We buy ripe mangos at the door of the Grande Hotel da Beira, by the sea, which, even in ruins, has lost neither its majesty nor its magnitude. With a stillness and shyness customary to rural Mozambicans, he unfolds the history of a family shelter, comprised of about people in familial gatherings โ in his case 9 elements โ who, in one room, do a bit of everything: sleep, bathe, eat, cook.
In the staircase women go up with plastic bowls on their heads, boys gather around the sewing machine, and barefooted children play side by side with rats and centipedes. It is the exploitation of the space which strikes us immediately: the pool is used to wash clothes, the floorboards were used for fire, and on every patch of land and in every pot a machamba a small vegetable garden had been planted.
All of the space is valued at this overpopulated house. But precisely because of the original expanse, everything looks paradoxically spacious. In the hallways young people gather in sluggish conversation, women braid hair and breastfeed babies lying down. The rooms are multi-purposed: privacy is divided using thin curtains, a mattress is lifted and a living room or a kitchen becomes visible.
There are those who live in the basement, in the former walk-in fridges, in the laundry and in the elevator. We go up to the rooftop; the Indian Ocean still exists to balance this heavy Beira, which seems to be stuck in time.
Inside, you go back to the city of remains, a hotel with an apartment building name. Several activities take place here, ranging from primary classes for the children promoted by the government , to the sale of shrimp, vegetables picked right there at the hotel , coal, xima flour and fried fish, all of which takes place in the corridors.
