It’s 95 degrees in the shade on Ilha de Moçambique, and after walking the whole 3 kilometer length of the island, it seems like my colleague Chris and I might be the only tourists here. We’ve flown two hours north in Mozambique to escape the capital and explore Ilha for the weekend, before a few days of work in nearby Nampula. And wandering the tiny island, I’m up to my usual tricks. Chris patiently waits in the shade of a building as I stop to take the umpteenth photo of a bicycle. This one has four live chickens dangling from the handlebars.
Like many ports on the east coast of Africa, Ilha has a long and interesting history as a cultural crossroads, with entangled African, Arab, and European histories. When Vasco de Gama “discovered” it in 1498, it had already been an Arab trading port for many years, and the beautiful central mosque is still a centerpiece of the architectural and cultural life on the island. Ilha was the capitol of Portuguese Mozambique from the mid 1500s through the 19th century. The island’s Portuguese chapel from 1522 is considered the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere.
Before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Ilha was a key stop on the Portuguese trade route around the Cape of Good Hope and east to Portuguese-controlled Goa (India) and Macau (China). The island is now a sleepy place with about 2000 inhabitants and a handful of guesthouses, connected to the mainland by a 4-kilometer-long one lane bridge.
Fisherman ply the waters off the coast of the island, returning every afternoon with their catch and selling it in an informal beach market (you can see the bridge behind them).
As the sun sinks and the shadows lengthen, we stop to look at the market, and take a few snapshots. Up the road a little ways I find something that interests me much more: an old Indian Avon bicycle, with the wonderful patina of years of steady use.
This bike is typical of the older one-speed Indian bikes I have seen throughout Mozambique, with 28-inch wheels, a lugged steel frame, rod brakes, cottered cranks, a branded (“Avon”) chainring, and front and back lights with bottle-style dynamo. (In fact, Avon still makes these bikes in their factory in Punjab, in basically the same model).
As I start photographing the bike, I realize that its owner is sitting on a shady stoop across the street with his friends, watching me. He walks over and I shake his hand and introduce myself. His name is Assane Sualehe. I ask him how long he’s had the bike.
“I’ve had this bike ten years,” he tells me in Portuguese, speaking slowly so that I can catch his meaning with my limited Spanish. “It’s a good strong bike. I ride it every day across the bridge to my job. I am a petrol station attendant.”
He seems amused when I ask to take his photograph with the bicycle, and gives me a little half smile. And with my most heartfelt “obrigado senhor,” I let him go back to chatting with his friends, in the shade on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
Assane Sualehe: bike commuter, wearer of a snappy hat, Ilha de Mozambique resident.
(This is the second in a series of Bikejuju posts about bicycles in Mozambique. There are several more to come. Find all the Mozambique posts here. Or more broadly, all the Bikejuju African bike posts are here.)
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Also a snappy story–thanks!
Great photos and profile, Tom. In Bots I found, as I am sure you have, that expressing an interest someone’s bike was an great way to warm them up to a portrait. It would be great to compile enough of these portraits to make a book.
In Mali, we used to the term “bicycle chicken” to distinguish between plump, well fed chickens and the rather sinewy underfed chicken typically transported upsidedown on bicycle handlebars.
WOWZERS!!!! Do they have aaaaaanything there?!
Love, *Claire*
P.S. Those electrical wires look funny in such a remote town!