The Only Country With A Gun On Their Flag

Plenty of countries throw some red color on their flag to symbolize the violence that helped get them founded. With so many similar flags though, splashing a few complementary colors together may not convey the kind of threat display that your newly founded Federated People’s Democratic Republic of whatever needs. Now, if one had zero knowledge of country flags, a good guess for a country with a gun on their flag might be the USA. Hell, you could probably get double-digit percentages of Americans to vote for a stylized AR-15 slapped over the stars & stripes if a certain short-fingered vulgarian liked the idea. But I digress…

The country we’re actually talking about here is Mozambique. My only prior reference point for Mozambique was probably one of the free international Coke flavors at Disney’s Epcot. I think I may have also recalled some “anti-imperial” mutterings from Noam Chomsky, picking crumbs out of his hobo beard while assailing a century of US foreign policy. Reading some of his work in my younger days without the benefit of having visited the places he’s referencing, it sounded like flipping a bird to the west and plastering Che Guevara’s face around could lead to some kind of egalitarian paradise. Alas, it didn’t quite work out that way. After the Cold War, the developing countries that bet on the wrong horse certainly didn’t raise the living conditions of their people. Today, Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in Africa. Depending on how you’re measuring it, the average annual wages there are ~$450. But at least they got some really cool Soviet monuments! I mean, not that they have the money to dismantle them now even if they wanted, I suppose.

Anyhow, how was the visit? Hmmm… Ok, first impressions, we’re jammed into this schweaty arrival hall with fifty Chinese miscreants yelling, pushing, line-cutting, getting their incorrect papers crumpled up and thrown back at them. It took a couple hours to: pay a visa fee and get a receipt. As for the city though, honestly I don’t think I can judge the country from the conditions in Maputo. I really couldn’t reconcile an average wage of less than $2/day with a city that had late-model luxury cars parked on the street unattended. The wealth disparity has to be just staggering. So even though we had a pretty decent tour of the capital & departed overland, I can’t help feeling like I didn’t actually see the place. What we did see though was actually a pretty decent time honestly. No scary incidents, friendly people and great food.

Maputo

Mozambique has some of the weirdest corporate art I’ve seen anywhere. Is this sculpture meant to provide visual interest to bank customers or to scare away would-be robbers?