1 - Gender, Family and Social Transformations in Maputo

Summary

‘You need to pray while walking through the streets of Maputo,’ Joana tells me on the way to a Brazilian Pentecostal church. She points to a group of men who are sitting on a wall next to some barracas (stalls) where women dressed in colorful capulanas (printed cotton clothes) are selling vegetables and drinks. I feel that these men, enjoying a Mozambican 2M beer, have their eyes fixed on us. Joana grabs my arm to cross the street to where we will catch the chapa (public transport, minibus) to her church. Young guys shout out the destinations while a crowd of people who have just finished work jostle to find a seat on their journey home. We are squashed together to allow more people on to the chapa and when we leave, Joana warns me to take care: ‘Why is someone looking at you? Why is someone following you? Does he have good or bad intentions?’

It is twilight. The noise of chapa horns, mobile phones and crackling radio speakers fill the air. The smell of exhaust fumes is pervasive. I had met Joana at her office at the university before going to her church. She gives me a meaningful look as she says: ‘It is Friday.’ I remember the conversation I had with her and her friend Julia last week when they explained why they were still unmarried at the ages of 29 and 40 respectively. They told me about Fridays and how it is ‘men's day’, when men visit bars, drink and chat up women, or when they secretly visit their amantes (lovers). Julia and Joana had not accepted their former partners’ ‘Friday sessions’.

Friday evening is also the weekly time for liberating evil powers in Pentecostal churches. Joana and I enter the church building where about a thousand people, mostly upwardly mobile women like Joana, have already started praying and shouting under the guidance of the pastor who is screaming through huge speakers, ‘We are at war’ (Estamos em guerra). ‘Go awaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy, you demon, go, go, go, go… burn, burn, burn’ (queima, queima, queima). Everybody is furiously waving their hands to drive the evil out of their lives and screaming ‘go out’ and again ‘go out [bad spirit], go out and never come back again’.