The chairman wrote my name in his diary. He asked where I lived, what I did, how long I had been there.
Then my camera was brought in.
“Look. We can put you in jail if we want.”
I can only tell you what happened to me, and when.
In all my years filming in Africa, nothing unpleasant had happened to me until 2024. That year, with the politics tense, a man with a camera looked suspicious. Police and a local chairman questioned me for filming a market without permission. Then, in December 2024, unrest hit foreign-owned shops. Before you go, check official travel advice.
- Where I live
- Mozambique, about six years by December 2024
- 2023
- Police stopped me on a dirt road after an orange orchard visit
- 2024
- Questioned by police and a local chairman over a market video. Came away the same day
- December 2024
- Looting of foreign-owned shops after the election ruling, Bangladeshi shops among them
- Was I arrested?
- No. I went to the police station myself
- Today's situation
- It changes. Check your government's official travel advice
01 — The planA market that comes once a week
I was going to film a market. That was all.
Once a week, a traditional market sits in one spot, the way our weekly haat does at home. People come from far away to buy and sell. It was cashew season, so farmers would be bringing in their cashews. I thought it was well worth seeing, especially for people from our country.
I was on the national highway. The microbus that goes there was running very late. So I spoke to a passing pickup, and it took me.
A man called Josefa was going to the market in it too. I asked how far. Thirty kilometres, I thought. It turned out to be 38.
The road was broken. We went over it wave after wave. Those kilometres felt like more than 100 in Bangladesh.
I know some words of the local language, so I tried a few. The man beside me kept asking, “What does this one mean? And this one?” He was checking. Then he said, “You really do know. I thought you had only heard them.”
Outside, people walked to the market with chickens in their hands. Men and women. For them, the distance didn't seem to matter. Someone carried cashews on a bicycle. Someone had water containers tied to the back of a motorbike. A woman waved from the roadside, and we stopped to take her too.
Even out there, Bangladeshi brothers had shops.
At the market, cashews were changing hands under a tree, next to the maize. People thought I was Chinese. One man came up holding a torn Chinese note and asked if I would take it. No, brother, I don't need that.
I got down and filmed the whole market, part by part, with my two cameras.
02 — Lunchtime“Who is filming?”
The video was finished. I had already said goodbye to you on camera.
At the market I had met a Bangladeshi brother and sat in his shop. Somewhere between half past twelve and half past one, we stepped out to go to his home for lunch.
Two local police were walking around. Nothing unusual. The Bangladeshis who run shops there kept a good relationship with the local administration, and this brother knew both of them.
They asked in a casual way. “Someone has brought a machine to film here. Who is it? Did you see?”
“Yes, that was me,” I said. “Why, what happened?”
“We got scared,” they said. Someone had phoned the officer in charge at the police station. A man was filming in the market with a machine.
One of them wanted to call the officer in charge. His phone had no balance. So he asked my Bangladeshi brother for the number, and called. “We've found the man. He has a YouTube channel. He just came to look around.”
The officer in charge said to tell the local council as well. The council is what we would call the union parishad.
“If it's a big problem, I'll go to the station myself,” I said. “I didn't film with any bad intention.”
“Fine. Go to the station once.”
“Then let's go together.”
“No. Go on your own.”
“If you go with us, the locals will think we are taking you away.”— One of the two policemen
My Bangladeshi brother said, “It's fine. I'll come with you.” A little later, we went to the station together.
03 — The council“Did you ask our permission?”
At the station, they were glad to know who I was. Then they took me somewhere harder.
“Someone informed us that a man had come with a machine to film. We were scared. There are protests and rallies in different places, so we were in a panic until now. Good that we know. Let's go and tell the council chairman.”
The council was next door. For the first time, I saw a council chairman be a little aggressive.
His room was very grand. He wrote my name in his diary. Where do I live? What do I do? Why was I filming?
I told him I have a YouTube channel. I have been to several countries, just travelling. I'm a traveller.
“YouTube traveller” and “blogger” meant nothing to him. So I put it simply. I go to different places and show the world the things it hasn't seen.
He suspected I might be a spy. We sat face to face, and he questioned me his own way. Where do you live? What do you do? How long have you been here?
“You came here to film. Did you inform us? Did you take permission?”
“No,” I said. I go to many places and film. I have never taken permission anywhere, so I didn't here either. I only came to see this market in cashew season, and to show it.
“They say you were filming with machines. Where are they?”
I had left them in the shop. My Bangladeshi brother said he could bring them.
04 — A quick decisionTwo cameras, and the one I sent for
I said one thing to my brother in Bangla.
There were two cameras in that shop. One had less footage on it. The other had more. If they wanted the camera, I guessed they would make me delete what was on it. So I asked him to bring only the one with less.
The footage you see at the start of my video was on the other one.
The camera arrived. Then the chairman said it.
“We can put you in jail if we want. First, the situation in Mozambique is bad now. And you could be a spy.”
I gave him my channel. “Please look. I uploaded a video just two days ago. See what kind of videos they are.”
He watched three or four of them. For about 20 to 25 minutes.
05 — The request“Delete them, and don't upload them”
He didn't skip. After two or three videos, he said something different.
“This is a social channel. You mix with all kinds of people, you travel around. That's all.”
Then he told me what I had done wrong. “If you had asked our permission just once, we would have been happy. We would have given interviews in your video. But you made a mistake. You came to this area without permission. You didn't tell the local administration. You shouldn't have done that.”
He knew the brother I came with. They had a good relationship. “But I have one request for you. Delete the videos, and don't upload them.”
“Yes, all right,” I said. “I'll delete them.”
Then he added a warning. “Careful. We have your channel. Don't bring the deleted ones back and upload them later. Our good relationship with your brother must not be spoiled.”
So I decided those market videos could not go up. What I uploaded was the other camera's footage, from the start of the trip up to just before the market.
That day, somehow, I made him understand. And I came away.
06 — The real reasonWhy a camera worried them that year
Looking back, I think it was about what a camera meant in 2024.
That year, Mozambique's political situation was unstable. The ruling party and the opposition. Strikes, blockades, many kinds of protest.
Maybe, to guard against protests or secret attacks, people were keeping watch in markets and in different areas. Someone like that may have found me suspicious and phoned the station. I don't know for sure.
With the situation bad, a man with a camera could be anything to anyone. Some think he is a journalist. Some think he is a spy. Some think he is from the ruling party, or from the opposition. Each side thinks its own way.
So moving around villages with a camera had become risky for me.
Other travellers usually can't get to villages like this one. I can, because I have lived in this country a long time and I have a feel for it. But until the situation got better, I didn't think I could keep coming to places like this. Maybe in another country.
It was the first time in Mozambique that I had to face something like this.
07 — 2023The road from the orange orchard
Police had stood in my way once before, in April 2023. It ended politely. That one is on camera, partly.
I had ridden out on a motorbike to a small orange orchard. The farmer told me he sold his oranges, but he couldn't find a good buyer. The farmer and I knocked oranges down with a long pole and filled a yellow jerrycan with them.
On the way out, along a narrow red-dirt track, a man came the other way on a motorbike. A little further on, three people were walking towards me on the road. One of them wore a khaki uniform.
In the video I put it in one line: “Police blocked the way!”
Then the camera went under my clothes. For almost a minute, all you see is blue cloth and a bit of sky. What you hear is polite. “Fine, thank you.” “Thank you too.” “Where are you going?”
The next shots are of the open, paved road, with the motorbike moving again.
I can't tell you more than that here. Under the cloth, the sound isn't clear enough for me to quote the rest of the conversation word for word.
08 — December 2024The night hundreds of foreign shops were attacked
A few weeks after that market, the bad situation the chairman spoke of became much worse.
Mozambique held its national and presidential election in October 2024. The ruling party's candidate was declared the winner. The same party had governed since independence in 1975.
One opposition party said it did not accept the result and went to court. Strikes and protests went on for about a month and a half. During those protests, many foreigners' businesses were looted, but on a smaller scale.
On 23 December, the court again declared the ruling party's candidate the winner. From then on, it became something much bigger.
As members of the Bangladeshi community, we were getting the news. In one night, across the country, hundreds of foreign businesses were attacked and smashed. The next day, 24 December, updates came in from all over. Pakistani, Indian, Chinese and other foreign businesses were being looted too.
On the second day we heard about the capital, Maputo, and the areas around it. Most foreigners' shops there were finished. People were left with nothing, overnight. Mills, factories and big warehouses were emptied. At night, the empty warehouses were set on fire.
On the third day, the news came from the north. In one town, I was told, there had been about 30 Bangladeshi shops. All of them were gone. Many Bangladeshis lived there with their families, and even their homes were attacked.
One Bangladeshi brother I heard about was a well-established man. First his shop went. Then his home. They took his children's clothes, his wife's clothes, his own clothes. His family had already left, with only what they were wearing, to save their lives.
The administration was a victim too. I heard that police were killed, and police stations, a court and government offices were set on fire. So the administration was in a weak state.
Why so much anger at foreigners? The argument of those who were angry was that foreigners take the country's natural resources and hold its businesses.
In one or two cities, nothing had happened yet. There, after learning from the first days of looting, the elders of our community worked out how to protect what they had. In a few cities, they kept guard all night.
09 — No embassyWho looks after Bangladeshis in Mozambique?
Many of you asked what the Bangladesh government was doing. Here is how it stood in December 2024.
There was no Bangladesh embassy in Mozambique. No Bangladeshi authority at all. We were looked after from the Bangladesh embassy in Portugal.
Mozambique is a country in Africa. Portugal is in Europe. Imagine someone in Bangladesh being told he would be looked after from Brazil. It isn't possible.
Mozambique's own government was in a shaky state. I couldn't see any assurance of safety for foreigners.
Three or four elders from the Bangladeshi community in Mozambique met advisers in Bangladesh and held a press conference. They had four demands. Protection, through international organisations, for whatever was left. An embassy in Mozambique, urgently. Rehabilitation for those left with nothing. And safety for the Bangladeshis who have settled there for good, with their homes, shops and families.
I ended that video with a prayer. Please pray that it goes in a good direction. May Allah protect our Bangladeshi brothers from this chaos.
10 — What I can tell youSo, is Mozambique safe?
I won't give you a yes or a no. I can give you dates.
Until 2024, in all my years filming in Africa, nothing unpleasant had happened to me. That is what I said in my video, and it was true for me.
In 2024, the politics changed how people saw a camera. A day at a market ended with the police and a chairman who thought I might be a spy. I came away that same day. But a whole market's footage never went up.
In December 2024, the danger was of a different kind. What I described then fell on the shops and homes of foreigners, Bangladeshis among them.
What helped me that day was simple. A Bangladeshi brother who knew the police and came with me. Going to the station on my own. Showing my channel and letting the chairman watch.
And what I did wrong is simple too. I filmed without telling the local administration. If you want to film in a village there, find out first what the local authorities expect.
Things in Mozambique can change quickly, as I saw in 2024. Before you go, check your own government's official travel advice for Mozambique. That advice is kept up to date. My story is from 2023 and 2024.
If you want to see the quieter side of my life there, read seven years in a Mozambique village.
WatchThe road to the market, and the story after
FAQQuestions people ask about safety in Mozambique
Is Mozambique safe to visit?
I can only tell you what happened to me. In all my years filming in Africa, nothing unpleasant happened to me until 2024, when police and a local chairman questioned me over a market video. In December 2024, unrest after the election hit foreign-owned shops. Things change, so check your government's official travel advice before you go.
Were you arrested in Mozambique?
No. In 2024 two police told me someone had reported a man filming in the market. I went to the police station myself, then a local council chairman questioned me, said they could put me in jail if they wanted, and asked me to delete the footage. I came away the same day.
Can you film in villages and markets in Mozambique?
I filmed a village market in 2024 without telling anyone, and the local chairman told me I should have asked permission and informed the local administration first. I can't tell you the rules. Ask the local authorities what they expect before you film, and check official sources.
Why did they think you might be a spy?
In 2024 Mozambique's politics were tense, with strikes and protests. In that situation, some people took a man with a camera for a journalist, a spy, or someone from the ruling party or the opposition.
What happened to Bangladeshi shops in Mozambique in December 2024?
After the court upheld the election result on 23 December 2024, foreign-owned businesses were attacked and looted across the country, Bangladeshi shops among them. In some places homes were attacked too, and one family I heard about left with only what they were wearing.
Is there a Bangladesh embassy in Mozambique?
In December 2024 there wasn't one, and Bangladeshis in Mozambique were looked after from the Bangladesh embassy in Portugal. This can change, so check with Bangladesh's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Have police stopped you in Mozambique before?
Yes, in April 2023, on a dirt road after I visited an orange orchard. I filmed it with the camera hidden under my clothes. The words I could hear were polite, and the next shots are back on the road.