2. The lion’s share of asylum seekers in South Africa during this period were Zimbabweans who left home in the midst of the country’s hyperinflation crisis. Since then, war in Syria has dramatically increased the flow of refugees worldwide, and Germany’s backlog has overtaken South Africa’s, according to the UNHCR. South Africa was tenth on the list of countries where most new asylum applications were filed in 2015. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR Global Appeal 2012–2013: South Africa (Geneva, Switzerland: UHHCR, 2012–13), 108, www.unhcr.org/4ec230fe16.pdf.
3. Ibid.
4. IRIN, “Horn of Africa Migrants Heading South ‘Pushed Backwards,’” August 2, 2011, syndicated by Thomson Reuters at, news.trust.org//item/20110802162900-05ui6.
5. Ibid.
6. UNHCR, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015 (Geneva, Switzerland: UHHCR, 2016), www.unhcr.org/576408cd7.pdf.
7. Human Rights Watch, “Welcome to Kenya”: Police Abuse of Somali Refugees (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2010), www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/kenya0610webwcover.pdf.
8. Xan Rice, “Somali Refugee Settlement in Kenya Swells as Row Grows over Empty Camp,” The Guardian, August 11, 2011, www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/11/somali-refugees-kenya-camp-empty.
9. “Kenya Court Quashes Government Order to Close Dadaab,” Al Jazeera, February 9, 2017, www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/02/kenya-court-quashes-government-order-close-dadaab-170209101027645.html.
10. “Focus on Africa: Somali National Front,” BBC News, April 4, 1991, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mn7tm.
11. “These Are the Biggest Townships in South Africa,” BusinessTech South Africa, August 14, 2016, businesstech.co.za/news/general/132269/these-are-the-biggest-townships-in-south-africa.
12. M.C. Horton, “Early Muslim Trading Settlements on the East African Coast: New Evidence from Shanga,” Antiquaries Journal 67, no. 2 (1987): 290–323. DOI: doi.org/10.1017/S0003581500025427; Felix Chami, The Tanzanian Coast in the First Millennium AD: An Archaeology of the Iron-Working, Farming Communities (Sweden: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, 1994).
13. “93 estrangeiros ilegais detidos em Nampula,” O País, January 26, 2010, opais.sapo.mz/index.php/sociedade/45-sociedade/4200-93-estrangeiros-ilegais-detidos-em-nampula.html.
14. Ibid.
15. “Tanzania nega cooperar no repatriamento de imigrantes ilegais,” O País, February 13, 2010.
16. Anadarko / Environmental Resources Management, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Report: Liquefied Natural Gas Project, Areas 1 & 4 Offshore of Rovuma Basin (Environmental Resources Management, February 2014), 9–164, www.mzlng.com/content/documents/MZLNG/EIA/Volume_I/English/Chapter_9-_LNG_Final_EIA_Sept_2014_Eng.pdf.
17. José Raymundo de Palma Velho, A tomada da bahia de Tungue no parlamento e na imprensa (La Bécarre Papelaria e Typ, 1887), 10, play.google.com/store/books/details?id=buc7AQAAMAAJ&rdid=book-buc7AQAAMAAJ&rdot=1.
18. “Field Listing: Natural Gas—Consumption,” World Factbook, CIA, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/print_2250.html.
19. “Tanzania nega cooperar.”
20. “Mozambique: North Overwhelmed by Asylum Seekers,” IRIN via AllAfrica.com, May 12, 2011. allafrica.com/stories/201105120920.html; “Mozambique: Most Refugees Abandon Refugee Camp,” Agência de Informação de Moçambique via AllAfrica.com, January 18, 2011, allafrica.com/stories/201101140245.html; “Mozambique: Somali Immigrants Flee Refugee Centre in Nampula Province,” Agência de Informação de Moçambique via AllAfrica.com, January 13, 2011, allafrica.com/stories/201101190280.html.
21. Júlio Paulino, “Cerca de 500 ilegais entram diariamente na província de Nampula,” O Pais, January 19, 2011. opais.sapo.mz/index.php/sociedade/45-sociedade/11847-cerca-de-500-ilegais-entram-diariamente-na-provincia-de-nampula.html.
22. “Mozambique: More Somali Migrants Arrested,” Agencia de Informação de Moçambique via Club of Mozambique, December 8, 2010.
23. “Polícia apreende camião com 108 somalis ilegais na Zambézia,” O país, December 8, 2010.
24. “Mozambique: Somali Immigrants Flee Refugee Centre.”
25. “11 Illegal Migrants Drowned in Northern Mozambique,” Jornal Notícias, January 8, 2011, via Club of Mozambique, January 10, 2011.
26. “Illegal Immigrants Asphyxiated in a Container,” Radio Moçambique via Club of Mozambique, April 2, 2011, www.clubofmozambique.com/solutions1/sectionnews.php?secao=mozambique&id=20908&tipo=one.
27. “51 Somali Migrants Killed in Mozambique Boat Sinking: Police,” AFP via Hiiraan Online, www.hiiraan.com/comments2-news-2011-Feb-51_somali_migrants_killed_in_mozambique_boat_sinking_police.aspx.
28. UNHCR press release, “UNHCR Condemns Shooting of Somali Asylum-Seekers in Mozambique,” May 6, 2011; “Nearly Five Somalis Shot Dead in Mozambique Border,” Club of Mozambique via Shabelle Media Network, July 28, 2011, www.clubofmozambique.com/solutions1/sectionnews.php?secao=mozambique&id=22440&tipo=one.
29. According to UNHCR, this was an extreme instance in a pattern of beatings and forced expulsions of migrants who entered Mozambique along the Rovuma. Groups of more than one hundred people reportedly had their clothes and cell phones confiscated by the Mozambican police to dissuade them from returning. See remarks by spokesperson Melissa Fleming, “UNHCR Calls on Mozambique Authorities to Stop Deporting Asylum-Seekers,” June 24, 2011, www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/search?page=search&skip=45&docid=4e0476089&query=Mozambique.
30. “Horn Migrants Beaten, Deported, Imprisoned,” IRIN, September 19, 2011, reliefweb.int/report/united-republic-tanzania/horn-migrants-beaten-deported-imprisoned.
31. Inácio Dina, Nampula police spokesman, personal interview, July 29, 2011.
32. “Mozambique: Trafficked Bangladeshis Repatriated,” AllAfrica.com, January 20, 2011, allafrica.com/stories/201101210157.html.
33. These are both nicknames for Abdul Aziz.
34. “Mozambique: Hundreds of Asians Deported to Country,” Agencia de Informação de Moçambique via AllAfrica.com, allafrica.com/stories/201102070005.html.
35. “Mozambique: Ethiopian Airlines Denies Responsibility for Drugs,” Agencia de Informação de Moçambique via AllAfrica.com, November 7, 2011, allafrica.com/stories/201111071333.html.
36. I returned to Marratane once more, nearly four months later. The camp was eerily calm. All was as Liban had said it would be: in the previous three months, not a single new arrival from Ethiopia or Somalia had been registered there. Supply tents had vanished. Churches stood vacant. No columns of smoke rose from the transit center. Oxfam Spain had installed a new set of wells and aboveground water tanks to ease the burden of the camp’s overpopulation, but Marratane was no longer overpopulated at all. A dozen Ethiopian men lounged beneath a cashew tree with broad smiles fixed on their faces by the sight of outside visitors. They were the only ones of their countrymen left in the camp. “South Africa!” they explained when I asked where the others had gone, raising their eyebrows. No one would say just how. Why hadn’t they gone too? They rubbed two fingers together with their thumbs: no money.
In 2016, I saw Liban in an apartment block within sight of the Presidential Palace, in Maputo, and we went for a drive with his girlfriend as he drank Johnnie Walker out of a plastic water bottle. On the phone, he had pleaded with me to help him get a visa to the United States in exchange for an interview. “The woman I love, my life, one Somali girl, she stay in Kansas,” he said, lingering on the s’s. Mixed migration has continued to flow through Mozambique in spurts, even as the routes out of Africa have shifted, through Libya to Europe, or through Cuba and South America to the United States. In the car, Liban took a phone call, talking loudly in Somali. “That guy is calling from Kenya. Human traffic. I get him money. I don’t like that job.” I thought you left that job, I said. “How can I leave that job!” Liban retorted. “I have no country. I like to help my people. Somalia. Is it a country? Human traffic, is girl, is children. You are selling them. But if you know where y
ou go, is it a traffic?” he asked, bristling at the suggestion. Liban returned the radio to full volume and swayed, giddy, to the sounds of Mozambique. He reached into the back seat and took a swig from a fresh one-liter carton of milk. “I’m sick,” he said after a few seconds. “I want to enjoy my country. I want to drink milk my country.” Liban stepped on the gas, careening into a roundabout and slamming on the brakes. “Don’t destroy the car!” his girlfriend protested. “My country is destroyed,” Liban said. “What’s a car?”
5. Where Have You Hidden the Cholera?—Nampula
1. The first and second epigraphs are from Geoffrey Gill, Sean Burrell, and Jody Brown, “Fear and Frustration—the Liverpool Cholera Riots of 1832,” Lancet 358, no 9277 (2001).
2. Alejandro Cravioto, Claudio F. Lanata, Daniele S. Lantagne, and G. Balakrish Nair, Final Report of the Independent Panel of Experts on the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti. United Nations, May 4, 2011. “Frustration Boils Over in Haiti as Riots Disrupt Efforts to Contain Cholera,” interview with Jacqueline Charles, PBS NewsHour, November 17, 2010.
3. Cravioto et al., “Final Report on the Cholera Outbreak”; Ivan Watson, “Haitians Unleash Anger over Cholera Epidemic at Peacekeepers,” CNN, November 17, 2010.
4. Watson, “Haitians Unleash Anger over Cholera Epidemic at Peacekeepers”; Doctors Without Borders, “Haiti: Demonstration in St. Marc Disrupts Outbreak Response,” October 27, 2010.
5. “Unrest ‘Must Not Stop Haiti Polls,’” Reuters via Al Jazeera, November 19, 2010; “Frustration Boils Over in Haiti.”
6. “Unrest ‘Must Not Stop Haiti Polls.’”
7. Jonathan Katz, “U.N. Admits Role in Cholera Epidemic in Haiti,” New York Times, August 17, 2016.
8. Joseph Guyler Delva, “Haiti Urged to Halt Cholera Anti-Voodoo Lynchings,” Reuters World News, December 23, 2010.
9. “It’s not good to go into details,” a technician with Nampula’s Department of Water and Sanitation office told me about their cholera prevention work in the field, “but when we go there as the government, they may accept or reject it. Sometimes people have different political positions, and they look at the government as a political party.”
10. International Federation of Red Cross Societies, DREF Operation Final Report, DREF operation no. MDRMZ003, GLIDE no. TC-2008-000033-MOZ, November 28, 2008; Jean-Luc Martinage, “Mozambique: More than 10,000 Houses Destroyed by Cyclone Jokwe,” International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), March 12, 2008, www.ifrc.org/es/noticias/noticias/africa/mozambique/mozambique-more-than-10000-houses-destroyed-by-cyclone-jokwe; Joseph Hanlon, “The Panic and Rage of the Poor,” Review of African Political Economy 119 (March 2009).
11. Liupo has since been designated as its own district; Namige is now the district seat of Mogincual.
12. J. Cliff, “Konzo and Continuing Cyanide Intoxication from Cassava in Mozambique,” Food and Chemical Toxicology 49 (2001): 631–35.
13. Hanlon, “Panic and Rage of the Poor.”
14. Ibid.
15. Administratively speaking, Curuhama is part of the regulado of Muanhapo (meaning area under supervision of a traditional chief, or régulo), in the city of Quinga.
16. Carlos Serra, Cólera e catarse (Maputo, Mozambique: Imprensa Universitaria, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 1998, 2002).
17. “Revolta em Nampula contra Cruz Vermelha,” Diário de Notícias, March 24, 2009.
18. Reports differ as to the identity of the second person killed. Some say it was another Red Cross volunteer; others say it was a secretario. See, e.g., “Revolta em Nampula contra Cruz Vermelha” and Hanlon, “Panic and Rage of the Poor.”
19. “Ipo” is a kind of grasshopper that Paulo says his father was particularly fond of. The nickname stuck, and since Makua generally take their father’s or grandfather’s names as their own last names, lived on into the next generation.
20. “Comissão de inquérito da AR responsabiliza Renamo,” O País, April 29, 2009.
21. “Revolta em Nampula.”
22. Wamphula Fax, February 27, 2009, macua.blogs.com/moambique_para_todos/2009/02/activista-da-cvm-morto-no-mogincual.html.
23. Hanlon, “Panic and Rage of the Poor.”
24. “Mozambique: Policeman Killed in Cholera Riot,” Agencia de Informação de Moçambique via AllAfrica.com, March 4, 2009, allafrica.com/stories/200903040806.html; “Moçambique: Três activistas da Cruz Vermelha mortos, 20 desaparecidos e 10 feridos em Nampula,” Lusa, March 19, 2009, noticias.sapo.pt/lusa/artigo/9455278.html; “Mozambique: Where Have You Hidden the Cholera?” Agencia de Informação de Moçambique via AllAfrica.com, April 9, 2009.
25. “Comissão de inquérito da AR responsabiliza Renamo.”
26. “Mozambique: Where Have You Hidden the Cholera?”
27. “Mozambique: Pupils Leave School Because of Violence,” Allafrica.com via Agencia de Informação de Moçambique, March 16, 2009.
28. “Mozambique: Mogincual Deaths—Attorney-General Gives Details,” AllAfrica.com via Agencia de Informação de Moçambique, April 22, 2009.
29. Augusta Eduardo, Book Sambo, Salva Revez, Tarciso Abibo, Relatório da Liga dos Direitos Humanos: caso Mogincual, Nampula, March 25, 2009.
30. Ibid.
31. At the closest jail, in Angoche. Ibid.
32. “Mozambique: Mogincual—Frelimo and Renamo Blame Each Other,” Agencia de Informação de Moçambique via AllAfrica.com, March 27, 2009.
33. Mouzinho de Albuquerque, “Dialogando: Mogincual,” Jornal notícias, March 18, 2009, comunidademocambicana.blogspot.com/search/label/Mogincual.
34. Eduardo et al., Relatório da liga dos direitos humanos: caso Mogincual.
35. Lenny Bernstein, “First-Year Doctors Would Be Allowed to Work 24-Hour Shifts Under New Rules,” Washington Post, November 4, 2016; Amy Witkoski Stimpfel, Douglas M. Sloane, and Linda H. Aiken, “The Longer the Shifts for Hospital Nurses, the Higher the Levels of Burnout and Patient Dissatisfaction,” Health Affairs (Millwood) 31, no. 11 (2012): 2501–9, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608421; “Corruption Undermining Health Service,” IRIN, November 28, 2012, www.irinnews.org/report/96903/mozambique-corruption-undermining-health-service.
36. World Health Organization (WHO), “Mozambique: WHO Statistical Profile,” 2015, www.who.int/gho/countries/moz.pdf; WHO, WHO Country Cooperation Strategy 2009–2013: Mozambique (Brazzaville, Congo: World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa, 2009), 7, 9.
37. WHO, “Mozambique: WHO Statistical Profile.” In 2009, more than one in ten adults in Mozambique was HIV positive. See Carolyn Audet, Kate Groh, Troy D. Moon, Sten H. Vermund, and Mohsin Sidat, “Poor-Quality Health Services and Lack of Programme Support Leads to Low Uptake of HIV Testing in Rural Mozambique,” African Journal of AIDS Research 11, no. 4 (2012): 327–35; Andrew Auld, Ray Shirashi, A. Couto, F. Mbofana, K. Colborn, C. Alfredo, T.V. Ellerbrock, C. Xavier, and K. Jobarteh, “A Decade of Antiretroviral Therapy Scale-up in Mozambique: Evaluation of Outcome Trends and New Models of Service Delivery Among More Than 300,000 Patients Enrolled During 2004–2013,” Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 73, no. 2 (2016): e11–e22, doi: 10.1097/QAI.0000000000001137.
38. UNICEF Mozambique, “Nutrition: Current Situation,” www.unicef.org.mz/en/our-work/what-we-do/nutrition.
39. WHO, “Mozambique: WHO Statistical Profile,” 2015.
40. Ibid.
41. WHO, WHO Country Cooperation Strategy. The United States had one doctor for every 400 people in 2011, according to the World Bank.
42. Ministério de Saúde, MISAU Plano estratégico do sector da saúde: PESS 2014–2019, 2014.
43. Ibid.
44. Maria Paula Meneses, “‘Quando não há problemas, estamos de boa saúde, sem azar nem nada’: para uma concepção emancipatória da saúde e das medicinas,” paper presented as part of the proceedings of the conference Moçambique e a Reinvenção Social, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Teresa Cruz e Silva, eds. Maputo, 2004.
45. Ibid.
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br /> 46. “Mais de 120 mil curandeiros dos 300 mil existentes não estão registados,” O País, September 2, 2015.
47. Meneses, “‘Quando não há problemas, estamos de boa saúde, sem azar nem nada.’”
48. “Mozambique: Zambezia Residents Apologise for Cholera Riot,” Agencia de Informação de Moçambique via AllAfrica.com, April 2, 2010.
49. The Catholic priest I stayed with in Liupo, an easygoing, chain-smoking Indonesian man named Marcelo Anggo who runs a mission just outside of town, told a similar story about trying, on occasion, to raise the subject of cholera during church services. “I tell them, cholera is not a person. It doesn’t have legs. No one brought that sickness here. It has to do with cleanliness and hygiene,” he told me. This is when he gets drowned out with recriminations and disagreement. “No, come on, Father, we know who brought the cholera,” and so forth. Anggo thinks his parishioners take it easy on him because he’s a priest and said he’d be fearful of being tied up if he were not. In 2010, in Monapo, a small city along the road to Nampula, locals told him that it was forbidden to use the word “cholera”: “‘You must speak of diarrhea instead,’ they said, ‘because cholera doesn’t exist here.’”
50. Hanlon, “Panic and Rage of the Poor.”
51. Serra, Cólera e catarse.
52. Ibid. (italics mine).
53. World Health Organization, “Cholera” fact sheet, www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs107/en.
54. Miguel Aragon, Avertino Barreto, Philippe Tabbard, Jonas Chambule, Clara Santos, and António Noya, “Epidemiologia da cólera em Moçambique no período de 1973–1992,” Revista de saúde pública 28, no. 5 (1994), dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0034-89101994000500004.
55. Ibid.
56. Richard Evans, “Epidemics and Revolutions: Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Past & Present, no. 120 (1988): 124, http://www.jstor.org/stable/650924.
57. Aragon et al., “Epidemiologia da cólera.”
58. Ibid.
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