Elevators
For being a pretty sprawling city, Maputo has a surprising number of tall buildings. Our apartment building has 23 floors (we live on the 17th), and there are many other buildings with at least 10 or 15 stories. Even more surprisingly is that many of these buildings don't have elevators that work!
The other day, I helped some friends move into their new apartment on the 9th floor. Without a working elevator, it was a lot of work to carry all the heavy bags up the stairs, but at least they didn't live on the 19th floor at the top. Imagine living there and walking up and down all those stairs every day or walking all the way down and then realizing you forgot something!
The crazy thing is that the building used to have elevators, but they weren't maintained and now they don't work anymore. Imagine how awful it must have been for someone living at the top of the building when the elevator stopped working and how badly the value of their flat must of fallen too. Who's going to buy a flat on the 19th floor of a building without working elevators?
The other day, I helped some friends move into their new apartment on the 9th floor. Without a working elevator, it was a lot of work to carry all the heavy bags up the stairs, but at least they didn't live on the 19th floor at the top. Imagine living there and walking up and down all those stairs every day or walking all the way down and then realizing you forgot something!
The crazy thing is that the building used to have elevators, but they weren't maintained and now they don't work anymore. Imagine how awful it must have been for someone living at the top of the building when the elevator stopped working and how badly the value of their flat must of fallen too. Who's going to buy a flat on the 19th floor of a building without working elevators?