In the Coconut Forest
I love my site. I’ve been called crazy for enjoying living here and I’ve been commended for it. There are some really great things about Cambine, not the least of which is the history. It is located in the district of Morrumbene and is about a half an hour north of Maxixe, one of the three largest cities in Inhambane province, and a half an hour to 45 minutes inland on a bumpy dirt road that changes every time it rains. In portuguese, Cambine is classified as a “localidade”, too small to be called a town (“vila”) but big enough to have it’s own name. It began as an American methodist mission station, and the first Methodist mission in Mozambique exactly 125 years ago in December. Back when Mozambique was still a Portuguese colony, and the province of Inhambane was considered but a district, these American missionaries chose Cambine as the location of their mission over Mongue, another nearby localidade that has since housed a Catholic mission, because of the spring that still exists here. I spoke to David Cumbe, the grandson of one of the two stonesmiths who built the secondary school, where I now work, and the oldest buildings still standing under the tutelage of an american engineer around the year 1925. In December 1990 the second President of Mozambique, Joaquim Alberto Chissano (president from 6 November 1986-2 February 2005), a Methodist himself, visited Cambine to celebrate 100 years of Methodism in Mozambique in the place Mozambican Methodism began. However, he was only the second important mozambican political figure to set foot on Cambine soil. It was here that the founder and first president of Frelimo, the ruling political party here in Mozambique, Eduardo Mondlane(1920-1969), attended secondary school.
On top of this incredible history, the aesthetics only add to Cambine’s charm. Imagine rolling hills covered in thick, heavy sand mixed with light brown dirt. Imagine rows upon rows of towering coconut trees lining those beige hills. Picture every type of perfectly rounded mango tree scattered unevenly among the rows of coconut trees with a few cashew nut trees sprinkled in with lemon trees and the occasional avocado tree or masala tree. Picture passion fruit vines twining among the different trees, connecting everything together and adding bright spots of yellow to all of the greens and browns. Now, imagine a thick dutsy green carpet of wild grass and weeds. In the valley between two hills picture a small spring that rises lazily from the earth and meanders through the thick greenery it gives life to and sustains.
Imagine several monkeys swinging through the trees down by the nascente, the place the water springs from the ground. Below the thick canopy, the women wash their clothes to monkey calls and bird songs. Further down the river the men bathe and water their cattle and even further down you can find that for a moment only, the gentle spring turns into a raging river where the water clamors to fit through the dam, where the first electricity in Cambine was harvested. Along the river and along the hillsides, imagine snails with shells bigger than your hands and tiny black mambas that with one bite can end the life of a man. Imagine cockroaches three inches long and millions of tiny mosquitoes carrying diseases that have caused the death of more people in Africa than any other animal. Imagine grasshoppers as big as a small bird with wings the color of a campfire and thousands of fruit bats rising into the air as one, creating a cloud so big and thick it can block out the sun.
Now picture a spider web network of sandy trails connecting a smattering of small rectangle shaped concrete and “Kiniso” or reed houses on the hills lining the valley. All are decorated with sandy, peeling paint and sky blue windows and doors. Some have caved-in roofs with broken doors and absent windows, and some have been carefully tended to so though they are old, they still give the shelter they were built to provide. Some have fences made of woven banana tree leaves, called macute, and all have small huts outside made for cooking on charcoal or wood. In the center of all these old buildings is the methodist church, a bright orange, new building that, in accordance with it’s importance in the community, has been well cared for over the years. Just a few minute walk down the hill from the new church, the buzzing hospital building, the restored theological school building, the old, unstable church, and the old schoolhouse where Mondlane attended his classes and where I now teach rest. From a distance, these charming stone buildings lining the dirt lane and surrounded by flowers from trees and bushes look like something out of Beauty and the Beast but on closer inspection, the missing windows, the broken chalk boards, the doors that refuse to close all the way and the missing roof tiles become apparent.
Every morning while teaching I look out through the broken and dusty windows and see the beautiful bright and promising day. Outside the window of my Class C, in front of the hospital, normally overflowing with patients (most with malaria), there is a building in complete disrepair. The windows and doors have long since been taken or lost and the roof is now just the occasional rotting beam on the floor. The thick concrete walls, once a sandy yellow, have since faded to a blotchy light beige mixed with the dark brown of the rock beneath the newer façade. In the morning light, the beige parts almost seem golden and the brown parts seem even darker. The building is surrounded by lawn and the shade of the closest tree cannot reach it. However within, a whole new ecosystem has arisen. The weeds have taken ahold of the floor and the vines have begun to slowly twine through and around the windows and a tree somehow managed to burst up through the concrete floor, creating hills and valleys with its roots. When I was a child there was a book I loved to read about a boy who had a pet salamander. The boy dreamed he converted his room into the natural home of his pet, complete with pond, moss, trees and stars. This beautiful, decaying house is what I imagine that room to have looked like. There are trees and grass; when it rains there are pools and at night, the only roof you can find is the Milky Way.
