Interno Hotel Maputo

Shower … wow, the shower! I have slept, I am sipping instant coffee to take advantage  of all that is offered for free in the hotel  (we all do that, admit it!). It is a first-class hotel, it is clean, there is internet, TV and a bathtub next to the bed.

I can see palm trees and the sea from the window.

But where the hell am I?

And this is not coffee!

When the alarm-clock rang to warn me to get ready  for dinner, I was already up, I had already had a shower and I had already got dressed. Yes, I am a bit charged-up.

I go down to the lobby and start looking around.

* * *

Africa, Mozambique, Maputo, and they are all black.

Do not take it as a racist statement, it isn’t, but the first thing that makes you fully realize where you are is the fact that the only white person is you.

The hotel staff smile at me all the time, I ask for matches, they give them to me with a smile, then I walk past a mirror and discover that the first person with a smile on his face is me.

I am back in Africa, the moon in the sky is all crooked, with its belly upside- down, it is never like this in Italy.

Baobab – particular

I go out to breathe a bit of Africa: palm trees everywhere and baobab. Yes, Africa is also baobab trees. Huge trunks and short branches. According to a  Burkinabe legend, one day the baobab messed up with a spirit  and the latter took revenge uprooting the baobab and replanting it upside down. Since then the baobab trees  have taken their  typical form, with branches that seem roots.

According to another legend, the baobab was one of the first trees created by God. But when it saw the next plant created, a palm tree stretching  out towards the sky, the baobab began to grumble because it wanted be as tall as the palm tree. God heard its complaints and made it grow; but it had just reached the height of the palm tree when it saw the spectacular blossoming of the Flamboyant, and it complained about  having no flowers. God solved  that, too and endowed the baobab  with flowers. It was still not enough: the baobab began to whine about having no fruit like the fig did. This was too much even for the patience of the Creator who, in a fit of rage, uprooted the baobab tree from the land and threw it back with its crown down and the roots up in the air.

I go out of the hotel and I am in the middle of traffic: cars, trucks, buses, tractors, carts, animals, pedestrians, women, children, vendors, everyone in the street at the same time.

I went out when it was daylight, I crossed the street and it was night. Even this is Africa: the sun sets very quickly. Is it because we are close to the Equator?