Maputo Has Winter Too: A Dialogue Between Two Cities

Maputo is cold. We are in winter. Is there another season besides summer in Mozambique? Well, there is the answer: we have lows of 10 degrees and highs of 24. It is cold. It is winter. Those who wear jackets do not suffer from the changes. You saw them in the 35-degree sun and you will see them now at 24. The rest of us alternate. In the morning and evening, we wear sweaters. During the day, we wear t-shirts. And the usual jeans. It is known that Europeans like Maputo at this time of year, almost going alone to the beaches to dive into the Indian Ocean. We, fleeing the water, leaving the streets deserted at nightfall, huddled under double blankets, and they in shorts and flip-flops around the city. Mockingly, they tell us that in Mozambique there is no winter, but there is. These days I even go out fully cautious, as if it were snowing outside. When I first went to Lisbon, it was about 16 degrees Celsius, I was wearing shorts and I was hit by a cold I will never forget. That's when I bought a real coat, never imagining I would later experience zero degrees in Berlin. The real problem is that, under normal conditions, we do not have sweaters for cold weather. Our houses are prepared for summer. Almost no house in Maputo has a heater or even a hot water shower. We have huge windows, zinc roofs that sweat in the night and morning fog, and burnt cement floors. Getting sick to the point of being hospitalized at this time of year is the worst that can happen to you. The cold seems to settle in hospitals. Summer is better. Against malaria we are already trained: every bed has mosquito nets. You enter the rooms of the houses in this city and there is no roof without a net hanging, no bed without posts in the corners to support it. It creates the barrier between Anopheles and humans. See? We have winter, yes, in Maputo. Nights are longer. At 5 pm it starts to get dark. Daylight only begins to peek after 6 am. But it is strange that even so we do not sleep an extra hour than usual. We get home at 8 pm and get up at 4 am, still. We get on the first minibus that stops at the stop and feel the cold wind hitting our faces and electrocuting our ears. It does not hurt, because we travel arm in arm or with our bodies glued together. But we are not used to it. I find it hard to believe that anyone gets used to the whip. Meanwhile, I read your letter and in Lisbon there are street parties and sardines. There are the weddings of Saint Anthony and the festival clothes that cause talk. Forget sushi and eat a sardine. And take life less seriously, in the name of some saint. Haven't you learned anything about life in Maputo? Here we say "dying is from here to there." So it is the now that matters, put all your money on the grill and eat some chestnuts. That is if writing brings money, because I know you only write. I picked up the habit of "only" that they stick to our faces when we go to collect the fee. Apart from that, if Maputo had the fashion of saints, I would bet on Saint Jude Thaddeus, the saint of impossible causes and the desperate. In Lisbon everything is taken with a seriousness that always leaves us tense. For people to meet, they set times. For a lunch, a dinner, even a tea, everything is arranged: the time, the place and the bills, made and divided. To dance and sing in the streets there would have to be a specific period; it is not surprising. In Maputo we meet without arranging, we eat and drink and we see at the time of the bill. Even if there are five, it can be just one paying. When someone dies we chip in. Grain by grain fills the.