7. Sawdust
For my father, for his kindness and noble ideals, in love and gratitude
The Old Factory – The New Oligarchs – Amending the Future
1. Mobel
I travelled afar to see the place. I knew it well. I had often come by as a child, always reassured of having it as a shelter. But fate is never what we expect and I have been gone for 20 years. Now, standing in front of a badly smudged facade, it is a wrecked building I see, all colors melted away into mouldy nuances of grey which have now deleted the words once engraved: “Mobel, Furniture and Mattresses Ltd”. Today, I’m told that the building has been converted into a sawmill, grandly registered as the “Industry for Transformation of Timber Logs (ITM)”, located at Avenue Mártires da Machava, 2462. Be as it may, no exterior corporate signage discloses where we are and I feel momentarily lost.
I have not made an appointment. Whom would I ask? I return to meet father as I last saw him in his office. The factory has been his life’s accomplishment and he passed away in Lisbon only a few months ago, no single word ever spoken about pain, estrangement or bitterness for all his losses. Now I still see him seated by his room up on the first floor, with his welcoming smile, brave and confident self, the long working table with a top made of a single untrimmed mahogany plank, chest of drawers against the wall, chesterfield couch and chairs.
I recall the last time we met there, discussing how the political turmoil following independence might jeopardise his business. What should he do? Where would they go? I reassured him that circumstances would change to the better, that all good he had done – as a considerate employer and honest industrialist– would be recognised. The new country needs him and likeminded people. But seldom events turn out the way we expect, and outcomes proved me wrong. Blondwe, an old friend of mine with good contacts at the local party cell, warned him of an imminent arrest for the simple reason of being ‘a capitalist’ in a communist country: the next day mother and father escaped to Lisbon via Malawi with all they could carry in a small suitcase. Never to return, their remaining days enslaved in past remembrance.
Family life in Beira, the second largest Mozambican city, was often in pace with ‘father’s factory’, where he usually spent long working days. He was rather restrained with his deeds, but at times he would admit having pride for his professional ethos, and even (more rarely) reflecting on the steady progress of business. He loved promoting technical innovation, along with human development. His interests went beyond capital gains. He was a creative and respected administrator, a benefactor, fostering equal employment opportunities whenever possible: I have a vivid recollection of the blind switchboard operator performing a fascinating tactile choreography of gauging the different sizes of rubber-bands he had wrapped around switches and dials to recognise telephone numbers and extensions.
I usually visited Mobel during school holidays, if nothing else for the lasting ritual of meeting with many whom I knew since childhood, and cherish the range of activities performed in a variety of working stations, the neatness of outfits from production line and storage rooms to the modest infirmary. The factory entrance had an imposing metal door facing the large avenue heading West to the Manga suburbs and further inland towards the Rhodesian boarder. After being welcomed by Blondwe, the friendly porter, I would greet my father at his office, often following him for a factory tour. The administrative personnel and the switchboard operator had their offices on the ground-floor, while the head of accounting, the architect, designer and a secretary were stationed before father’s office which was located at the further end of the first-floor. Both premises were situated close to the main gate and had broad glass windows looking out the long stretch of the furniture division.
It was particularly bewitching to observe the meticulous artistry involved in woodworking, how individual parts, some of them carefully hand-carved and polished, ended up being assembled into furnishings. An alluring old-world of craftmanship: from blueprint to the skilled handling of unusual tools, the deeply aromatic wooden scents and the peppery odour of gluing resins. This microcosm was poles apart from the serial production of the mattress department further down my pilgrimage: as I progressed deeper into its entrails a striking sense of modern times would suddenly take over, where tempo, smells and sounds sharply changed, with fewer workmen racing faster, scents becoming acutely acrid and metallic, and noise levels paramount.
At the further end of the factory a sub woofing, heartbeat thumping, would be heard: the unique Austrian ‘Wagner Shredder’ machine, an all-metal monster working around the clock, could be seen spreading its long tentacles under a vast ballroom-like hangar. The industrial shredder had the unique –but complex and fascinating– function of tearing apart chunks of fabric bought from Textáfrica, the giant textile industry, recycling the fibre waste into huge carpet-like rolls which later make essential mattress-padding and coil encasement. Mobel was proud to be the sole provider of such a raw-material, also used by Morfeu and Siesta, the other two mattress companies located in the capital city; and for the recognition as the exclusive exporter of mattresses to neighbouring Rhodesia and Malawi. The splendid shredder was however particularly prone to hazard –since cotton easily self-heat and ignite –and twice this colossal ‘Phoenix’ had to be resurrected from the ashes: I recall well how father on both occasions had to rush to the factory in the middle of the night to witness the disaster, and how resolutely he fought back adversity.
The Spring Mattress division was installed in the largest vault of the 10 000 square meter factory: the frame of each new bed would emerge from what seemed at first a convoluted metal skeleton, a rectangular case where coils of variable densities were gradually added until forming a mesh of regularly lined innersprings. Such components were locally produced and heat-tempered, the imported rolls of stainless-steel wire of varying thickness fed in into a machine which would expel the original ‘spaghetti’ suddenly mutated into finished coils, before being heated to very high-temperature for strength and resiliency. As soon as the core mattress layer was ready, a new worker would take over the task of building its comfort overlay, adding step-by-step an insulator material, a middle upholstery and a quilt-like fabric cover. The final technical operation included using an industrial sewing-machine to slide around the perimeter of the mattress in order to stitch it all together.
My father was overjoyed that the factory could offer the highest production standards reflected on a 25-year mattress guarantee for core-construction, as well as for the quality and beauty of their finishing, highlighted by ‘Belgian Damask’ textiles with patterns often selected according to mother’s taste. Another of father’s pride was the workforce that the factory employed: a few hundred neatly equipped staff, tidy premises, free dairy products given to those working in more polluted environments. All that long ago…
2. The Sawmill
The main gate opens and I step through the gloomy corridor leading to the factory offices. Someone saw me coming: “Is there something I can help you with?” enquires an inquisitive, bulky lady. “Yes please, could I be allowed to briefly look around? This factory was owned by my family until nationalized in 1980”.
“Is Mr Chamboko expecting you?” she asks… “I don’t know who the person might be” I say, presuming however that this would be the manager. “Oh, I see, he is our boss and a well-known Party member; and this is your lucky day! As it happens –and not so often– he is visiting … to make sure that the money rolls in” she adds playfully (or ironically perhaps?) before disappearing upstairs to arrange for the visit.
While waiting I stand still and look nostalgically into the large, void space where the main furniture section once was, with its well-organised rows of benches where fittings were put together. Now all I see is an abandoned pavilion, with oddly placed garbage piles along empty and heavily smudged walls. And, as a painful afterthought, I suddenly feel myself baffled for the remarkable absence of what once were familiar sweet and aromatic scents of precious hardwoods: Chanfuta, Umbila, Jambirre, Mondzo … their poetic names intrinsically a part of those walls. Moving slightly forward I now discover a new, large gate, opened onto an exterior courtyard displaying large carriers and tracks holding gigantic timber logs. This is what our large factory had been transformed into- a sawmill! No surprise though, I come to think: from an expanding and relatively sustainable economy, independence has shifted production into a purely extractive system, better suited to quickly enrich a few new masters.
Not long ago I read something to that effect in a ‘Environmental Investigation Agency’ report. The article referred to a major ecological crisis, connecting national crony corruption to China’s criminal depletion of Mozambique’s Miombo Forests. The study further documented how Chinese demand for timber is driving unsustainable wood smuggling, with over 90 per cent illegal logging. Assuming such trend, the report went, all first-class forest resources will be logged out in the next few years, by 2029 at the latest.
Very much to the point, a Provincial Governor, former Minister and Head of the ruling party’s ‘Disciplinary Body’ has recently been caught up in an illegal timber scandal regarding exports to China and elsewhere, including dispatching containers seized by the court. A Chinese trader was arrested with a few of its cronies, but soon afterwards all were released. The patron-client, an institutionalized chain from high-up oligarchs to their middle and lower-level parasites, perpetuate poverty and will in time fuel rebellion. Meanwhile, status quo maintaining ‘foreign aid’ keeps on flowing, domestic kleptocrats loot the beloved country from real estate to rubies, and the international capital promoting extensive gas extraction does the rest.
My thoughts are bristly cut off by a cheerful voice. “Mr Chamboko is now ready to receive you”, announces the lady secretary. As I climb up the stairs into the main office I confirm my initial, overall impression: except for an attendant and a servant, what once was a vibrant workplace with technical and administrative personnel, is now a dark, desolate store. As I enter the large room I face a pair of small, mean eyes, protruding from a large and obese body, looking inquisitively at me. Unavoidably, mechanically, his greasy and cold hand meets with mine.
I look closer, deeper: Chamboko’s presence is assertive.: the glowing fat shinning from his face, the soggy mouth exuding self-contempt. As if reacting to a switch I have accidentally pressed, he starts elaborating on how all his achievements are honestly and dully deserved, for the good of the country and the ‘new citizen’. I observe sarcastically how smart he must have been in overcoming so many good competitors and to bulldoze all those who dared to be along his path; feeling concurrently a wave of repulsion creeping in, the unbearable sense of having to listen to a self-invented tale.
“Do you come here out of curiosity, what do you expect to see?” he asks, as if for long having anticipated the possibly of an encounter with the previous owner. “I come to see how much it has changed” I reply. To which he quickly remarks “very well, but I am only allowing you to look around under ‘her’ guidance”, looking at his secretary. "The factory is now my property" he proudly declares, to promptly ask “Do you know that I bought it from the government?” pointing to a golden frame hanging in the wall, encasing a barely visible photocopy of a government dispatch granting him the sole possession of “Mobel, Fábrica de Colchões e Mobiliário Lda” … “Yes, I am aware that you have ‘acquired’ it along with a number of other expropriated factories”; which –ignoring the satire– motivates his response in a pious, soothing voice: “life has been hard, but the harder I work the luckier I get”… prompting my observation, in a mocking-like benediction tone: “I suspect that the saying comes from East German Comrades… but perhaps a more appropriate translation under the circumstances would be “the better connected you are the wealthier you get”? ... noticing at once that perplexity begins altering his mien.
Lydia (she had a name) leads me at last to a pilgrimage of apocalyptic proportions: empty, dark, convoluted spaces, old pieces of abandoned machinery and large vaults of piled waste here and there… until we are ejected on to an open-air, vast courtyard, where gigantic logs marked with Chinese characters lay bare before been taken and slashed in a device with enormous chainsaw blades. A dense cloud of sawdust and haze filters the sunlight and adds misery to the ominous setting. Through watering eyes, I am still able to identify sizeable piles of boards laying for drying, before to be ferried to the harbour and to the People’s Republic beyond. This is how the brave, beloved country many dreamt about, ended up: one of the many savage sawmills in the hands of corrupted politicians, an outcome I had never foreseen in my worst nightmares; I, who had fantasied the new, liberated homeland; I, the archaeologist.
3. Leftovers
In one of the corners of the backyard, among a pile of waste, I see a few ragged workers standing by. I enquire Lydia whether any of the three hundred workers from the ‘old days’ are still employed. She points to a very old man, with bloodshot, visibly worn-out eyes. I curiously approach him, keenly offering my hand. A shy, surprised but open smile makes me feel truly welcomed, for the first time since arriving here. Overwhelmed, I recognise Blondwe! He recognises me back as we embrace. For a few minutes of the brake he is allowed, we hastily share a few of our lasting memories. At last father was there –alive– between us; at last somehow reconciled with the present.
Blondwe brings to mind how my father had known that my daughter’s school in Maputo had all their furniture stolen shortly after independence; and I confirm how much we had been upset that Sofia and her colleagues sat on the floor during their lessons. My father had therefore arranged for Mobel to manufacture and deliver a number of school benches for free. However, timber was by then a prized possession, and all the wood he managed to purchase had been stolen. This was one of the last blows father had to endure when the factory was already standing still without raw materials to operate with, and salaries had to regularly be paid by law.
With much regret –knowing that soon as part of Frelimo’s terror and nationalisation policies would have him jailed– he gave Blondwe a sizeable money compensation for him to stay at his post for as long as possible. Blondwe tells me that he has never forgotten that father had once told him: “I love my son too much to make him to see that his dream is no more than a fantasy” … adding that my father was convinced that someday I would return and wanted to make sure that Blondwe, in some way on his behalf, would be there to meet with me. And to my surprise our encounter was a fact very much as my father had hoped.
We nostalgically exchange memories of the past, the exciting days of mangrove exploration [1], and thoughts over the loss of vanished or deceased friends. With sadness, he learns of my father’s passing a few months ago. “A major part of yours and our past is gone with him”, before adding with tears in his eyes: “I have no child no more; and when a parent loses his child, he loses his future. My only child was executed in a concentration camp. Holding to the promise I gave to your father and to whatever good I could keep from the past, I always hoped I could see you again before too late. Now that I have seen you one last time I can go back to my Zambezian village.”
… “But before I go”, he stops, eyes and smile reflecting infinite wisdom, “come with me inside, I have something for you”. Making sure that Lydia is not following us, he leads me into the old infirmary. From a hiding spot on the floor he retrieves a small parcel wrapped up in an old cloth. With much surprise and emotion, I receive in my hands a small wooden case carved in a lasting mahogany piece from the old factory. The box contains a silver ‘Parker Cicelé’ Fountain Pen which –he tells me– my father had left behind. In a torn piece of paper Blondwe had written a note, which I translate: At the gate I failed to save us from greed and downfall, but I rescued this relic for your return: Unable to redraft the past, will it help amend the future?
[1] See ”The Unspoken Secret”.