Praça da Independência

I snuck in a meeting at the airport as the partner NGO colleagues I'm working with were due to fly to the UK just afterwards. The car park ticketing system was in chaos. Ten free minutes are given inside the airport grounds but many drivers chance their luck, overstay and are turned away at the barrier. This creates vehicle reversing carnage, with the later vehicles then passing the ten minute mark due to the delay. Cue a repeat of the problem.

In the evening I was taken to a fantastic venue called Nucleo de Arte. Attached to an art exhibition, it's a weekly Sunday open air bar, specialising in traditional Mozambican marrabenta music, camarões and hot dogs. Great laid back and informal atmosphere and I shall seek it out on future trips.

I met Romy, a fun South African woman who works for the socially conscious arm of Nando's. The company invests in some projects in Mozambique and she personally has led some impressive efforts to fundraise for and clean up waterways in Johannesburg, where Nando's is headquartered. Romy is having a dalliance with the captain of the Mozambican futsal (think indoor football) squad, which all sounds excellent fun.

I've got a few Mozambican Whatsapp contacts now, who were going into overdrive late at night with round robin messages. They panicked that an earthquake off the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte was due to strike the tectonic plates of mainland Africa a few hours later and 'cosmic rays' were due to affect the countries of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and various others in the south-east of the continent. And Ghana, a few thousand miles away across some other vast countries that were somehow to escape them. I deduce that cosmic rays are very particular, or that whoever issued the warning was not an expert in seismology, astronomy, or geography. Needless to say, the early hours of the morning arrived and I did not experience any tremors, tsunamis or asteroids.

The picture is of Maputo City Hall, an austere-looking building on the Praça da Independência.