Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Grande Hotel Beira

There are many things that take one by surprise in life. Upon arrival in Beira, now over nearly 2 weeks back I had asked , "What is there to see in Beira?" To my surprise the major historic point of interest was not a museum or the beach, rather a decadent, monstrous hotel built in the 1950´s post WWII to attract the wealthy & well to do from Former Rhodesia, as well as around the world.
For nearly 3 decades & through the 2nd Mozambiquen Civil war, the hotel has been a refugee camp for the extremly poor & many whom flock to the city. Upon arriving at this massive beach-side Monstrous cement housing complex I was completely dumb-founded by the visual. There were boys playing soccer inside the massive former courtyard, next to the art~deco structured building, perhaps once even the hotel garden. I realized immediately I was seeing something all together unique from my other experiences traveling in over 28 different countries. As the sun began to drift I wandered around the outside the exterior of the building premises, where there still exists an olympic sized pool, built parallel the base of the hotel. On one edge of the pull, there was trash filled corners & rats scurrying around. On the deeper end of the pool there was a bit of fetid water. A mother brought her child poolside & with a roped plastic bucket lowered it into the fetid water to extract & then bath her son. Immune system= extraterrestial!
I would suppose many people reading this would already be critizing, "what are you doing vouyering into a community as such?", however it was unprovoked & rather unplanned, as well as totally unexpectedly surreal on so many levels. I couldn´t determine what I wittnessing was purely awful & tragic, or rather a monumental yet slim glimmer of hope, viewing human kind that is innocent when not having any conditions but to take to such a squalid yet impactful living setting due to it´s monstrous size.
Walking to the back of the art~deco hollowed out hotel, there was a movie room/ hut constructed of hay & wood that was blasting an unrecognizable yet horrid american movie from the 80´s as well as another unrecognizable trash hip hop song from a later period. There were countless girls jumping around dancing with sticks, joyously immune to their health standard- living situation. For many a moment I felt I´d been transported to a Post-Apocalyptic world, the nergy was soemthing I had never experienced. There seemed to exist no condition for hatred, violence, anger, rather a simple & shameless content life & self existence.
I would have expected individuals to be rather aggressive towards me intruding upon their living grounds, territorial rather. However the exterior conditions suggested, "What is there to ask 4?" of what material value would be placed where in the interior of the hotel if not out of reach- sight of the other 700-1000 inhabitants of the Grande Hotel?
Having a local take me inside the following day was even more shocking & somehow bizarrely profound. Within many of the corridors & the darkness, I was impacted to see the same style of African women in colorful garbs "Capulanas", seated on buckets behind their produce- soaps,little piles of carbon (which is used to cook everything in Mozambique, being that it´s more affordable than gas!), alluminum packed snacks for sale! As if one were going for a casual stroll in the town praca center or random market. There these women were, waiting, chatting, laughing, the only difference being that they were squatting inside the darkness of their housing facility, extreme darkness on a normal sunny afternoon. Electricity, plumbing= non-existant to most of these people before they ever moved into the Hotel at seperate periods & for various lengths of time.
Over the course of 1975-1981, the entire hotel was stripped of all its prior grandeur, marble, gold, (glass is a luxury in many parts of Africa). The only occasional decoration aside from hung-to-dry Clothes & wraps is random Graffiti & FRELIMO (The still governing political Party) Propaganda. Rotting Stickers of FRELIMO, the Drum & rocketing Corn diagonalling across the drum. Corn the mass produced crop to evict hunger & which supplies about 80 percent of the population from hunger in non coastal areas.
!Frelimo e que Fez!
!Frelimo e que Faz!
Perhaps the most striking aspect aside from the precarious housing refugee reality, is that the building(disintegrating due to proximity w- sea salt) has been stripped of everything. It appears in inital stages of construction & the Art-deco archictectural building. Imagining the ball room as it were, but rather staring into the ceiling to see streaks of sun shining into the darkness of what once was while children run around full of energy unconscoius of a seperate world otside of their neighborhood. Just a 10 min stroll up the coastline north is a nicer neighborhood known as Miramar, where there are a few Beachside Bars owned by Portuguese selling Beer to locals & a few random tourists.
Atop the highest point of the Grande Hotel roof top terrace, the building offers the most beautiful views one has to offer in the entire city of Beira & along the coastline stretching North to South. Truly another world apart.

1 comment:

  1. Did you have your camera with you? Fantastic description, but I can't wait to see the photos.

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