Mutare

Mutare has stood in three places. Fort Umtali was established in 1890 between the Tsambe and Mutare rivers, near the Penhalonga valley to the north; the site was moved in 1891 to what is now Old Mutare, about 14 kilometres from the present centre, and moved a third time in 1896 so that the town would sit on the railway being built to the Mozambican port of Beira, the British South Africa Company compensating the townspeople for the cost of the move. The town on its present site dates from 1897, and the corridor to the coast fixed the purpose it has kept ever since as the country's gateway to the sea.

The town grew as a customs post, railhead and service centre for the farms, plantations and mines of the eastern districts, with gold worked at Penhalonga and timber cut on the slopes. Its position made it a frontier town in every sense: Portuguese territory a few kilometres away, a constant traffic in goods and people, and a mixed population of settlers, migrant workers from Mozambique and Manyika villagers drawn into wage work.

During the liberation war of the 1970s the border district saw fighting, and the town's position beside Mozambique put it close to the front; the Catholic bishop of Umtali, an outspoken critic of the Rhodesian government, was tried and expelled from the country in 1977. The town was renamed Mutare in 1982, after the river whose name comes from utare, meaning iron, and from the gold found in the Penhalonga valley. Since then it has lived through the growth and decline of its industries, the reopening of the Beira corridor after Mozambique's civil war, the diamond rush at Marange from 2006 in the district to the west, and the long economic crisis that has emptied many of its factories.

Mutare is a Manyika city. The Manyika dialect of Shona is what is spoken in the street, distinct enough in vocabulary and intonation to be recognised anywhere in the country, and the city's humour and music trade on it. Proximity to Mozambique gives an added layer: families with relatives on both sides of the border, Portuguese words in circulation, and a taste for Mozambican music and prawns brought up the corridor.

Religion is prominent. The city has churches and mission foundations of long standing and is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop, and Africa University, a United Methodist-related institution, stands outside the city and brings students from across the continent. White-robed apostolic congregations gather in the open on hillsides and open ground at weekends, and their singing carries a long way.

The mountains shape leisure as much as anything else. Sunday drives into the Bvumba, walks on Cecil Kop and Murahwa, church picnics and school trips to the highlands are part of city life, and the border is a fact of daily existence rather than a novelty — traders crossing for goods, lorries queueing for the port, and a constant awareness of what is cheaper on which side. Football is followed keenly, with the city's clubs playing at the Sakubva stadium.

About 225,000 people lived in Mutare at the 2012 census, making it one of Zimbabwe's larger cities and the capital of Manicaland province. Most live in the high-density suburbs south and west of the centre — Sakubva, Dangamvura, Chikanga and the areas around them — while the older low-density streets on the northern slopes hold the bigger houses and gardens.

The corridor to Beira is the economic backbone: road haulage, the railway, the fuel pipeline and customs work, with cross-border trade both formal and informal supporting thousands of households. Timber and paper, food processing, a border-area industrial estate, provincial government offices, schools and hospitals provide the rest of the formal jobs, and the diamond fields at Marange to the west pull workers and money through the city. Much of the population, as everywhere in the country, lives by informal trade.

The day starts early with kombis filling at the ranks and traders setting up at Sakubva. Water rationing and power cuts are routine, and prices are calculated in US dollars. The city is quieter than Harare and small enough that people meet the same faces, and many families have someone working in South Africa, Mozambique or overseas whose remittances keep the household going.

Sadza remains the centre of the plate: stiff maize-meal porridge eaten by hand with muriwo, the greens of covo, rape or pumpkin leaves cooked with tomato and onion and often finished with peanut butter, a habit especially strong in the eastern districts. Beans, matemba and kapenta dried fish, beef stew, and road-runner chicken for a proper occasion complete the everyday repertoire, and derere, the slippery okra relish, is popular here.

The highlands supply what the rest of the country cannot. Potatoes, cabbages and temperate fruit come down from the uplands, bananas, avocados and macadamia from the warm valleys, and trout from the Nyanga dams appears on hotel menus. Tea from the Honde valley and coffee grown around Chipinge are local products and a point of pride, drunk strong and very sweet. Roadside stalls sell fruit by the bucket, and maize is roasted on braziers at every rank.

Mozambique is close enough to be tasted. Prawns and fish come up the corridor from Beira, peri-peri chilli and coconut turn up in kitchens near the border, and Mozambican beers and soft drinks are sold in the city. Local drinks follow the national pattern — maheu, sorghum beer, Chibuku from cartons in the beer halls, and Mazoe orange cordial at home.