Forget 24-hour electricity, luxury bathroom fittings and free toiletries. In Mozambique, a new standard is being set for sustainable tourism. Judith D Schwartz reports
It is dark as the Land Rover pushes through a bank of high grass before finally stopping in a clearing. Then, incongruously, out of the gloom appears a waiter with a tray of tall glasses. At his shoulder is a woman. ‘I’m Amy Carter, welcome to Guludo,’ she says brightly, shaking everyone’s hand and giving out small, high-tech torches so we can find our way around. So, here in the darkness, we meet the 27-year-old co-founder of one of Mozambique’s new generation of environmentally conscious beach lodges.
It is around 80km from the airport in Pemba to Guludo, but the road is potholed and tortuous and the journey takes longer than expected. The villages along the way look identical: clusters of mud and grass huts; women carrying baskets on their heads and babies on their backs.
It is against this backdrop that Guludo was conceived, five years ago, the plan being that it would form the cornerstone of a multi-faceted effort to reduce local poverty, preserve the region’s fragile ecosystem, and offer increasingly discerning tourists a holiday where they could put something back into the community.
Carter and her fiancé, Neal Allcock, 29, scoured the Mozambican coastline. When they arrived at Guludo they knew they had their spot. ‘The village chief took us over to the beach,’ Allcock says. ‘It was very poetic, sitting on coconut logs beneath the full moon. Everything took three steps of translation, but the chief’s main question to us was, “When can you start?”’
The lodge sits on the 12km-long curve of a white sand beach. Guests can swim in the ocean, snorkel and dive (the dive centre has Padi-level instruction) and take evening beach walks under the clear night sky. Nearby lies Guludo village, where life expectancy is 38 years and infant mortality is high – even for Mozambique, which has one of the worst rates in the world – at nearly 30 per cent.
Has the two-year-old lodge made a difference? According to the company’s charity wing, Nema, the number of children attending the village school jumped from 80 in 2006 to 264 last year, with more signing up. Before January 2007, when the lodge put in a pump, villagers took their drinking water from a pond. Allcock tells the story of a researcher asking villagers about any changes and being told by the chief: ‘Before everyone was hungry, and now no one is hungry. Soon we’ll all be fat.’
Mozambique once had a thriving tourism industry, but decades of civil war and extreme poverty – for years the country topped the list of poorest nations – put an end to that. Just a few years ago, travel here was only for the intrepid or the foolhardy. Apart from poor roads and scant facilities, there was the added risk of driving over, or stepping on, one of the thousands of landmines that littered the bush.
Now there is a stable government, led by President Armando Emílio Guebuza, the number of visitors is picking up. The last decade has seen some $12 billion in foreign and domestic investment in tourism. Much of this is on the south coast, where South Africans hop over for cheap beach holidays. But, in the more remote north, there is a rise in high-return, low-number destinations. In 2006, USAID granted $5.5m towards developing tourism in the northern provinces of Nampula, Cabo Delgado, and Niassa.
Except for a few positions, such as diving instructors and the executive chef, the Guludo lodge is staffed by local people. Whenever possible, Carter and Allcock buy locally. ‘We actually had a challenge convincing local women to collect more eggs than they needed,’ adds Carter.
The resort itself is a series of 12 tented bandas with a central hub, modelled on an African village. There is no electricity (except for the office, which is run off a solar generator, where guests can recharge electronic equipment) and the plumbing is environmental: there is an ‘enviro loo’ outside the private tents, gourds for sinks, a hole-punched coconut for a shower and hot water that is delivered at 7am and 5pm promptly.
Says Allcock: ‘We deliberately made it easy to disassemble, so that if we left there would be no scar on the landscape.’
Simple the accommodations are, but they are not without luxury. The grass-and-bamboo bandas are spacious and airy, with a choice of hammocks outside. A few steps lead to a private beach where a sparkling turquoise ocean laps the shore. The meals, often based on the day’s catch, are delicious and imaginatively served, and there is always a jovial scene at the bar as guests and staff share their adventures of the day. Furnishings are cleverly designed – it comes as a surprise to realise that the bookshelf in the common area is half a hand-wrought dugout canoe. The architect, London-based Cullem and Knightingale, has experience working on projects all over Africa, South America and India, and won commendation from the British Consultants and Consultants Bureau. Their secret? Learn from the locals.
Forty minutes away by speedboat – or a few hours by dhow, depending on the winds – is Ibo Island, home to another spot geared to sustainable tourism, the Ibo Island Lodge. The coral island, one of 27 in the Quirimbas Archipelago and part of the new Quirimbas National Park, is beautiful but eerie, a place that time has let languish. It was a centre of trade with the Arab nations for several centuries before 1502, when Portuguese adventurer Vasco da Gama rested here and became the first known European on its shores. Ibo town is a blend of African fishing community and abandoned Mediterranean village by the sea; once impressive, columned buildings now relegated to sun-bleached seediness, were once grand Portuguese villas. There are a number of historic sites, including the pentagonal Fortaleza de Joao Baptista – the Fort of St John the Baptist – that was used as a prison and to house slaves.
This sleepy island is about to be thrust from obscurity, however. Ibo Island has been nominated for the coveted World Heritage status, and a walk along the broad avenues offers hints of development in the works. Crumbling buildings are being bought and converted into guesthouses; international nonprofit organisations, including USAID and the World Wildlife Fund, are also showing an interest. According to Fiona Record, who owns the Ibo Island Lodge with her husband, Kevin, there are plans to turn the stone town into a living museum.
The couple came upon Ibo in the early 1990s, says Fiona, ‘We got to Pemba and heard about this amazing little forgotten island.’ Like Carter and Allock in Guludo, the Records had an unforgettable introduction to Ibo: ‘We came in on a sailing dhow at night with phosphorescence bouncing off the warm water. The buildings were reflected by the sea and in that atmospheric moonlight appeared to us like a lost city.’ They soon decided they needed to become involved in the island’s future and build up tourism in a way that empowered the local population.
In 2000 they began renovating a former Portuguese governor’s mansion, sticking to the original lime and coral stone, which are difficult materials with which to work. Among other challenges, Fiona says, was the three-day journey to get to Ibo from the mainland, including the awful road from Pemba (I apparently experienced the new-and-improved version) and the 12-hour dhow ride. The end of 2006 saw the lodge’s opening: with guests impressed by comfortable, high-ceilinged rooms with great ocean views and colonial grandeur.
Partially through grants, the lodge supports local training initiatives. This includes a market gardening project (to offer alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture) and a programme to develop silversmith skills using traditional Arabic fine-metal techniques. At check-in, guests learn about the lodge’s conservation policies. For example, shells are not to be removed and water is not to be wasted. There is no television, radio or refrigerator in the room and electricity is limited to certain hours.
Ibo is ringed by a section of the largest mangrove forest in Africa. We head out in kayaks, weaving our way among these wetland trees while a nature guide identifies the birds around us – dimorphic egrets, herons, and iridescent malachite kingfishers. We return at sunset when the tide is low, a vast plain of sand before us catching the last light as the wading birds feed in silhouette. It is at low tide when you appreciate the vulnerability of the landscape, as sand banks laden with crabs and shells emerge and reefs of varied coral come within snorkeling range. Could this delicate ecosystem survive large hotels and tour groups?
Forward-looking investors in the north are combining idealism – sustainable tourism and poverty reduction – with a variety of travel experiences: bush walks and game drives; beaches, boating, and water sports; historical venues and opportunities for cultural exchange. To offer game viewing as well as the beach, Carter and Allcock are opening another lodge – the Mipande Bush Lodge, 15km from Guludo – at the end of next year.
‘We came in with no preconceived ideas – just our beliefs, dreams, and ideas,’ says Allcock, noting that the lodge has been surpassing their forecasts. Carter, who in 2006 won the Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year award co-sponsored by The New Statesman magazine, adds: ‘When people come here, their perceptions change. This is what tourism can be and what business can be.’
How to get there
Pemba is the main connection for points in the Quirimbas National Park and the archipelago. There are regular flights to Pemba from Johannesburg, Maputo, Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Travel from Pemba can involve vehicle, boat, light aircraft or helicopter.
What to do
Visitors can take part in game-viewing, bushwalks, diving, whale-watching, sea-kayaking or can just take it easy.
What to eat
This is prime seafood territory, so catch-ofthe-day rules. Expect creative dishes using crab, calamari and prawns plus fish such as tuna and marlin. Peri-peri is common in cookery as are bananas, cashews, coconuts and papayas. The three local Mozambican beers are 2M, Laurentina and Manica.
More information
www.guludo.com
www.iboisland.com
www.kaskazini.com
