I unfortunately could not identify the photographers of all the archival images I used in this book, but if I learn more I will provide more complete attributions on the book’s Ohio University Press web page.
Alejandra Bronfman, Noëleen Murray, Jeanne Penvenne, Betty Banks, Ben Machava, Colin Darch, Paul Jenkins, and Anne Pitcher offered sharp commentary on some or all of the final manuscript. I have been bouncing my findings off Zachary Kagan Guthrie almost since I started finding them. Jason Cherkis, with his keen storytelling skills, worked hard to help me invigorate the prose, and I also received key editing help from Glenn Dixon, Cody Rocko, and Paul Morton. Cody Rocko put all the images into beautiful shape, revealing many hidden things in the process. The manuscript’s anonymous reviewers and the editors and production staff at Ohio University Press, led by Gillian Berchowitz, Nancy Basmajian, and Beth Pratt, have helped make the material sing. Allen Isaacman and Helena Pohlandt-McCormick supervised the thesis that became the book; I am tremendously indebted to them for the guidance they have offered me over the years. It has been my great privilege to explore Mozambique’s past with Allen, il miglior storico.
Um abraço enorme for Luciana Justiniani Hees, a unique creative talent, for being an important part of many aspects of this project and for helping me understand what I was seeing.
In Vancouver, Alejandra Bronfman, Bill French, Heidi Tworek, John Chistopoulos, Eagle Glassheim, Tina Loo, Michael Lanthier, Nicolas Kenny, Tatiana van Riemsdijk, Brad Miller, and especially Roxanne Panchasi have been vital sources of personal and intellectual support. Nikolai Brandes, Gabriella Carolini, Euclides Gonçalves, Silje Sollien, Katie McKeown, Elliot James, Sian Butcher, Vanessa Díaz, Sílvia Jorge, Vanessa Melo, Emily Witt, Alicia Lazzarini, Marcia Schenck, Todd Cleveland, and Rowan Moore Gerety were some of my fellow researchers in Portugal or southern Africa or both at the time when most of the research for this book was conducted, with all the nourishing mutuality that entails. Nikolai led me to the library and archive at MITADER, site of many treasures. I am very grateful for the help and guidance offered by the staffs of all the archives I worked in, in Mozambique and in Portugal, with special thanks to Joel das Neves Tembe, director of the Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique (AHM), António Sopa (AHM), Maria Isabel de Jesus Mahutsane (CDFF), and Sérgio Mucavele (MITADER).
I also benefited greatly from conversations with or comments from Fernando Arenas, Patricia Lorcin, Maria de Lurdes Torcato, Joaquim Salvador, Marissa Moorman, Todd Cleveland, Claudia Gastrow, Euclides Gonçalves, Décio Muianga, Teresa Cruz e Silva, António Botelho de Melo, Eric Sheppard, Michael Goldman, Rachel Schurman, Karen Brown, Gary Minkley, Chico Carneiro, Nicole Ridgway, Joe Miller, Kathie Sheldon, Patricia Hayes, Ciraj Rassool, Eléusio Filipe, Carlos Fernandes, Ernesto Capello, José Teixeira, Geoffrey Traugh, Tucker Sharon, Cláudia Castelo, Nate Holdren, James Coplin, Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, João Sousa Morais, Alan Mabin, Carol d’Essen, Miguel Santiago, José Manuel Fernandes, Clara Mendes, Isabel Raposo, Cristina Henriques, Bento Sitoe, José Luís Cabaço, Tiago Castela, Sandra Roque, Richard Roberts, Samuli Schielke and other participants in the 2013 “Still in Search of Europe?” workshop at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, Morten Nielsen, Anna Mazzolini, Flora Botelho, Carla Mirella de Oliveira Cortês, Jonathan Howard, Idalina Baptista, Lucy Earle, Luís Lage, the late António Rita-Ferreira, Manuel G. Mendes de Araújo, Yussuf Adam, Ivo Imparato, Ivan Laranjeira, M. J. Maynes, Ann Waltner, Judith Byfield, Deborah McDowell, Maurice Wallace, Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, Nicole Burrowes, Celeste Day Moore, Katherine Wiley, Laura Helton, Ellen Tani, La TaSha Levy, Kwame Edwin Otu, Tammy Owens, Ava Purkiss, Taneisha Means, Jon Forney, Erin Nourse, Zakiyyah Jackson, George Mentore, Ellen Bassett, Adria LaViolette, Louis Nelson, Sheila Crane, and Robert Fatton. Eléusio and I traveled together to Luís Cabral and to Ricatla, Rui Gonçalves gave me an architect’s perspective of Maxaquene, and Ana Magaia lent some of her charm and star power to a day of interviews in Chamanculo. Otilia Aquino and Raquel de Aquino Vedor gave me the space (their Akino café) to air ideas. Of course, I am responsible for the directions taken in the book, and I would not want to suggest that the appearance of people’s names here means that they would approve of what lies in the pages ahead. I will also point out that Jeanne Penvenne has been extremely helpful in her suggestions over the years, and beyond that, her decades of rich scholarship have given anyone aspiring to write a history of Maputo a strong foundation on which to build.
In Mozambique, South Africa, Portugal, Minnesota, and Sweden, I enjoyed the gracious hospitality and friendship of Juliana Soares Linn, Castigo Guambe, Hawa Guambe, Rosa Maniça, Chico Carneiro, Roberta Pegoraro, Ivan Laranjeira, Amália Mepatia, Juliet Lyon Edwards, Scott Edwards, Nils Mueller, Mindy Hernandez, Lucas Bonanno, Gabriel Borges, Thais Ferreira, Richard Jordan, Katie McKeown, Marcel Du Toit, Robynne Hansmann, Joe Dawson, Luisa Casal, Margarida Casal, James Coplin, Heidi Coplin, and Anita Ullerstam.
And a wink and a smile for Cody Rocko; my aunt and uncle, Trudi and Allen Small; my brother and best friend, Paul; and most of all, my mother and chief strategist, Joan Morton.
AGE OF CONCRETE
Figure I.1 Polana Caniço, 1987. (CDFF)
INTRODUCTION
You, mother!
Transforming the reeds into zinc
and the zinc into stone
in the wearying battle against time
—Calane da Silva, from “Incomplete Poem to My Mother” (1972)1
IN 2010, about two dozen architecture students at Maputo’s main university were sent into the subúrbios in search of the last of the city’s reed houses. There are many ways to describe the low-lying neighborhoods where most residents of Mozambique’s capital city live, but any frank depiction must underline the fact that, historically, life in the subúrbios has been conditioned by a lack of basic urban infrastructure. For most of the twentieth century, flooding was frequent, and the absence of sewage and drainage lines left neighborhoods vulnerable to cholera outbreaks. To dispose of trash, people had to bury it in their yards or burn it. Very few residents had ready access to running water or electricity. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, however, Mozambique’s nearly double-digit economic growth was changing the picture. The threat of flooding remained, but the water and energy grids were rapidly expanding into suburban households. Many latrines now had concrete septic tanks. Most people were building their houses out of concrete blocks.
A majority of people in the subúrbios once lived in houses built from the reeds that grow beside waterways throughout rural southern Mozambique. The fences of their yards were usually made of reeds as well. But now, even in the neighborhood called Polana Caniço—Polana was a chief’s name, caniço means “reed” in Portuguese—reed house construction, which had been declining for decades, was very rare. The architecture students went to Polana Caniço to record specimens of the elusive suburban reed house before the use of concrete pushed it to extinction. When they found one, they took its measurements and documented it with photographs and architectural renderings, and they interviewed residents about their experiences building with reeds.2
Despite the rustic appearance of the suburban reed house—some might call it a shack—its construction is actually highly standardized.3 Reeds, wood stays, and all the other building materials are purchased at local markets. The basic unit, a low-slung, two-room rectangular structure, is smaller than a one-car garage. The shade of a tree makes the outdoors more comfortable and more sociable than indoors, so daily life—preparing meals, washing clothes, conversing with friends—takes place outside, in the yard. At one end of the yard are a pit latrine and a bathing area, each screened with reeds. As with so many urban
