Ilha blog – Macuti town

Almost all the 13,000 inhabitants of Ilha live in half its tiny area, in the ‘makuti’ town, so called because of the makuti palm used to roof the huts there. The makuti huts house tailors, jewellers, carpenters, convenience stores or private residences with barely anything outside to inform you. You really need a guide to give you the temerity to walk through the doorways, not knowing if it’s a public or private space. The line is blurry anyway, with many families supplementing their income by renting space to teachers or students for example, or simply sharing space with other families. Indeed, one of our plans is to give legal title to one family per house, as part of formalising the population there, and ultimately reducing crowding.

The town is especially ‘makuti’ in feel as the roofs are at ankle level, built as it is in the bottom of a lime quarry. Originally the southern half of the island was dug out to build the colonial houses of the northern half (and buildings as far south as Inhambane), and then once abandoned (or possibly deemed dangerous as it is below sea level), was used to house slaves before they embarked from the warehouses of the stone town. The makuti town evolved from there when the slave trade was outlawed.

Hafiz, one of the heads of the Muslim confrarias on Ilha, told us an amazing story about one bairro (neighbourhood), where the old slave families took to prostitution to survive, visiting the Portuguese soldiers in the fort for their fare. They gave birth to mulatto babies back in the bairro, which has meant that that bairro ever since has had more islanders with European features.


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