Cyan Cryptic

By Michael H. Kew

A TALL HOOKAH looms over the beer fridge and its forest of brown glass in the dim orange light. Warm wind and crickets for music. I bellied-up atop one of the old wooden stools and asked the young barkeep for a bottle of 2M. Mohammed, a local Ibo Island fixer and non-drinker, sat closely to my left, leaning in. His crude English was hard to understand. He was slightly bucktoothed, out-jawed, bug-eyed. I was glad to see him. Enjoying my first swig of cold Mozambican lager, I asked him to describe his favorite Quirimbas isle.

“Matemo. Its beaches is very long. People there very different. The people from Matemo are big Muslim. They no like beer.”

“Do Ibo Muslims drink alcohol?”

“Yeah!” He laughed. “Ibo Muslim okay. Get along with anybody. My mother Muslim. My father Christian.”

2M’s name was a nod to French president Patrice de MacMahon who in 1875 favored Portugal in a quibble with England over which of the two imperialists should rule southern Mozambique. Cheap and lightweight at 4.5-percent alcohol, 2M is nationally the most widely consumed beer. It is brewed by Cervejas de Moçambique in Maputo, 1,530 miles south of Ibo and near Inhambane Province, where almost all Mozambican surfing has occurred. Not till the death of the country’s 15-year civil war in 1992 did punters really go looking for waves along what is Africa’s longest stretch of Indian Ocean coast—big roadless swaths of sharky albeit unknown surf. Due to swell-shadowing by nearby Madagascar, Mozambique’s south was and is its core zone; Tofinho and Ponta do Ouro come to mind. In 2014 one cyclone-reliant point (“the African Kirra”) here was showcased in Globe’s Strange Rumblings in Shangri La and O’Neill’s The Getaway.

Tom Curren, mysto Mozambique, 1992. Frame grab from The Search 2.

Mozambican waves hadn’t much been seen worldwide until 1993 via Rip Curl’s The Search 2. Tom Curren, Shane Beschen, Frankie Oberholzer, and Boris Le Texier had enjoyed a 12-day trimaran trip, lucking into clean cyclone-swell tubes at a sandy cape east of Maputo. The 11 minutes of footage were scored with savory sounds by Jamaica’s Mutabaruka and Zimbabwe’s Thomas Mapfumo. It was my favorite piece of the film.

“Some of the best waves you get are total flukes,” Curren recalled of the voyage in 1996’s Searching For Tom Curren. “We went against the grain—the wind was blowing onshore. We were sailing against the wind. Got up to a place and it looked nice and there was no surf for a week or so. Then, out of the blue, a 6- to 8-foot swell came in. It was very rewarding to go up there when we weren’t sure about it the whole time. It was all enjoyable. Even the flat days. It was new territory—very isolated areas—so it was good to take it all in. The surf was the icing on the cake.”

Cake-icing frame from The Search 2.

Rip Curl struck promptly after Mozambique’s civil war. “Things were pretty raw,” trip photographer Ted Grambeau told me. “Shops were totally bare. The people were cool, almost as if it was a relief or a sign that the conflict was definitely over if non-combatant foreigners were entering the country.”

Indeed boating was the safest transport. Land mines were set everywhere during Mozambique’s war for independence (1964-1974) and the civil war (1977-1992). The mines killed tens of thousands of people and injured thousands more. Though Mozambique was declared mine-free in 2015, residual mines continue to kill and maim innocents inland and across the south.

Bombs aside, there would be no cyclone swell during my time exploring Mozambique’s obverse end which mainstream travel media had pegged as “unspoiled,” “magical,” “barefoot luxury,” “a hideaway,” “a private island paradise,” “one of Africa’s best-kept secrets,” “Mozambique’s answer to the Maldives.” My surf prospects hung on the southeasterly winter trades to push energy into right-hand Quirimbas Archipelago reefs. There were no guarantees and not much optimism. Before my arrival, Jörg, German owner of the Ibo bar, had emailed:

There is no wave surfing at all in the Quirimbas. It is not bad for kitesurfing, and I believe windsurfing with the right equipment can also be fun over here. But don’t expect any places to surf on waves.

Using Jörg’s slow (and rare: just four percent of Mozambicans have internet) wifi, I checked Buoyweather. Mohammed was interested. On the latest chart, between flanks of the standard six-second windswell, were two days of blue lines denoting swell of one meter at 13 seconds from the south-southeast. This was unusual. Groundswell in the Mozambique Channel generally rolled from the southwest, beneath and around South Africa, beelining for Madagascar and Réunion, not northern Mozambique.

LATER THAT WEEK. Mohammed seemed rushed and fidgety. Captain Califa awaited us at the port a half-mile away.

We walk from my guesthouse down Rua Republica, Ibo’s white-dirt main street, past the 19th-century ruins, the thorny cacti, the large mango trees full of chirping birds, the neatly-landscaped-but-derelict town square. Felt oddly conspicuous walking with a surfboard. Children wanted to touch it. Adults stared at me, the absurd blond mzungu, as they hid from the midday Sun in dark broken doorways or peeking from broken windows set in broken whitewashed walls.

“Very Sun, eh?” Mohammed said, squinting, pointing up.

“Yeah. Hot.”

Soon with a hand line he trolled whilst perma-grinning Califa, chain-smoking in a stained green rain slicker, tillered the old panga much slower than yesterday, today his boat limping with an old 15-horsepower outboard. The 25-horsepower he’d been using was “have fix,” Mohammed told me, and I was grateful for its service to push us up to Kissongosawi and back for my few prior surf sessions. The tide was higher this day, the highest I’d tried to find surf and, as we passed it, I grew curious how more water would treat the north reef of Ibo itself. More than two miles out, whitewater was—yes.

Downwinding we crept north, heat shimmering lazily off the mottled greeny blue shallows as we passed Ibo and rafts of brown leaves, schools of baitfish, fishermen in small canoes, mangroves, squeaking flocks of sooty terns. Sky was brilliant and bright, the slack wind affording a smooth cruise.

As we approached Kissongosawi I observed more bump and slosh than previous days and realized there was too much water on the reef—wind chop washed over it and swamped the lineup. I signaled to Califa to reverse course. He waited for Mohammed to wind the fishing line around an old green plastic soda bottle before we bounced back toward Ibo, my focus on the distant thin white froth which grew taller as we neared a very fun-looking right-hander. Pleasantly surprised, I wondered if this reef produced a wave similar to—or better than—Kissongosawi’s.

From the gunwale I leapt into the cool water and stroked toward chest-high powder-blue waves breaking over flat coral, tracing the edge of two miles of exposed reef between me and the 60-foot-tall Ibo lighthouse. Built in 1873, the light was surrounded by a strangely shaped grove of ironwood trees at the end of a bare thumb of a headland, across the reef, east of coconut plantations. Ibo appeared as low bluffs, a bright white beach, a spiky line of pines.

Mohammed and Califa left to troll, motoring east until they were a distant speck among whitecaps. For two hours I rode the clean but imperfect rights, admiring the shallow reef and sea turtles and weathered dhows with patchwork-rag sails bobbing past, huddled fishermen staring at me blankly as they headed out to join the other dhows, their sails like inverted shark teeth. I wondered if I actually was the first to surf Ibo, its windswell unexceptional but exceptionally fun in that foamy almost fizzy tiny-bubble hiss of tropical turquoise as my board sang over the grass-covered reef and sand. There were no urchins nor coral-head hazards. As the Sun lowered, foragers waded out onto the wide flats fronting the surf which ebbed along with the tide.

Mohammed and Califa returned (just one small tilapia was caught) and we boated slowly, trolling away from the expired surf, back into the Canal do Ibo, bouncing through the chop. Portside were 19 locals on the reef facing incongruous white-columned Ibo Island Lodge, the three restored mansions where tourists on white terrace couches lounged with cocktails, watching the Sun disappear and spreading orange radiance over the lagoon and mangroves and ever-photogenic dhows. A striking contrast: view of happy drinkers at the lodge directly above destitute islanders who scratched for dinner.

Mohammed was thrilled about his one fish—his dinner. And he had plans.

“Tonight—disco!” he said, grinning as we walked in the low golden light along shadowy Rua Republica, past kids yelling, women sweeping, idle men staring. “Is house big in island center. Big bottle beer 70 meticals [$1]. Música to morning!”

Later at his empty bar as I finished another 2M lager, Jörg himself appeared. It was the first time I’d actually met him since until now he’d been on the mainland, reprovisioning in Pemba. Instantly I recalled what he’d said months before: There is no wave surfing at all in the Quirimbas.

He smiled and nodded, opening another 2M for me after he pulled bottles from a box and placed them on a shelf near the beer cooler.

“Have a good day, Michael?”

“Yes, but no kiting.” I grinned. “You were definitely wrong about something….”

 Adapted from Cococandescence, 2023 East Africa volume via Spruce Coast Press.

 First published in Wavelength, issue 262.