While Pebane (peh-bah-nee) is a speck on the map, like most African towns, it is still full of people. Its position by the sea makes it a lucky town, with its free share in fish-capture, however there aren't many other reasons to mark Pebane from the other small towns I saw with Johannes.
We went to market on a Saturday, though there's always a market everyday when a town lacks a grocery store! The market consists partly of 3-walled stalls with thatch roofs where people daily stock their goods; partly of floor mats and chairs lining the streets; and partly of small, free-standing wooden rooms, such as you see in my photo of the man folding my fabric, for vendors with pricier stock. In such rooms (also called tuck shops) you can also buy various sundries, like long-life milk, cooking oil, beer, cigarettes, soap, and airtime for cell phones. There's not much refrigeration in Pebane, obviously due to the recent electricity installation, so there are few things you can buy cold: coke, fanta and beer. No butter, no yogurt, no fresh milk, and certainly no ice cream!
The hustle and bustle in town was lively, music playing on tin-ey sounding radios, clunky steel bikes bobbing over the bumpy roads, and a mixture of Portuguese and the local Bantu-dialect being spoken loudly. Items for sale included: peanuts, cassava root, eggs, live chickens, green beans, patterned fabric, potato chips, knock-off American brand clothes and lumps of second-hand clothes. Also, a common site, amongst many of the towns we saw, were small bicycle stalls under grass roofs, where men congregated over fixing a motley crew of bikes.
In this town, transport is limited to foot and bike. Occasionally a large truck passing through will fill its back to the brim with people as a way of mass transport from town to town. Otherwise, the people stick to their local regions and I doubt they ever travel more than 60 kms from their homes, ever. When your main priorities consist of carrying water from the closest bore hole to providing food for your family, there is very little time left over to dedicate to travel. It makes rush-hour traffic lines in Chicago, New York and Johannesburg seem like light-years away. Life is slow-paced and only the necessary projects are accomplished. This gives way to the slow hips of the women who walk with 40-litre water containers on their heads, deliberately placing each footstep in a rhythm known only to these. It gives way to the long, patient minutes devoted to eating pap (maize-meal) and cassava with fingertips, slowly soaking up the fruits of a day's labour and the juices of the day's meal.
Other than the normal hum-drum of daily life, we were witness to a rare spectacle passing through Pebane. The Moçambiquan president was coming to visit! As such, the day we arrived, we saw rows of people with pangas (machetes) and hoes in hand, hacking at the grass surrounding the sand roads & ensuring the road would provide a smooth ride (ha, ha!). Children were let out of school early to help in the effort and you can see this as well in one of my photos posted here. One day, while driving along the beach, we came across the procession of the president coming to visit a local celebration in his honour. Note, we were not invited and not wanted & we left quickly! But, for a millisecond, I heard the flavor of the local music; very African in it's rhythm, with something of Europe mixed in with the Portuguese language.
After driving from north to south in Moçambique, I must say that Pebane was special in that white people are a rarity, ie they know little about white people and that they stand for money "only," as is often the impression on this continent. Therefore, the local black population seemed to stare and gawk, rather than flock and hassle. They kept a respectful distance, maybe calling out "whitey" in the local tongue. When Johannes jovially broke out in Portuguese, however, they were all shocked to silence!
Some people remembered Johannes in town, but more so along the coconut-shell paved roads (the coconut shells provide a buffer from the difficult sand) where stacks of children ran out of their houses calling, "Ta-Ta (hello)! Johanne-see! Johanne-see!" All the children along the road to the lodge remember Johannes with affirming affection from the days when he lived there and handed out sweeties daily. It was quite endearing to hear! You can see in one of my photos the clean, sand yard of a clay-brick house -- all the houses are kept as such, nary a hair out of place, hours given to sweeping the yard free of debris. Makes a grass yard a horse of a very different colour!
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