São as coisas

I slept horribly with a streaming nose. My persistent cold has risen up, but is hopefully in its death throes. At 5am my bag broke so I had to improvise and pour the contents into other receptacles. At the airport I informed the woman on security why I had wires spilling out of my baggage. São as coisas (they are the things [we deal with]),she said calmly. True story mana. I can only hope for the unflappability of Mozambicans.

As I waited for the flight to Dar es Salaam, I contemplated the state of affairs.

We’ve got Liz Truss doing interviews claiming that negative coverage of her disastrous tenure as Prime Minister is a left-wing wokerati smear.

We’ve got logical gymnastics from all and sundry on the question of which nations ‘have the right to defend’ themselves. David Cameron is criticising Iran for a massive escalation by way of its retaliation, which was successfully intercepted. We don’t have to look far for another pertinent example of massive escalation, which has been acceptable for several months. The stench of western hypocrisy is not being concealed.

And we’ve got Trump about to breeze into other presidency with all the social ills that it will entail because Biden increasingly cannot do anything other than grin benevolently. He reserves the same inane expression for all circumstances; whether he’s being asked about American complicity in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, or giving his grandchild a dollar bill to run out for some candy.

My nose streamed for several hours from Maputo to Dar es Salaam, including the slow transit and document checks at Pemba in northern Mozambique. The act of finding an unused tissue brought me untold joy. And I am grateful for durable napkins that can withstand a snotty battering, compared to the tissue paper style that disintegrates on impact.

I distracted myself with the blue, white, green and brown formations of the endless Mozambican seascape. North of Pemba along the coastline of Cabo Delgado, the province besieged by a torrid and violent insurgency, nothing could detract from the beauty of the scenery.

I was desperate to get home after two months. Of course Dar es Salaam airport was the busiest I’ve seen it, with throngs in the immigration hall. The wait was long but the stamping of my passport using the renewal documents I thrust at the official was the simplest part of the day, contrary to my expectations.