Reminiscing about tropical life in Mozambique of yore

MARGOT COHEN

Pivo, born in Johannesburg, became passionate about tracing the footsteps of her great-grandparents, Reuben and Rachel Morris Barnett, who emigrated to Lourenco Marques (LM) in Mozambique in 1900 from the UK with their eight children.

Despite the joys of wide open spaces, warm waters, and coconut palms, was the challenges of heat, humidity and the fear of mosquitoes, crocodiles and hippos.

Reuben established himself as a butcher and, among the small but growing Jewish community, the family learnt to speak Portuguese.

Four of the couple’s children married in LM where weddings took place in private homes, under a chuppah officiated by a rabbi from South Africa. Subsequently, their children, including Vivienne’s mother Jessie, became the first generation of Mozambican Jews.

The husband of their youngest daughter, supposedly owned the land on which a quaint synagogue was eventually built. It was consecrated by Rabbi Yehuda Landau in 1926 who came from Johannesburg for the occasion. The shul which was built by a Portuguese construction firm, has been restored and is still in operation today.

In 1928, Pivo’s South African-born father, Henry Moss, went to Lourenco Marques where he eventually became assistant manager of the Polana Hotel. Henry and Jessie married in Johannesburg and returned to the Polana where they had lived previously and during the Second World War. As part of the neutral Portuguese empire, the hotel during the war was renowned as a meeting place for spies and secret agents, both from Allied and other forces.

Lourenco Marques became known as “the Riviera of Africa” and the Polana Hotel, now owned by the Aga Khan Serena Hotel Group, remains the “Grand Dame of Africa”. It was designed by Sir Herbert Baker, who also designed the Union Buildings in Pretoria and was completed in 1922.

Henry and Jessie lived to ripe old ages, dying in 1999 and 1998.

Vivienne Pivo is currently working on a biography of her mother.