Inhambane

Inhambane is among the oldest continuously occupied settlements on this coast. Swahili and Arab traders worked the bay long before European ships arrived, and when Vasco da Gama put in here in 1498 he is said to have called the district the land of good people, a phrase the town still repeats. The Portuguese established a permanent trading post in 1534, making Inhambane one of their earliest footholds south of the Zambezi.

For three centuries the bay exported ivory and, increasingly, enslaved people, much of that trade under Indian control in the eighteenth century. The town was destroyed in 1834 by Soshangane of the Gaza kingdom that dominated the interior, then grew again in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the old cathedral and the old mosque were built. When the slave trade ended, coconut and later cashew plantations took its place, and Inhambane became the centre of a province of palm groves whose produce left through its port.

The colonial capital moved to Lourenço Marques in 1898 and the railways went elsewhere, leaving Inhambane a quiet provincial capital of low, tiled houses. Independence came in 1975; the civil war that followed touched the province badly, including a massacre at Homoíne in 1987, and the town filled with people from the countryside. Since the 1992 peace it has lived from administration, fishing and the tourism of the peninsula beaches, while the old grid has changed remarkably little.

Inhambane is Bitonga country, and the language is heard everywhere alongside Portuguese; the province as a whole is also home to the Chopi, whose timbila xylophone orchestras — long composed suites played by groups of tuned wooden instruments with dancers — were proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005 and belong to the Zavala district south of the town. Marrabenta, pandza and South African music fill the bars and the minibuses.

The town wears its layered history plainly. Catholic churches and a cathedral stand within the same small grid as a mosque, and the Muslim community here is older than Portuguese rule, descended from the Indian Ocean trade. Sunday churchgoing is widespread, Friday prayers are well attended, and both coexist with ancestral observances at family level.

Manners are those of a small provincial town: greetings before business, respect for elders, modest dress, and a slower pace than the beaches a few kilometres away. Capulana cloth is worn daily and given at weddings and funerals, and lobolo, the negotiation of bride wealth between families, remains part of marriage. Craftwork on sale runs to basketry, wood carving and shell work, and the coconut palm supplies not only food but thatch, rope and timber.

About 80,000 people live in Inhambane, which is the capital of its province and a market town for a wide stretch of coast and palm country. Its twin across the bay, Maxixe, sits on the EN1 highway and is the busier commercial centre; the boats between them run all day and many people work on one side and live on the other.

The economy rests on government offices, the port and fishing, the coconut and cashew trade, small business, and tourism on the peninsula. Fishing crews go out early and sell at the market; office hours run from early morning to mid-afternoon; the middle of the day is hot and slow, and the waterfront fills again in the late afternoon.

Most residents live in the districts spreading inland from the old grid, where houses are of concrete or reed and power and water supply are uneven. Youth unemployment, the cost of living and the seasonality of tourism work are the common worries, and cyclones crossing this coast periodically damage houses, boats and the palm groves the province depends on.

This is coconut and cashew country and the cooking shows it. Fish, prawns, crab and squid from the bay are grilled with garlic, lemon and piri-piri or stewed in coconut milk, and matapa — cassava leaves pounded with groundnuts and coconut — is one of the country's best-known dishes, eaten with rice or with xima, the stiff maize porridge. Cassava and coconut rice fill out the everyday table.

The market is the best guide to what the district grows: cassava, sweet potatoes, mangoes and papaya in season, piles of coconuts, and roasted, salted cashews sold by the bag from the groves that made the nut one of the country's main exports. Fried fish with rice or chips from a market stall is the cheapest hot meal in town.

Portuguese habits persist in the bakeries and cafés — crusty rolls, custard tarts, chamussas and rissóis, and frango à piri-piri at the grills. The drinks are 2M and Laurentina beer, strong coffee in small cups, sugar-cane spirit, and the palm wine tapped from coconut palms and drunk fresh, which is a speciality of this coast.