They have learnt to live with the sea as an extension of themselves. But the unregulated fishing encouraged by the industry shows them a side of the sea that they haven't got used to dealing with yet. There is a lack of fish and shellfish, as if the sea, which is rising due to climate change, is dead. This is the story of women and men who are seeing their lives change and of an installation that wants to give them a face and revive their memory.
At the age of 15, the sea level was already defining Rosa Napaua's life path. The low tide always marked the time to harvest the xocolo, a mollusc protected by a shell that was once more abundant in the region of Ilha de Moçambique. The name came from the verb "xocolar", which means to carry out the activity.
Without much in the way of a future, xocolar turned out to be the activity that kept Rosa (now 35) and her family from starving. The harvest is now for subsistence. But in times when the low tide was generous, it was also used to set up a small business and help buy more groceries for the house.
Like her, almost all of the 5,000 or so inhabitants who make up the population of Cabeceira Pequena live from harvesting xocolo and resent the lack of it. "Every house here has someone who works with xocolo," she said. It's like a profession passed down from generation to generation. Maiumuna Asmin - 28 years old - is at least the third generation of her family to dedicate themselves to this activity. "My mum does it, my grandmother does it and she also says she learnt it from her mum," explains Maimuna.
Cabaceira Pequena, this piece of land jutting out into the Indian Sea, can be reached by boat from the island of Mozambique. The sea marks the horizon for all the people born here.
Women like Rosa and Maimuna had to learn the language of the tides from an early age. An activity that requires patience that perhaps only women have. "The men go fishing more," says Rosa.
The indian queue that they make towards the labour as if summoning up the biblical memory of the procession in the middle of the open sea to escape from a past of pain. The buckets they carry on their heads are filled by one Xocolo at a time, after his hand has scooped up the muddy earth. "It takes a while to fill," says Maimuna and then confirms that it often doesn't fill at all.
And in these moments when they have the sea at their feet and only the sky above them, it's the songs sung in emakhuwa that cheer them up. They are songs of joy when the labour is fruitful and of sadness when they don't manage to catch enough chocolates to at least satisfy their hunger.
And for some time now, Rosa and Maimuna confess, there have been repeated scenarios of scarcity. "Before, we used to get a lot of xocolo. Now, it's always a little at a time. It's really just to eat," she says, with an embittered voice that can't disguise the uncertainty of the future. That's also why, as a kind of pact they've learnt to make with the sea, they no longer go out to sea every time the tide goes out. "We have to give the xocol "population" time to continue growing. We don't know how much longer we'll have xocolos," says Rosa.
This could be due to unbridled harvesting. But also the rise in sea level caused by climate change. No wonder. Mozambique, with more than 3,000 kilometres of coastline, has in recent years been considered one of the five countries in the world and number one on the continent most affected by the effects of climate change.
In 2022 alone, there were 4 tropical cyclones and in the coming years even more can be expected. What used to be an event every 20 or 50 years is now a permanent threat to fishing communities in very vulnerable conditions.
This impact is further exacerbated by the fact that the sea level around the island has risen rapidly and is expected to reach 20 centimetres in the next seven years, which could mean the elimination of these communities and their heritage.
An installation to rethink life with the sea
Immersive exhibition, created and curated by Yara Costa, on the island of Mozambique
The immersive installation "Nakhodha (Nahota) and the Mermaid" is here to save the land and with it its men and women and to rescue their memory. It takes us on board a dhow for a journey around the many lives of the sea and with them proposes ways back to a past that was already future. It's interventional art, trying to close the last floodgate before the world runs out.
In the building of an old customs house, in the heart of Ilha de Moçambique, Yara Costa, the filmmaker who created and curated the installation, gives Ilha back its place as the centre of the world and makes us rethink how, as humanity, we can still save the planet. "There's an industrial fishery that's taking place which means that there are no fish and shellfish, and it's the artisanal fishermen, the women of xokolo, the communities who suffer," says Yara.
And our participation in the installation confronts us with this reality. And that's also why it's a place of growth for those who take part. Perhaps we begin as mere spectators of the experience of the sea. But from the virtual reality, we learn about their lives and the ways of life that the sea invokes until we reach the position of masters of the sea. It's a journey you can make in a few minutes, but one that takes a lifetime to make in "real" reality.
And behind this odyssey, in the perspective of returning to the place of departure, to a past in which the relationship between man and nature was one of complementarity, there is a real person, Jorge Jamal Sadique, whose life at sea has earned him the position of Nahota, a category that only the scaffolding of experience can place us in.
"To be a Nahota you have to learn to interpret meteorological phenomena, such as temperature, wind speed and direction, sailing conditions, sea state, among others. He has to learn everything I've mentioned, that's the only way he can be considered Nahota and he can't just steer the boat, he has to obey the rules," says Jorge, who is also known as Thorodji.
Today he works as a security guard, already retired from the life of the sea, a compulsive retirement brought on by the slow death of the sea. Having started fishing with a line, he says that today fishing has become unregulated and perhaps this explains much of the scarcity of fish today. "This forces fishermen who used to work in the sea off the island of Mozambique to end up fishing in seas like Mocímboa da Praia," he said.
A journey that, with the wind in favour, can take around five days, with the wind against it can take up to 20 days.
With a faraway look in his eyes, he returned to the shore with his boat weighed down with another 40kg of fish. In his last days of fishing - it was 2019 - there were days when he only managed 5kg. "On others, I might even come back with nothing," he says.
He had no choice but to look for a new source of income. But once a fisherman, always a fisherman. And he still puts up a few "malemas" cages in the hope that he'll catch some fish, at least to satisfy his hunger and kill his nostalgia for the old days. "The other day I threw seven cages in and when I went to take them all out I didn't even have a fish," he said with the tone of someone looking for humour so as not to live in tears.
By Elton Pila
