(The Independent) – Mozambique’s Ibo island, home to crumbling forts and mansions, could soon be back on the tourist map. Chris Leadbeater explores its faded charms
Rua da Republica must have looked splendid in its heyday. Laden carts must have rolled along its easy width. Well-dressed ladies must have strolled its pavements. The sound of laughter and conversation must have ebbed from between the doors of its elegant houses.
But no more. My only obvious companion as I cross the defunct doorstep of one such mansion is a tiny grey lizard. Startled by my arrival, it skitters over the broken tiles of what was the hall, and hides under a bush that is growing in the corner.
Two centuries ago, this was the residence of a wealthy merchant. Now it is a shell, eaten by neglect and sea salt. The roof is a memory, the walls fatally wounded, holes in their fabric gaping to reveal the Indian Ocean behind. And while there are traces of former magnificence – not least the red and white patterns on what is left of the plaster – their only observers are the grasshoppers that skip blithely over the faded lines and loops.
Nor is this a lone example. Rua da Republica’s once prosperous smile is now a down-turned mouth of cracked teeth and forlorn gaps, all dust, dirt and decay – a stark reminder of what happened when the tide of history turned in the 20th century, and the furthest extremities of European imperialism were left marooned in distant countries.
This is Ibo. Nowadays it is a small outpost off the coast of northern Mozambique, one of more than 30 islands that make up the Quirimbas Archipelago. But at its height, in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was one of Portugal’s key bases in south-east Africa. And although never as important as its sister island Ilha de Mocambique – the European power’s nerve centre in the Indian Ocean 200 miles to the south – it was a hotspot of cash and influence, home to 37,000 – an enclave built on gold, ivory and the unslakable thirst of the slave trade.
My first glimpse of Ibo is the rudimentary grass airstrip on which I land, with something of a thud, after a 20-minute flight from the mainland city of Pemba. But its dilapidated beauty is instantly apparent: the whitewashed flanks of the church of Sao Joao Baptista; the smooth curve of a forgotten promenade on the west edge of the old town, where circular cavities in the walkway mourn the flowerpots they once held; and the streets, which have names such as Rua do Matadouro and Rua da Fortaleza, out of synch and out of time in this young African republic. Beyond lies the imposing bulk of the Forte de Sao Joao, where Portuguese cannons still guard against Dutch incursion and a room off the main courtyard is stuffed with torn folders of administrative records – groaning shelves of council minutes and school appointments, dumped here after the collapse of colonial rule.