Beira

Beira is a young city on an old coast. The Swahili and then Portuguese gold port of Sofala lay a short way down the shore, and by the late nineteenth century it was silting up and failing. In 1890 the Portuguese began building a new port on the sandy spit at the mouth of the Púngoè; from 1891 the settlement was the headquarters of the Mozambique Company, the chartered concern that governed Manica and Sofala on Portugal's behalf. The place was first called Chiveve, after a local river, and then renamed in honour of the Prince of Beira. Its purpose was the railway inland: the line to the gold and farming country of Rhodesia reached the border in the 1890s and made the town the ocean end of what is still called the Beira corridor.

Trade built the city. Cargo for Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia moved through its wharves, and the company laid out avenues, a cathedral, offices and villas for a population of Portuguese settlers, Goan and Indian traders and Mozambican workers drawn from across the centre. The chartered company's rule ended in 1942 and the state took over, and by the 1960s Beira was a seaside resort as well as a port, complete with a grand hotel that never paid its way.

Independence in 1975 and the departure of most settlers, then the civil war of 1977 to 1992, cut the city off from its hinterland and emptied its economy; the corridor was defended by Zimbabwean troops to keep it open. Peace and the rehabilitation of the port and railway revived trade from the 1990s. On 15 March 2019 Cyclone Idai came ashore here, destroying or damaging much of the city's housing and its power and water systems and flooding the Búzi and Púngoè valleys behind it. Rebuilding, and defending a low-lying city from the sea, have shaped Beira ever since.

Beira is the cultural capital of central Mozambique because it is where the centre meets: Sena speakers from the Zambezi, Ndau from southern Sofala and Manica, Manyika from the highlands, and Portuguese as the shared language of work and school. Older families trace roots to Goa, Portugal, Greece and the Indian trading communities of the port, and the mosque, the cathedral and a growing number of Pentecostal and Zionist churches all draw crowds at the weekend.

Music and dance here lean towards the region rather than the capital. Ndau and Shona rhythms, and popular music from Zimbabwe and Malawi carried in along the corridor, are heard as much as Maputo's marrabenta, and local bands mix them with pandza and South African house. Spirit mediums and traditional healers are consulted alongside clinics, particularly by families with roots in Manica, and funerals and initiations remain large family obligations.

Politically the city has long had a mind of its own: for many years it was run by the opposition and it has a reputation for outspokenness that Beirenses enjoy. Football is followed closely, with local clubs and the national league drawing crowds, and the beach at Macuti serves as the city's public space on Sunday afternoons, when families walk, swim and eat along the seafront. Greetings are unhurried and formal — a handshake, an enquiry after the family — and impatience is read as rudeness.

About 530,000 people lived in Beira in 2019, making it the fourth largest city in the country after Maputo, Matola and Nampula. Most live in the inland bairros — Manga, Munhava, Inhamízua and others — rather than in the colonial centre, in houses of block and sheet metal along sand roads that flood in the rains.

Work comes from the port and the corridor above all: stevedoring, haulage, customs, warehousing and the coal and chrome traffic that moves by rail from Zimbabwe and Tete. Fishing and prawn processing employ many along the shore, and the markets, workshops and small trade of the bairros absorb the rest. Salaried jobs are scarce, and a great deal of the city works informally.

The day starts before dawn, with chapas filling on the main avenues and the fish landing at Praia Nova; by mid-afternoon the heat has slowed everything, and the seafront fills in the evening. The issues people talk about are drainage and flooding — much of Beira lies at or below the high-tide line, and the Chiveve channel and the sea wall are permanent subjects — along with the slow rebuilding after Idai, water and power cuts, malaria and the cost of living.

Beira eats from the sea and from the highlands behind it. Prawns are the local pride, grilled with garlic and piri-piri or stewed with coconut, and crab, squid and grilled line fish appear on almost every menu. The regional dish is frango à zambeziana, chicken cooked with coconut milk, garlic and chilli, and mucapata, rice cooked with coconut milk and mung beans, is a common accompaniment.

Inland cooking sets the everyday table: xima, a stiff maize porridge, with a relish of beans, dried fish or leaves in peanut sauce, and matapa, cassava leaves stewed with ground peanuts and coconut. The Manica highlands send potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, citrus and bananas down the corridor to the city's markets, and coconut, cashews and mangoes are sold at every junction.

Portuguese habits survive strongly in the Baixa: crusty bread rolls in the morning, prego and bifana sandwiches at lunch, rissóis and custard tarts with strong coffee. Indian influence, from the old trading families, shows in chamuças and curries. The everyday drinks are 2M and Laurentina lagers, sugarcane and fruit juices, and in the bairros home-brewed maize and sorghum beers.