Boroma Mission

Near Tete city there is an old Catholic Mission built by the Portuguese at the end of the 19th century. Since traditional life in Sub-Saharan Africa has for so long focused on day to day existence and societies rarely had enough surplus to construct monumental architecture, few buildings of historical existence from the past remain today. Most traditional structures in our area were small and temporary and returned to the earth within a generation of construction. So, unlike many of the places we have traveled in Europe, Latin America, and South Asia, that are full of temples, palaces, fortresses, and monuments, it’s hard to find physical traces of the past in the places we visit here. Aside from a few Swahili settlements and some ancient petroglyphs, there is almost nothing in Mozambique from before the Portuguese era. So at over 100 years old, the Mission at Boroma is a historical anomaly, and one of the oldest man made structures in the region. Taking advantage of the one day during national exams neither of us were scheduled to proctor tests we attempted a visit. Boroma lies only 20 kms from Tete city, but not unexpectedly since we do live in Africa, the outing turned into an entire day of adventure. There is no paved road and no formal transportation between Boroma and Tete. We had to rely on hitching in a really crowded pick-up truck leaving from the outdoor market on the edge of town; luckily the driver invited to ride inside the cab since possibly because we are foreigners. Once we got to Boroma, and could see the old Mission looming over the small population on a high bluff, we had to locate the man with the church key. This took almost an hour, and several teams of loitering kids who we sent running back and forth looking for people while we talked with the small community of nuns. Finally Inocencio, the caretaker of the local perish found us, he had been at a funeral that morning and was taking a shower when our young messengers found him. At first he seemed a little non-plussed about our visit, but once he learned that we were fluent in Portuguese and were volunteering as high school teachers in the province, he got very excited, and gave us a deluxe tour of the entire grounds, showing us every room in the church. We even climbed up the old bell tower, although we were a little reluctant to climb the rickety 100 year old wooden stairs. The chapel interior still preserved original colorful fresco paintings, but everything was in a very poor state of conservation, with an owl living in a big hole in the ceiling just above the altar, a funky chicken coop smell in the sacristy, and a huge monitor lizard which our guide called a salamander. The mission had been converted into a high school soon after Mozambican independence, and I don’t think any maintenance had been performed on this historic monument since that time. The principal greeted us and we got a tour of the old facilities were students were taking national exams. When we returned to Boroma village we learned there were no cars returning to Tete. No problems, we just sat at the “Final Stop” cafe while our host tried to locate some soda and transport. Apparently this remote population only gets one type of soda delivered per week. They were worried because they had promised us Sprite, and that week’s flavor happened to be Coke. Eventually our hosts did find one jeep leaving and we were off, and despite one break down, we were just in time to catch the last minibus back home from Tete.