Lessons from Mozambique

Mozambican fishermen. Photo by Steve Evans.

I’ve started a new project, as I frequently do. Every week I’m going to pick a different topic – anything that interests me – and learn about it all that week. Maybe I’ll get tired of it eventually, and if so that’s fine, but it’s a lot of fun for now. I’ve started with Mozambique.

I’ve already learned a lot, both from the Internet, and from a book I found at the library, This is Mozambique by Ian Michler. For instance, I learned that Mozambique was a Portuguese colony until 1975, and also (this shocked me) that Portugal itself was a dictatorship until roughly the same time. The book also has a bunch of great photos, and I do like me some pretty pictures.

However, this is a writing blog, so I have to talk about the writing. I’ve noticed something about the writing style in the book that bothers me. I’ve seen it in a lot of other books too.

This passage is a good example:

The Mozambican people have a wonderful sense of revelry with weekends being a time for song and dance.

When I read sentences like that, something seems wrong, though it isn’t always easy to pinpoint. To bring it into sharper focus, I’ll rewrite it to be about my own home – Ohio, USA.

The Ohio people have a wonderful sense of revelry with weekends being a time for song and dance.

I’d say the sentence is still true. We party on the weekends, no? But when the sentence is about me, it becomes clearer that it’s…condescending, somehow. Like he’s talking about a specimen he discovered. It’s so generic as to be almost meaningless. The feeling is that of an adult praising a child: “Good for you!”

What kind of music do they play? What does it sound like? Is it uniquely Mozambican or is it more widespread? Is it religious or secular?

Or take this passage:

Mozambicans are proud of their roots. The Makonde, who inhabit the far northern regions of the country, still dance in colourful costumes and masks, and carve as they always have, although the traditional art of tattooing the face and body is dying out.

They’re proud of their roots – but what do “colourful costumes and masks” tell us about their roots? What do the costumes signify? Why do they do it? Without that information, it’s just an exotic curiosity, something to smile about. Nobody would ever visit a Catholic church and write that the Catholics “are proud of their roots” and “still perform rituals in elaborate costumes and hats” without mentioning what the point of it all is.

In this case, details aren’t just good writing, they indicate respect. Details mean you care enough about your subject to really get into it, because it isn’t just a curiosity – it actually matters.

Fundamentally, I think the issue is learning about people versus learning from them. This book wants you to learn about Mozambique, which is not in itself a bad thing. But without a real sense of what’s going on – what it all means – it’s difficult to learn from Mozambique.

For instance: after a decade-long war of independence and another decade-long civil war, they’ve still managed to emerge as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. How are they doing it? Is it a model for others to emulate, or is there a dark side to their rapid growth? Etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I give the author tremendous credit for writing the book at all, for taking the time to travel all over the country and take the pictures and make the effort. It’s more than I’ve ever done. I just think the writing style – and possibly the viewpoint – need some work.

What do you think? Do the passages I quoted seem condescending to you? Have you come across writing like that in other places?