A Skull on the Beach

Neville took us to a very sad place. During the war in Mozambique (mid 1970s to mid 1980s), hundreds of thousands of innocent people died (as the USA and Russia fought their proxy war). Civilians were the main casualties. In the early 1980s, a boat carrying 30 women and children to relative safety on the Pomene sand spit, capsized in a SE storm. Everyone drowned. Local tradition has it those those who die at sea must be buried on the shoreline. So the victims were all buried in the mangroves on the beach. Over time the estuary has changed shape, and waves have eroded the burial beach. We found human bones scattered like seashells across the beach as we landed. Below a palm we found a well-preserved skull. It was extremely sad to hold it and try to imagine past events, but also there was something beautiful about it. We buried the bones on the beach where we found them.