Books

Costa do Sol, the book about the decades old restaurant is finally available in Mozambique after being reported in this blog. At a whopping 60 dollars a piece (in Maputo), it is not likely that too many folks will splurge on it. This writer, riddled with the fear of missing out, over a title that may easily go out of print and be forever lost to the dark confines of Mozambican history, did just that.

The book with a selection of photos from the Petrakakis’ personal archives and others widely seen on the internet folded together into somewhat of a light-hearted reflection on what became to be more than just a restaurant at the northern fringe of the then Lourenco Marques.

Without giving too much away, the drive of nascent Greek migrant families to sojourn far-flung lands and carve businesses out of meager resources is an admirable accomplishment. It is one that is seen in other countries with significant Greek populations such as Australia. The story goes that Gerri Petrakakis bought the “tea-room” from a Portuguese man when it had already been built in 1938. Gerry was invited to Mozambique by his brother John from Rethymno, on the Greek island of Crete.

In the years following, the restaurant operated with banging success both with locals and as an obligatory pit-stop for tourists coming to Lourenco Marques – home of the famous LM Prawns. The book goes into much detail recounting the various “colorful” patrons and their foibles.

Not long after Mozambique became independent of Portugal, Gerry Petrakakis died in 1978 of a cancer that had been ailing him for some years. The restaurant continued to operate under the stewardship of his wife Maria and son Immanuel, co-author of this book.

The Petrakakis family were of the few that had not left Mozambique and were forced to re-formulate their business as the country plunged into a socialist dystopia that everyone had long feared. The book is unapologetic (a sign of the times?) in that it quite openly reveals communications with the authorities. With reference to, shall we say, a difference of opinion, the State responds:

It is regrettable when you say your hotel wasn’t funded by the Party, the money wasn’t given by the Party, and the Ministers have no say in your hotel. This is a great insult to the People’s Republic of Mozambique, to our Party, and to our top leaders. For that reason, we classify this ideologically as a reactionary action that will imply our taking extreme measures.

This was the era in which the Party and the State were one. Democracy, was limited to coming together and agreeing to the same rhetoric. Anyone towing a different line would be considered a counter-revolutionary. In those years, the reach of the Party was so extensive that in every business or association there was a Secretary who would report back to the Party.

Decisions could not be made by the management alone, and if a choice had to be made between profitability and efficiency the Secretary would be able to veto so that ultimately the ideological outcome would prevail. It was more often than not that poorly informed Secretaries, lacking comprehension or business expertise and obscenely confident led a great many companies to bankruptcy.

The restaurant went on to have a very special place after the economic liberalization of Mozambique, counting Leonardo di Caprio as one of its visitors of international fame – who was in Mozambique during the filming of Blood Diamond.

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This book was bought sometime ago, an impulsive purchase influenced by the cover and the repute of Ricardo Rangel a Mozambican photographer who is of some acclaim at least in Mozambique. He was born in Mozambique of Chinese, Greek and Portuguese ancestry in 1924 and is considered by many to be pivotal in the development of the visual medium.

Rangel’s great fortune was that he was an able photographer and journalist during the country’s watershed moments. In the highly stratified society of colonial Mozambique, he occupied a lesser social position than that of a Portuguese man. Growing up in the suburbs of Lourenco Marques, surrounded by poverty and inequality he learned to use his ability as a photographer to document his experiences.

The book is a posthumous release and in its initial chapters contains long commentaries on Rangel’s capacity and intention to highlight unacceptable (by modern standards) social norms.

RicardoRangel2 The histories told in the book by many of Rangel’s contemporaries suggest that he initially kept most of his material that would not pass the censor board private. His foray into journalism began at what is now Noticias for which he would provide photos. Owing to his ability, he was gradually given greater freedoms over his content which he gladly accepted and often used to throw jibes at the colonial administration.

RicardoRangel3 By the independence of the country in 1975, Rangel had become one of a handful photographers in the good graces of the party that claimed to have liberated Mozambique and to have toppled colonialism, FRELIMO. After independence he distanced himself from work related to politics and spent time as the director of the Center for Documentation and Photography CDFF.

From a technical perspective Rangel is a documentary photographer whose body of work differs to that of Saul Leiter or André Kertész who were more concerned with the creative and aesthetic dimensions of photography. However in the early 1970s, his release of Our Nightly Bread was notable for its capture of silhouettes, movement and of course its visual attestation of a vibrant adult entertainment industry.

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The latter part of the book is arguably the best, going much deeper into a historical analysis of the time in which Rangel lived. The city of Lourenco Marques, segregated but not as systematically as apartheid in South Africa personified the prevalent double standards of the time which Rangel captured poetically in his photos.

The backdrop for the series Our Nightly Bread was Rua Araujo. A red-light district near the port and in the heart of the city. The Portuguese colonial administration of the time worked very hard to keep an image of an organized city, fast in progress and righteous as the fascist dictator Antonio Salazar had bespoken.

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But the colonies of Portugal saw enormous prosperity and were a source of wealth at a time in which reforms in Portugal were slow. It was normal then for Portuguese to immigrate to Angola and Mozambique in search of better horizons and they found a place comparatively dynamic and liberal.

Portugal’s presence in Africa and other colonies gave rise to a cultural existence not possible elsewhere. Here, some distance away from Salazar’s political machinery it was normal to engage in forms of diversion unacceptable in the motherland. One of these was the frequenting of bars and clubs where African prostitutes entertained white men.

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Rangel documented the difficult life of the city’s residents, especially the women who lived a meagre life in the outskirts of the city but would travel to the city to work on Rua Araujo each night. Colonialism was hard on the people of Mozambique. while the men travelled to distant lands in South Africa to work in the mines, their earnings were not sufficient to run the expenses of the home.

Women supplemented the household income by working unusual jobs, forsaking their dignity and morality in the name of survival.

These are the themes, jarring and paradoxical which are discussed heavily towards the end of the book: innocence and guilt; providentialism and hunger; wealth and poverty; faith and renunciation; hopelessness and manufactured happiness.