On Benguerra Island.
Riding by the beach.
Most of my early days in Vilankulo I spent riding on the beach with Mozambique Horse Safaris. As a volunteer, I either accompanied riders as a back up or, once I had been there a while, led tourists on rides down the beach. The people of Vilankulo seem to have mixed opinions about the horses – many of the locals are afraid of them. Fishing is one of the main activities in Vilankulo, both as a job, a tourist attraction, and a leisure sport. Riding along the beach every day, we came across some interesting sights.
Once, for example, while riding with a family on holiday, we walked past a group of fishermen in a tight crowd around something on the sand. Seeing fishermen around their catch is a fairly common sight, but usually they are gathered around piles of little fish. This time, they were gathered around a 4-foot guitar shark, and one of them was using a foot-long machete to chop its head off. Intrigued, we led our horses to join the crown and stare for a while, then continued on.
One of the fishing dhows and a net.
On another ride, we rode up to a group of fishermen and their families gathered around a dhow, unloading it. We were a group of six riders, and came trotting up to them. As I mentioned, many of the locals are afraid of the horses - before these herds were brought in by Pat and Mandy, most of the Vilankulo the residents had never seen horses before. Now they are more used to seeing horses, but seeing six of them trotting towards you at once can still be intimidating. As we rode up, these fishermen all pulled out their phones to take pictures of us, posing next to us and motioning us to stand where they wanted us. One man came up with his baby, trying to convince the infant to pet the horse. The baby's mother panicked at this, screamed, and raced up to slap the man. She grabbed her baby by the arm and yanked him out of the man’s grasp and away from the horses. Once the baby was safe in her arms she backed away as quickly as possible.
The sand road that leads to the stable goes past a few houses, and each time we drive past some of the kids who live in the houses usually come out to either stare or run alongside us, calling "hola, hola!!" Once, as we drove by, we stopped to share some polo mints with them. We had been feeding the mints to the young horses kept in a pasture directly across from where the kids lived, and thought they might like to taste them as well. First we showed them that they were edible, eating one ourselves to let them know it was safe. Then, we handed one mint to a boy who looked about six. Hegrabbed it. All of the children then took of running, and once they were a safe distance away they gathered in a small huddle to examine the mint. We could see them passing it from hand to hand, each sniffing it and touching it. Apparently stumped as to what it was, they then raced with it over to the mama of the group, who examined it in her turn. There were now about nine kids and one woman all crowded around the mint. Finally, it was given back to the original boy, who held it up in his palm, gazed at it, and then turned and hurled it onto the roof of a nearby hut.
