A vista relaxante

I think one of the best things about travel is appreciating how people's lives pan out in similar ways around the world, just with very different surroundings. I spent a few hours wandering downtown Maputo, in an area known as Baixa (pronounced buy-sher). I heard some traditional singing before I saw a just married couple spring from a very unremarkable building followed by a huge entourage that spilled onto the street; the singing led by the bridesmaids. An old woman carrying a box on her head and not part of the wedding party started humming and jigging, whilst other traders with their fruit laid out around them continued to hawk it as if a hundred people in their finest attire hadn't spilled onto every inch of the pavement around them. There was much glee on everyone's face as there is elsewhere in the world when a couple springs from whichever building, beach or treehouse they've chosen to get hitched.

I tried to imagine a wedding party in the UK emerging to a chaotic street scene. The chief bridesmaid would be having a panic attack that the bride would have to overhear someone selling pineapples or that the jigging old woman would obstruct the confetti throwing. Apart from the degrees of order, emotions and life journeys have parallels everywhere: a couple beginning married life and older people remembering happy memories of their own wedding day. And others who refuse to enter into the spirit and continue to hawk pineapples or sneak off to the car park to check the latest footie score.

I mozied around the old train station, which is much admired for its appearance, and functions in a limited way. It has been restored well inside, so I poked my head in. Elsewhere the central market has had a makeover in the last ten years and is much less chaotic. The streets around Baixa contain many colonial era gems, in various states of repair. Skateboarders practised on the cathedral steps as another wedding party was photographed higher up at the entrance. Yet another wedding crowd emerged from the botanical gardens and scooped up bread rolls from hawkers. Perhaps they too feared for that hunger period between the service and reception meal, when it is unbecoming to clamour for the limited canapés, yet the bubbly goes straight to your head. People drinking the Mozambican lager 2M clustered around women selling fruit and drinks on various street corners, having a gay old time.

I feel like fruit hawking has been a theme of these Mozambican blips. Although some of the apples are being shipped in wrapped in plastic, the ubiquity of fruit everywhere I look speaks to the country's bounty.

The strolling ended after a long walk up one of the quieter and more upper class roads, Avenida Patrice Lumumba (first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo), towards an outdoor bar called Dhow. It has these lovely views of the marina below and the river that meets the Indian Ocean.

In the evening I was persuaded to join a small group for drinks and we ended up at a beach venue called South Beach. Not realising it was the preserve of the Mozambique elite, I trudged in wearing flip flops and was promptly almost denied entry until the others fudged my way in. 'It's a bar on the sand', I almost bawled in the face of the hostess.

Two Brits, Greg and Eddie, heard my accent and started chatting. 'What are you doing here. Are you in the oil and gas industry?'

'No, I'm a conservationist.'

We then had a very interesting conversation about safeguarding the environment whilst tapping into resources as they'd spent time all over: Angola, Senegal, Mauritania. Our organisation actually does work closely to try and influence oil and gas developments, as it doesn't do anyone much good to pretend resource extraction happens in an ideal way. These two were a good find as the people I was with were focusing on taking selfies and generally 'being seen' to be there. A nearby table next to a huge Moët sign was reserved so that when the party arrived, they could promptly start instagramming themselves in front of it.

With my flip flops, nose that today has started dripping very heavily, and the associated tissue clutching, I like to think I rallied against the showiness.