The rumours that were spread about me in Tofo in some ways felt surreal, like something from a movie, but the consequences were very real. It changed how I perceived and navigated Tofo. The silver lining of that whole ordeal was that I got to move into a local woman’s house. We had met only a few weeks earlier when I was out and about partying in Tofo.

She was an entrepreneur, a single mom and a Mozambican. If I thought that I had to balance on a knife to navigate the Mozambican patriarchy, it was vastly different from the machete she had to walk on daily as a Mozambican woman. It opened my eyes to the double standards and differences between how foreign women are viewed and treated in comparison to the local women.

With her by my side I also started to see different ways to handle the patriarchy in action. She reminded me that I don’t owe anybody niceness. She asserted her space and her innate right to it like it was nobody’s business, letting the backtalk fuel her motivation to build a life according to her. She is one of the strongest women I know and a huge inspiration. As weird as it may sound, I am grateful to how everything played out in Tofo, even the nasty. It was hurtful, yes. But the experience somehow shook me out of the role I thought I had to play as a visitor from a rich, European country. 

When I left Tofo, I went straight to Bilene, another sleepy seaside town in Mozambique, to meet my friend Inga. She is also a solo traveler from Sweden, sort of. At this point we had only known each other for three months tops but she had already become an integral part of my Mozambican experience. I poured my heart out to her, telling her all about the rumours, the beach boys and the scammer. We end up laughing at the whole situation, all my stumbles and the mess it all made.

It is nice to talk to somebody who doesn’t need me to explain the clashes that happens because I am foreign, that understands the culture and gender norms I grew up with. I feel seen and safe. It makes me wonder how the thing in Tofo would have played out if there were more women in the tourism sector. Not just as cleaners and cooks, but as guides, owners, bartenders, participants and party goers. How would it have transpired if more women were part of the public spaces and had a bigger voice?

What I do know is that for me, more women in public spaces makes me feel safe. That is usually how I judge when it is time for me to leave a party or a club when I’m out in new country. I leave when the local women start to leave. 

When I’m back in Maputo there is a big concert in Mafalala, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of town. Inga and I want to dance but the crowd mostly consists of young teenagers pushing through the crowds from one corner to the other. Each time we start dancing a ring of male spectators form around us, it makes me uncomfortable and uneasy.

Halfway through the night, we find ourselves in the middle of the crowd again. We are surrounded by what appears to be the grannies of the neighbourhood, they have formed a circle and together we dance our butts off. The women laugh, cheer and sing when I dance in the middle, from the corner of my eye I see how one of the grannies grabs a young man by the ear and pushes him out of our circle when he tries to dance with us. There is zero tolerance from the grannies, this is their space, and they have no time for the boys and men surrounding us. They are here to dance and dance we did.

I catch Inga’s eye across the sea of hijabs and shaking arms surrounding us. The joy I see in her eyes I know must mirror my own. Liberty. The freedom that comes from feeling safe and doing what you love. The memory gives me goose bumps. Women! I live for you!