True Friendships and Moslem Brothers

Brother CC

Following my rather embarrassing “experience” on the chapas from Quelimane to Nampula, it is lovely to meet Carlos Chall Nazir, a 25 year old local Moslem who seems to want to adopt me for no other payment than informal English conversation classes. He helps me from the bus, takes me to Grant’s (from PSJ) recommended Pensao Dona Kero (which is full) and onwards to Ruby’s, with a beautiful central location on one street adjacent (east) from the Captain’s building. (See Places to Stay). He also gives me a bag of herbal cigarettes and gives me a guided tour of the entire island. He accepts a 2M beer as payment.

Carlos-Chall Nazir is 25 years old and a college student in Portuguesa, Maths and Chemistry. His father is a painter and decorator, and is the same age as me! I really must be much older than i feel. All his fees are paid by the local authority, but he bemoans the high unemployment rates not just in Ilha but throughout the country. He has no idea what he will do on completion of his studies and fears he will have to relocate to Nampula to find himself a half-decent job. He suggests i get an English teaching in his college, and i give it more than a cursory thought – it is really beautiful here.

Although this is his home town C-C clearly appreciates it’s immense beauty as we wonder down the streets and he shows me places with a strong sense of pride. Everything fits into two categories with C-C – “really nice” or “really beautiful”.

C-C at the fort..."it's really beautiful"

C-C brings out a tracksuit top. It is some very unofficial looking England football top – he is clearly a real Anglophile.

He is also very keen to take me to “the Disco” at Nautico’s. I don’t do discos but i am curious to see more of that legendary Mozambique moves on the dance-floor. We head there on Friday night at around 11pm to find 2 people sitting in deckchairs next to a huge empty dance-floor and one person asleep in the bar.

I am invited to his home on my last night for some rather pungent fish, cold noodles and coconut rice. He insists in no uncertain terms on giving me a small silver Jesus on the crucifix which he ties on my neck like a dog-collar. It is a really nice gesture, but it will be removed as i head up out to Pemba. What would Ma say?

I am told it is in the Koran to invite strangers into your home and lives. I don’t care what you might have heard, Moslem brother’s rock.