So I sat on the run way at Maputo airport and we were just about to taxi and leave the country when a fight ensued between the air steward and two Portuguese passengers. It was to do with the fact that the two men, father and son I would say, wanted to move places and the air steward said 'no not now as it wasn't safe' he was in the right. Then, to my suprise the two men hurled abuse at the air steward, along the lines of 'If it wasn't for people like us you would be nothing'. It was ugly.
The air steward kept his cool, went to the captain, opened up the side door and went to throw them off. Security came in, the shyest security man I have ever seen. He actually had dread in his every step as he walked on to the plane, he sheepishly asked another passsenger what happened, then shrugged his shoulders and walked off. Everyone calmed down, the doors were shut and the two Portuguese guys behaved themselves.
I thought it was a sheer racist attack and there are always two sides to one story as by the end of the flight one of these men had befriended an African man sitting opposite him, it was as if they were best friends for years, laughing and chatting no end.
As the plane took off I had a huge surge of emotion, the moment when planes leave a place or arrives in a place, always does it for me. As if the whole trip was suddenly condensced in to that moment, and I had a good old weep. I wept for the kids I was leaving behind, I wept for the poverty of the place, I wept for racism as a whole, big globby tears fell on to my lap. And then I summoned all my thoughts together and stopped, like turning a clean page waiting for what I am to put on it.
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