Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects upon the entanglements of sand, life, and death along and around the Buzi River delta, Central Mozambique. It looks at how people navigate through loss, displacement, unpredictability, but also resist (the effects of) environmental change by engaging with sand.

Paper long abstract:

"This terra (dirt, sand) wasn’t from here; ...the colour and sound are different.” Ana tells me while sweeping the sand around her housing plot. “Anyhow, this is my terra (land).” In 2019, tropical cyclone Idai made landfall in Central Mozambique. Extreme winds, heavy rains, followed by days of flooding, left behind a trace of destruction. Ana lost relatives and friends, some of whom were never retrieved. She speaks of grief in front of an immense Mango tree packed with unripened mangoes. “The land is now more fertile,” she eventually concedes.

I travel in a crowded boat from the town of Buzi to the coastal city of Beira. I’m given a place next to the skipper, over the humid sand that piles on the rear. It’s sand from Praia Nova, Beira’s beachside informal neighbourhood where the skipper lives. Sand is what enables the boat to sail, as its weight ensures the underpowered engine reaches the water. Pointing to a bank of silt that stretches from the riverside, where we can see people loading buckets of sand for construction, he nestles himself onto the sand and says “sand can be tricky”.

In this piece, I introduce a collection of ethnographic vignettes arising from recent fieldwork along and around the Buzi River delta to reflect upon how sand (dirt, silt, dust), life, and death are locally entangled. The paper sensorially and theoretically explores how people navigate through loss, displacement, unpredictability, but also resist (the effects of) environmental change by engaging with sand.