August 15, Stalls sell crackling chicken feet and sizzling plantain. Scores of men and women are gathered by a makeshift bar topped with corrugated steel.
Spirits are high. The sound of laughter rises above the rumble of trucks trundling by. Light from the gas station across the road illuminates the scene. Some of the women sit on white plastic chairs, nursing infants. It's a nativity scene of sorts, set under coconut trees and soundtracked by Marrabenta-style dance music surging from a battered loudspeaker. Luisa some names have been changed and I walk behind the bar, through dried mud and over shards of glass and used condoms.
We're at the huts now. It's 80 meticais for five minutes — about a pound. A bottle of beer in this town, to put things in context, costs In Beira, like everywhere else, sex sells — and there's a good chance that HIV will be part of the transaction.
Truckers drive here along the trade corridor that stretches from Zimbabwe's eastern border. The end of their journey is a Mozambican port city where life expectancy is less than 50 and HIV rates are among the highest in the world.
When they leave, that legacy often follows them. But while the government has made progress on controlling the epidemic in recent years, reaching the marginalised along the Beira corridor has remained difficult. How do you reach a population that is perpetually mobile? A population fearful of police intimidation, or of being found out by friends and family? In their eyes, they have little to gain from meeting you and everything to lose.
