The sun was setting over the buildings in the Baixa district. People hurried across the streets, buses honked, and the smell of roasted peanuts wafted from the corners. Mário and Professor Mahlemba walked slowly, observing the activity.
“Professor,” Mario began, “why does the city look so different from one neighborhood to another?”
In just a few minutes by car, we went from concrete to reeds, from light to darkness.”
Mahlemba took a deep breath. "Because that's how she was born, Mario.".
Between the years 1910 and 1940, Lourenço Marques was planned to be divided.
The city of cement was the center — electricity, asphalt, school, hospital.
The reed city was the limit — sand, distance, and oblivion.
It wasn't by chance: it was political.”
“"Politics?" Mario asked.
“Yes,” the professor replied. “Urban space was designed as a social boundary.”.
The houses near the sea were reserved for the colonists; the Africans lived further away, in areas called 'indigenous'. Even the wind seemed to obey this hierarchy: here came the breeze from the Indian Ocean; there, dust and smoke.‘
Mario looked around. "But, professor, if that structure was so unfair, why does it still seem to exist today?"“
Mahlemba smiled bitterly. “Because the city map never changed within the people. Even after independence, many carried the same perspective: the center as progress, the periphery as backwardness. The physical city was united, but the mental city remains divided.”
“"So the challenge is to reconstruct the perspective," said Mario.
“Exactly,” Mahlemba replied. “True independence begins when the son of the reed believes he has the same value as the son of the cement—and acts with the same confidence. The day that becomes natural, we will finally have one city.”
Mario watched the people passing by, coming from all directions.
“"Perhaps the future lies in the corners where these worlds intersect."”
Mahlemba nodded. "It's there, Mario — on the street corners — that cities reinvent themselves."“
Final message: Cities were designed to separate, but are lived in to unite. And when each neighborhood recognizes the value of the other, the nation will finally find its center.
Based on this text, give me a photo that depicts the text. I added photos of the city center to help visualize the scene.
