A Nighttime Exploration of Maputo's night life
“Maputo is so quiet, honestly it seems a bit boring.” My face falls as I hear this statement. Lais, the girl in front of me, has just arrived in Maputo. She is originally from Brazil and has been traveling for a few weeks in Africa. For me, the past two weeks have been filled with visa issues and logistics of a possible internship in the north of Mozambique, so I have been keeping still. But this statement made me quite horrified. Maputo is not boring and I quickly promise Lais to show her just how vibrant the city is if she stays the weekend with me. She agrees!
It is Friday so Maputo is bound to be boiling with activity. I immediately start going through my contacts to find out where the party is tonight. With barely one month in this country I am impressed by the amount of numbers I have managed to collect, it says something about how very social the social climate is here. We are in luck! There is a live reggae concert tonight at Rua de Arte and at eight o’clock one of my friends came to pick us up. It is a new kind of luxury to have friends with cars. It was the first thing I noticed when I landed in South Africa all those months ago. My friends are living a different level of grown nowadays, the car-kids-and-career type of grown. I am not complaining, it is luxurious!
When we arrive at the event, the place is dead. I am starting to realise that despite what is written on an event poster, all Mozambican events start at least an hour late. We park the car in a dark alley, we are in downtown Maputo and the system of parking is unclear, to say the least. But to this day, no car has been stolen so something must be working. They are still testing the sound when we enter the venue and the echoes from the reverb rises towards the open sky. It is a simple venue, it looks more like a fenced in courtyard than anything else. I love that about the infrastructure in Maputo; life is everywhere! In any kind of corner or space, people have found a way to make it functional.
We are sipping on passion fruit caipirinhas as the venue fills up. I introduce Lais to everyone and everyone is equally welcoming to her as they were to me when I had just arrived. After an hour of mingling, I hear a hoarse voice starting to sing. It is the singer Ras Skunk, accompanied by a band, that has taken the stage. All of Maputo’s Rastas are here to take over the dance floor and we dance and jump to the beats until our feet are raw. After the concert, Lais and I get invited to some sort of initiation party, the details are unclear and despite our friends best efforts to convince us otherwise, we decide to start heading home.
In the car I realize I am starving! But where do you get food in the middle of the night in Maputo?! At Mercado Pulmão of course! The real name is the barracks of Pulmão de Malhangalene. When we get there at one AM, the market is popping! There are people partying and hanging outside of the liquor barracks, there is music is pumping from the different barracks and the noise is absolute. It is a happy energy and I can’t help but marvel at this city and all of its secrets! I follow the smell of fried chicken inside of the market and within minutes we are all seated on the cement floor devouring Maputo’s best fried chicken!
Experiencing the markets of Maputo
I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning as my friend Bolodoamor (Gil) had planned to take me and Lais to mercado Xipamanine, a huge market that has everything one could possibly need. The mission was to find a traditional healer for me as I’ve been feeling heavy in my energy for the longest time. When we get out of the xiapa (the minibus used as public transport) the mud greets us, long gone are the asphalted roads. The market of Xipamanine is built on mud roads making everything appear as if it’s floating.
The traditional medicine section is in the middle of the market and we have to pass by the cosmetics section as well as second hand clothes and shoes before we get there. If I ever need to rebuild the contents of my backpack all at once, this is the market I would choose. I wouldn’t want to walk here alone though… the amount of stolen items for sale makes this a place filled with lots of weird energies and intentions. Bolodoamor is walking a little in front of us talking to the different merchants and healers. He is collecting price offers to see which one has the best local price. He gives us a wave to follow him and another man as they disappear into the labyrinth of paths. He has found somebody.
When we arrive, the healer, a man in his fifties, tells me to sit down on a bench in front of him. He doesn’t even look at Bolodoamor or Lais even though it was Bolo that said he needed help. It was like the healer could sense that I was in need. He looks at me and asks me a few questions. Bolo helps me with the Portuguese when I can’t keep up. After the consultation where he says I need a proper cleanse but gives me a price that makes Bolodoamor pull me away. “No way you are paying that, that is three months salary.” This is one of the many blessings that come with having local friends, they will help you to not get scammed. I can highly recommend taking Bolodoamor with you, if you just like me, like to go on adventures but want to feel safe at the same time. He speaks both German and Portuguese!
I love hanging out at the markets of Maputo. There are so many of them but I do think my favourite one is Mercado do Povo, a normal food market right next to the cathedral. It was the first market I went to on my own, the first place where I started feeling like I knew the local prices and could negotiate for myself. Mercado do Povo means the people’s market and it truly is just that! It opens early in the morning so that the workers of Maputo can go and eat their breakfast, something that in Mozambique mostly consists of food. The breakfast people are quickly replaced by either the lunch crowd or the drunk crowd, or perhaps most accurately, a little bit of both. I love chilling here with a cold 2M (Mozambique’s most popular beer) and some good friends.
Another, similar market is mercado Janet which lies behind my hostel. Perfect for buying your morning fruits and veggies but not as nice to chill at in my opinion. On Sunday, I took Lais to one of the tourist markets: Mercado do Peixe! It is touristy due to the prices and the type of food served. There are also a lot of souvenir vendors who walk between mercado do Peixe and Mercado do Frango trying to sell their stuff. But if you want to go souvenir shopping for real, I would recommend going to FEIMA market. It is filled to the brim with crafts and art.
3 thoughts on “From Live Music to Midnight Markets: Indulging in Maputo”
Happy to see that you have perfect knowledge over the markets 😁 It will be useful in december 💃
Thankful that everything went well 🙏
Is a market really a good place to search for a healer…😬 Talking from own experience 😬
Hahahahah just because we got poisoned at one market doesn’t mean all markets have bad healers x)
But yes, that experience has made me more cautious… as you would know;)
❤️