History Condensed

Out-of-the-way island offers astonishingly rich insights into half a millennium of African antiquity

- Bruce Dennill

Ilha de Mocambique is a mind- and time-warp, an African Havana accessible only by sea or via a 3.5km single lane bridge from the town of Lumbo on the mainland, which is itself a two-and-a-half-hour drive from provincial capital Nampula, the nearest big city.

Historically, the island was not this remote. Originally inhabited by Swahili settlers in the 14th Century, the location came to European attention once Vasco da Gama had established the sea route from Portugal to India in 1498. The Portuguese set up shop in 1507, and over the next 100 years, this tiny lump of land, a literal speck on a map – 3km long by about 400m at its widest point (or about 1.2km2) – became the colonial capital for Portuguese East Africa, an area covering 801,590km2. It was only in 1898 that Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) was designated the capital.

Antonio Jaime – ‘James’ to his friends and tourists whose tongues can’t handle the nuances of Portuguese – is a tiny man with a vast inventory of facts about Mozambique Island (again with the easier English version). He’s a resident of Macuti Town, the settlement on the southern end of the island, named for the palm fronds used for roofing, and is known to pretty much everyone you pass on the tour and knows everything worth knowing about all the historical attractions.