In A Familiar Place

by Lilato Madiri (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Mozambique

I don't quite recall when exactly I made it outside, or why. I took a deep breath and exhaled, surprised to find it quivering on its release. Turning to look back towards the walls of cement that held a tribe full of Mozambican women and small children, clapping, singing and cheering. But I was out stood in the sun, but frozen like a statue in the sand overcome with feeling like an imposter. I had travelled from London, England to Machava, Mozambique to attend the nuptials of one of my closest friends. She was the daughter of Brazilian missionaries and was raised near Mozambique’s capital city. Their family home located within the Arco-Iris Centre is home to around 100 children and includes a church, primary and elementary schools, and so much more to ensure that the base is the best home for children who live there. So naturally, the typical wedding preparations were neatly but flexibly scheduled into their everyday life because this was after all Africa. Its vibrancy demands its own schedule. In Machava, I was exactly 708.3 miles from my childhood home town of Marondera, Zimbabwe, and the familiarity I thought would be natural felt just as distant. On a few excursions to the capital, I would proudly watch my friend conversate in the supermarket in Changana one of the 43 Bantu languages spoken in the country, whilst I stood as a passerby. I was barely getting by in the colonial language of Portuguese and would stand as if struck when I was mistaken for a local, and still unable to respond. The streets of Maputo were busy with traffic, and I quietly but excitedly exclaimed to myself "a Kombi", a term for a minivan in my native Shona language which are commonly used as Taxis, I took my phone out and began recording a video, the nostalgia from my childhood was almost euphoric, as I began to hum the melody to a song my siblings and I would sing sat in the back of one of those Kombi’s on our trips in Harare. I also captured men trying to hustle us into purchasing brand knock offs, and women trying to huddle us into their shops waving Capulana fabrics at us. The bustle, but the hustle and joy of the people is what I wanted to capture, and I wanted to send it back to my family to see because they would understand the emotion that I was feeling. Lost in the joy of filming, I had become unaware that a group of about 5-7 men were now following me and my group. "Hey! Are you going to send that video to show how bad Africa is?? Come back here" My mouth agape in shock, like they couldn't possibly be talking to me right? "But I'm one of..." Before I could even finish the sentence, my friends grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me into the safety of one of the Capulana shops. I had to take a second. I was so used to wearing an invisible "Other" sign on my forehead back home in England, never did I expect it to be visible in a continent I had been grouped into being from when I explained where my name was from. ”Ah, you're African” most people will respond with that generalisation, or the Black/African box I have to tick on a self-identifying form. But here in the streets of Maputo, I was Not Mozambican, and nor did the generalisation of being African provide me with any security or welcome. My breathing now back to normal, remembering I was in the safety of the rural outskirts, far away from the city. As I looked back at the building. A woman walked over and handed her child to me. The way only a female matriarch can. Making sure the child was secure in my arms, she began to walk away to freely join the other women. I suddenly blurted out, as if confessing a secret I wasn't supposed to tell “Eu também sou uma mulher Africana”-I am an African woman too. Without turning, she called back, “Eu sei filha, vem agora” - I know daughter, now come.