Almost at the centre of civil war!

Mozambique was a Portuguese colony until 1975, when the country was handed over to the Frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) following capitulation by Portugal after almost 10 years of a terrorist war. Frelimo had been relatively ineffective during the war, based outside the country and receiving support mainly from Russia, but in April 1974 a coup in Portugal overthrew the government and the new regime decided against supporting the expensive war against Frelimo, so in September 1974 it was decreed that the army would n longer fight against Frelimo, and that power would be handed over in 1975 with the granting of Independence.
This move was not very popular in Mozambique, and there was much dissent among the population, who felt that at the very least elections should be held, not simply a handover to a foreign-based terrorist organisation, of which, it was rumoured, many of the leaders were not even Mozambican or Portuguese-speaking. It was believed that Portugal had sold out the people of Mozambique, many of whom, myself included (as I had lived there since 1967), had not seen any real evidence of the terrorist war! Despite this the army was being recalled to the city bases, and some were even being sent back to Portugal.
There was a major incident in Lourenço Marques, Mozambique's capital, which almost spiralled out into civil war. According to legend a group of recalled Marines were having coffee in the city centre and a shoe-shine boy approached, sporting a t-shirt with the Frelimo flag on it. He pointed to this shirt and told the Marines that soon they would be honouring this flag, not the flag of Portugal, and so one of the Marines gave him a slap and told him to be on his way. The boy called the Police, and when the officer remonstrated with the soldiers all hell broke loose. The Marines were armed and a gunfight ensued resulting in a few civilian casualties, before their General managed to calm things down and they were arrested and taken back to base.
This disturbance spurred the disgruntled public to start a movement in Beira for a free independent Mozambique, with elections to decide on the future. The main square - in front of the office block I worked in! - was renamed (unofficially) Independence Square, and a lorry was parked there, equipped with loudspeakers, with a variety of people, some local politicians, speaking for a free multi-racial (Mozambique was one of the few sub-Saharan countries that didn't have a racist agenda prior to Independence) independence, rather than the capitulation proposed by Portugal. There were large, not huge, crowds in attendance, and the whole thing was incredibly peaceful and civilised.
I had a small one-bedroomed apartment not far from the city centre and my sister had travelled down from Luabo, in Zambézia province, with my nephew who was only 4 at the time. The unrest caused by the troubles in Lourenço Marques had unnerved some people on the British-run Sugar Estate on the banks of the Zambezi, which was felt to be a serious target for Frelimo as it provided around 10% of the country's foreign revenue, so, like my sister, had come to the city for a few days while the situation was tense.
The demonstration had started on the Saturday, and on Sunday many of the expats had met at the golf club and discussed the situation. There was talk of a local strike on the Monday to support the movement, and as the company I worked for was a South African owned one, it was felt that we should comply to show support, but my boss asked that we all turned up for work and a decision would be taken if the demonstration was still in place in front of our office.
My sister was hoping to do some shopping while in Beira, and as it was only a short walk to the centre it was agreed that if I didn't come home by 09.00 (we started at 07.00, so a decision on work would have been made very early) then it was safe for her to make her way in.
I arrived at work and there was a crowd of a few hundred around the truck, all chanting and waving placards, but still peacefully demonstrating - so I parked round the back of the building and made my way inside. Everyone was at the front window overlooking the square, which apart from the demonstration on one corner, pretty much looked like any other day with people walking through on their daily business, but it was soon decided that we would also close since many of our clients would be closed, and therefore it was a prudent decision. 
Before anyone could leave, however, army trucks started pouring into the square opposite the demonstrators and armed troops dismounted. They formed up across the square and told the demonstrators to disperse, but then charged across the square towards the demonstrators! We saw innocent people simply walking through the square being hit with batons, and when an elderly couple were knocked down just below us our office manager (a Scot) ran down, against advice, to offer assistance. There were a few gunshots, and as the crowd ran out of the square behind our building, where my car was parked, there were a couple of grenade blasts too!
We were trapped in our building as the army were all milling about in the square and the streets surrounding us, and there was no way I could warn my sister what was going on, and expected at any moment to see her wander into the square with my nephew in tow! By 10.00 all was quiet again, though there was still an army presence, and it was decided that it was safe enough for us all to leave, and stay away until at least Wednesday when things hopefully would have calmed down.
I quickly drove home to find that my sister was safely at home, my domestic help (part-time) had warned her that the streets were not safe, and she had waited to hear from me! We headed out of town to the beach for the rest of the day, and it went without incident - apart from getting two punctures, and having to drive slowly on the second flat tyre to a repair place to get them both fixed as it was deemed unsafe to leave the car and walk with 2 tyres.
It turned out the the government in Lourenço Marques had ordered the army to put down any resistance to the handover the following year, which further enraged many - the army were no longer going to fight against the terrorists, but were going to fight against its own people who were simply exercising their right to protest peacefully!
I found out later in the year, before leaving for South Africa in January 1975, that following the decree in September that Frelimo would be given power in 1975, a powerful organisation, funded by many wealthy Mozambicans who stood to lose a lot upon Independence, and with some serious military firepower, had been planning to mount a coup late in 1975 to take power and thwart the proposed Independence. They had hoped that by then the Portuguese military forces would have been severely depleted, and that Portugal would not have had the stomach to oppose the coup, who had numbers and weapons, so they could have easily taken over. The premature demonstrations had resulted in the army being ordered to stand against any threats to the Independence process, effectively stymieing their coup ambitions.
By Wednesday life had returned to normal, so I went back to work, my sister and nephew returned to Luabo, and it was as though nothing had ever happened!

Evening out with the gang in Beira, Mozambique

Mozambique was my home from 1967 until 1975 when I moved down permanently to South Africa - the first years I lived there during holidays from school in Rhodesia, and university in South Africa, but in 1974 I started working full-time in Beira as an articled clerk at a firm of South African Chartered Accountants.
My Portuguese was pretty good by then as I had learnt the basics in Angola between 1960 and 1962, and used it extensively during my holidays in Luabo, a sugar estate on the banks of the Zambezi, some 250 miles (400 kms) from Beira, so had no problems using it daily at work, even though many of our clients had English-speaking staff.
I had gone into Auditing primarily because my father was an Accountant, but I had also met a young auditor in Luabo, who had come from Beira as part of the team that audited the sugar estate books, and he worked for the company I joined, though he left the firm shortly before I started. We hung out together - he was a lot younger than the rest of the auditing team and only a couple of years older than me - while they were on the sugar estate and became friends, so met up when I moved to Beira.
Phil was English, but his mother had re-married a Portuguese man when he was very young so he had been brought up in Beira and spoke Portuguese like a native. The rest of our regular "gang" comprised of John (Portuguese father and South African mother), George (Greek, but lived in Beira all his life), and Nando (Portuguese), and the 5 of us hung out most evenings, sometimes meeting up with others (notably a couple of other Greeks), but generally we started out at the Mexicana - a cafe just outside the city centre. 
The Mexicana was a regular haunt for other ex-pats too - it had a bar attached as well as the regular coffee shop, and had tables on the pavement as well as indoors, and was always buzzing. Back in those days you could sit and nurse a coffee or soft drink for hours and no-one would bother you! They also made the best toasted cheese sandwiches I have ever eaten (before or since!) and later on it became my lunch-time spot!
Phil and I were working, though neither of us earned that much, Nando was helping support his family, so had left school to work at lowly paid jobs, helping at home as his father had walked out years before leaving his mother to provide for him, his older sister (who at the time was expecting her first child from her husband was away in the army doing his 5 years' national service), and her mother who also lived with them! George and John were still finishing High School - not that unusual in Mozambique at the time, even though they were both around 20 years old. They got "pocket money" from their families and back then money went a long way - if you had £5 in your pocket on Friday night you could afford to eat out Friday and Saturday, catch a movie both nights, and still have some money left over for a couple of beers Sunday evening!
We rarely drank alcohol back then, it was just something we didn't do and not a conscious decision - though Phil and Nando rode motorbikes (Nando a 50cc and Phil a 350cc), and George and I drove (coincidentally we both had Ford Cortina 1600 estates - his belonged to his father), and coffee and/or soft drinks were cheap. So we met up at the Mexicana and decided what to do that evening - which sometimes meant we sat around and chatted all night!! Sometimes we would head back to "George's Garage" - as he was a pretty good motorbike mechanic and a steady stream of guys would turn up for him to do repairs for them. He used to get them to strip the bikes down following his instructions and then did all the technical stuff, which often entailed swapping the 50cc internal parts (50cc bikes didn't require a licence!) for 85cc kits. This used to increase the top speeds from (unlimited!) 50mph (80kph) to 60-70mph (96-112kph), but at maximum speed the engines didn't last long as the crankshaft and all other components were not up to the additional strain!!
So whatever we decided to do had to be cheap - as Nando had very little left after helping his family out, and wouldn't allow us to pay for him. The cinema was a good option - it cost next to nothing to get in, and though the films were pretty old for the most part it was a nice diversion - our favourites being kung-fu movies, sometimes obscure ones starring Bruce Lee!!
During 1974 they decided to abolish movie censorship, and though this didn't mean that there was an influx of pornography in the cinemas it did mean that content was a little more, shall we say, salacious! Compared to what is shown on TV today in everyday programmes it was very tame, but at the time some of this was considered titillating! One evening we watched a foreign language film, subtitled in Portuguese, and there was a simulated rape scene - again nothing shown, not even a bare breast, but it certainly excited many of the male members of the audience, including some of our group!
When the movie ended someone suggested we head to "Miramortes". I asked what this was, and they said they would show me - so we jumped in the car and set off. "Miramar" means sea-view, from "mira" and "mar", and "miramortes" means "dead-view" - it is an apartment block overlooking the cemetery! This particular apartment block is where the "ladies of the night" live - some of them work the many night-clubs in Beira (it is a port town) so from around 23.00 men start gathering outside the apartment block, many sitting on the pavement, waiting for the club girls to come home - as it is cheaper than going to the club and picking one up there where you will also be paying a "club fee"!
I was told that the "better" girls are the ones who work the clubs, but that many others were "available" inside. I was already pretty horrified by this but went inside with my friends - George and John in particular seemed fairly familiar with the layout! We went up in the lift to the 10th floor from where we could see most of the other floors - the building was "U-shaped" with the lift at the base of the "U" and an open courtyard below so we could see the two open corridors on all the floors below us. Almost every door we could see had a queue of men outside!
By now I was nauseated by the sight. Men were going in and out of these apartments at an alarming rate, and on one occasion a scantily clad woman came out and called across to a friend, asking how she was doing! We were only there a few minutes, but in that time several men went into each apartment. I looked at Phil, and he looked as shocked as I was, even though this was his home town, and suggested we leave - and rather reluctantly, George and John agreed (Nando hadn't joined us as he had work early in the morning). Before driving away I asked the others if they really frequented that place, and they admitted that occasionally they did. Knowing that condoms were not in common usage back then (it was also a Catholic country so birth control was illegal!) I asked about diseases, and they admitted that "getting a dose" was commonplace too, but they had a friend at the hospital who gave them free shots! "Miramortes" was never again mentioned in my presence.