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Paper short abstract

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in coastal Central Mozambique, this paper explores the potential of thinking with and through high-water marks by tracing how they exceed and extend into multiple, possible lifelines.

Paper long abstract

In many coastal towns and villages of Central Mozambique, walls display high-water marks—mnemonics of massive floods left by tropical cyclones’ heavy rains and storm surge. Inside a family house near the ruins of the former colonial Companhia do Buzi, hand-drawn dashes multiply below and above the flood lines—inscriptions that register the changing heights of its dwellers in relation to shifting thresholds of life-threatening water. Government officials and nongovernmental workers frequently invoke high-water traces—not only as tangible evidence to legitimise displacement and justify resettlement, but also as a basis for drafting emergency evacuation routes and preparedness protocols. High-water traces are further (in)visibly impressed—into trees and plants, into redrawn shorelines and riverbanks, and into what is absent (e.g. bare stilt posts from houses that once stood).

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores the potential of thinking with and through high-water marks across affects and effects, scales and actors. It traces how such marks exceed and extend into multiple, often conflicting “lifelines” that unfold long after the water recedes, as a way to interrogate what presents and futures they make appear possible.