Crossing from Moz to SA - the difference an imaginary line makes

I had two experiences that shocked me – driving from Maputo, Mozambique, to Nelspruit, South Africa; and flying from Maputo to JoBerg, South Africa.

Driving on the Mozambican side, the earth is dry. It is dust, it is sand, it is red. There are farm plots (called ‘Machambas’) that are owned by individuals. They are mostly disorganized small plots with maize, some vegetables, and maybe a cash crop or two like cotton or sesame. They don’t have irrigation, tractors or bulls even, they are worked on by individuals (often husband and wife will have separate plots) and are generally subsistence farming, or at best, the produce is sold at local markets for a little cash.

When you cross the border, everything changes.

The fields are vast and organized. They are in rows with huge irrigation systems. They grow a diverse range of crops – maize, oranges, potatoes, cotton. There are tractors. The exact same soil produces umpteen times more on one side of the border than the other. It’s incredible.

The feel of the society is different as well. On the SA side, it is much less informal – the roads don’t have potholes that you have to avoid (in Moz driving, I swear, it’s like trying to avoid bananas and turtle shells on Mario Kart); people don’t wait on the side of the roads for lifts as much; you don’t see nearly as many children out of school; informal selling on the side of the roads is almost non-existent. And then you get to Nelspruit, a small-ish SA city. Everything is paved; all the buildings are brick; everything works; everything has a price; cars don’t have smashed windscreens (in Moz, if your windscreen is smashed, you keep driving); children and women aren’t sprawled in the street; in Moz the streets are crowded with unemployed or casually employed men; there are toilets for the public; people sell clothes and shoes on the street in Moz, in SA there are shopping malls. It’s just incredible and, for me, was absolutely overwhelming. I didn’t like the structure, the neatness – I felt like I was a (dirty) elephant in a china shop. Walking into a shopping mall made me a bit nauseous – here was all this stuff that I didn’t want or need. Here was all this wealth being poured into a clean marble floor while an hour away someone was starving. Since I’d gotten used to Mozambique, it felt very wrong somehow. Not wrong in a judgmental sort of way (as in, not ‘you SA shouldn’t be doing this’) just very unnerving and devastating.

One time, I was walking with a friend back from a party. It was his 2^nd night in the country. He was a little drunk and asked ‘do you think it’s alright to pee here?’ motioning towards a tree in the middle of the pavement. I said ‘Unfortunately… yes’. But once you get used to that atmosphere (I didn’t ever pee on the side of the road though… I learnt my lesson freshman year hehe) it seems very strange how organized and ‘civil’ the streets of a developing country are.

The difference from the air is almost as astounding. On the Moz side, it looks like the earth isn’t being used. On the SA side it looks like it’s all being used. You can see the organized crops with their irrigation circles; you can see the urban planning of cities (as in, cities in SA are planned, rather than a free-for-all); you can see the mines and the power stations (which are just incredible – for ten minutes of flying near JoBerg, you see nothing but power station after power station. They are built right next to the coal mines and provide electricity for most of SA, as well as Maputo).

What struck me the most about these experiences is how an invisible border becomes highly visible with the contrast between the two countries.

Thanks for reading!