips in a little lanchonete (cafeteria). That did me fine although I was envious of my mother’s talk of sprouts back home. In the evening the guesthouse had organised some karaoke, which did not attract people with talent. My strategy was to use it for long forgotten song tips and then listen to the proper version with my headphones, to protect my eardrums from Christmas Day damage.