Written while eating lychees.

A reflection on Maputo, the city that surprised me most on this trip.

Maputo surprised me in a way I wasn’t expecting. Within a day, you could almost trick yourself into thinking you were in a coastal southern European city, with wide boulevards, incredible food, and sweeping views of the ocean. It’s the first city I’ve visited in Africa where I felt comfortable walking around at night, and I didn’t fully comprehend how much that would change my experience of a place.

Every morning and afternoon, women greeted us with fresh mangoes and bright pink lychees, while men moved through the streets carrying bags of toasted cashews. The city is absolutely littered with good food that I’ve felt like a glutton. Mozambique is often credited as the birthplace of peri-peri chicken, though the Portuguese might argue otherwise. We also tried fruit I had never seen before, like masala, which opens into a perfect sphere.

Makari spent nearly two years working on project in Mozambique covering reforestation and conservation. This led him to spend a lot of time in Maputo. I was never able to join him during that time, so it felt special to finally get a glimpse of the life he had built here.

There’s a tight-knit expat community, made up mostly of UN workers and American schoolteachers, who spend their time exploring the Mozambican coast through kite surfing, diving, and wildlife trips. A perfect setup for Makari. We spent a few evenings getting to know his friends over game nights of Code Names and long, unhurried meals.

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, though you wouldn’t guess it within a small pocket of central Maputo called Polana, where the occasional Mercedes or Porsche is parked near the president’s residence. What began as a rest stop for the Portuguese became a colony for nearly 500 years. The country gained independence in 1975 after a decade-long liberation struggle. Independence was quickly followed by a brutal civil war from 1977 to 1992, which devastated the economy and institutions and left deep structural scars.

The old colonial train station & a bench made of bullets

Today, while the country has made progress, corruption remains a persistent challenge, driven by weak governance and extractive resource politics. It was a common frustration we heard from locals on our walking tour, a reminder that even the most beautiful cities carry complicated histories just beneath the surface.