Easter in Moz-am-bee-key

Despite being raised in a Catholic home and having attended 13 years of Catholic school, I’m not particularly religious. I didn’t attend Mass during college and typically reserve going to Church as a “family outing” with the added bonus of brunch and creeping on old gradeschool classmates. Plus, even though I’ve been assured it doesn’t work this way, I went to Mass twice a week for 10+ years and therefore am still using up those extras “mass points” I’ve accrued.  OK, but for real. In all seriousness, church (for me) is something I like to do with my family….and seeing as my family is not here in Mozambique, I haven’t felt the urge to go.  However, my mom has been dropping hints for a few weeks now about how Easter here might be something I want to try out. And with the distinct feeling she’s being encouraged by a higher power (……….my grandma) , I decided to go.

So I start asking around – “what time is mass on Sunday?”…. Some of my students told me 6 am (immediately planning how I’m getting out of this one) and then one of the nuns told me that it started at 8 (that’s a big time difference…in fact, its twice the length of what mass should be!).  At this point, I decided to ask the man in charge – Padre Ricardo – who said 7:30. Doable. So after selecting something relatively conservative enough to wear and appropriately bandaging the constantly infected sores on my feet (…… I bought some cute shoes in the market and refuse to let some minor flesh wounds stop me from walking 2.5 miles in them.  Heyyyyy auntie, I  still do that here).  It’s about a half an hour walk to the Catholic church in Moatize, so I left the house at 6:45 hoping that 15 minutes is enough time to snag myself a seat (note:  in Easter’s past… I was firmly against walking to church AND arriving more than 15 minutes early even though I know that’s not enough time to reserve seats for my entire family). Anyways, I finally get to Church and there’s a crowd of people standing outside along with some kids, probably 9-17 years old lining up outside. And these kids were fancyyyy. Like, full length white dresses, lots of hair…thing?,  lace, gloves, bow ties, the works. Which is when I remembered some of my students telling me that they were being baptized this weekend.  So they 30 or so kids process in, and then the rest of the crowd outside files into the church.  The church itself is actually pretty – simple wooden pews, lots of stained glass (which may or may not be out of place), vaulted tin roof.

So I sit down somewhere near the back in a relatively empty pew with a few other women (which, in the next 15 mintues would be shoulder-to-shoulder packed) and in comes the processional. But not just the priest and some alter servers. Its like, 20 or so young girls (7-14 years old maybe) with matching capulanas, then a whole pack of other people (alter servers? I don’t know…..) wearing white robes with the same coordinating capulanas, then some of the Brothers who live at the mission and finally Padre Ricardo (who matched them as well).  The choir started singing – and this isn’t like, 12 people who sound so-so….they’re taking up a solid quarter of the church and they’re rocking whatever it is that they’re singing. Cue the drums – and all of the girls start dancing down the aisle (I was fighting off “Forever” by Chris Brown in my head).  The music was absolutely beautiful – I was super impressed. Then when the first song lasted 15 minutes, I realized we were going to be in here for a while). 

Everything else was pretty much right on track with Catholic Mass at home. Someone translated the homily into Nyugue (the local language). There was a lot of singing and dancing. Lots of Baptisms and First Communions, which was cool.  So 3.5 hours later, I started my long walk home!  But first I ran into one of the ladies that sells me tomatoes and peppers in the market, one of my students (Octavio) who slipped in 2 hours late to catch his girlfriends baptism, and another neighbor.

There you have it. Easter   in Moz-am-bee-key!  (that’s how they say it here) I can’t say I wouldn’t have rather been coloring hard boiled eggs with my family (that we don’t hunt anymore, but just make into egg salad the next day. Which is why I try to secretly crack my eggs so that we have colorful egg salad – I swear it tastes better!) but I enjoyed being a part of the celebration here too.

Reconnect Conference

This past week, all of Moz15 volunteers in the central region (Tete, Manica and Sofala) have been in Chimoio for a little in-service training.  Basically, we’ve been posting up in a pretty sweet hotel enjoying real beds (I forget that I don’t have an actual bed in Moatize) hot showers (its been 4 months), all the food we can eat (seriously they feed us every 2 hours….its out of control), and catching up with friends.  Plus, we’ve been swapping ideas and hashing out our teaching problems – which has actually been extremely helpful.

Plus, this conference is getting us ready to start some of our secondary projects. Besides “coaching” my basketball team, Helen and I are starting REDES group (REDES translates into “girls in development, education and health).  Basically, it’s a nationally recognized group for high school girls that is aimed at increasing self-esteem and empowering young Mozambican women.  Some of the girls at our school are really struggling.  They’re just not making the grades and really need a little bit of encouragement.  So hopefully we’ll be able to help a little. Other fun things we’re getting ready to launch: Science fair (could be a challenge), and an English club for advanced students.  Basically, we’re getting ready to seriously step up our game at Dom Bosco!

The other big change that’s (hopefully) getting ready to take place….moving houses.  Our commute is getting a little ridiculous – ie we’ve been waiting for 45 minutes just to get on a chapa.  Plus, we’re so removed from our community (students, professors, etc) that we would reallyyyyyy benefit from living within walking distance from our school. So, there’s a lot of leg-work to be done…but we think we’re going to be able to get it done

Crispen, me, Teacher and Alex

I went to PE class with my welding students. It.was.hilarious. Oh and they have to wear all white....which is ridiculous if you ask me.... Basically, they walked and ran around the soccer field the entire time.

Some of my auto mechanic kids

Dom Bosco

civil construction kids

Carpentry students

3rd year students capinar-ing

Dia da Mulher

toasting

mid living-room dance party

little women. slash note rosa's husband who has been banned from the house

7 de Abril - Dia da Mulher Moçambicana

7 de Abril - Dia de Mulher Moçambicana

April 7th is the Day of the Mozambican Woman (“is there a day for American women?” ….. shame…. “nope”) So what better way to spend this national holiday than with our friend and fellow profesorra Rosa?! She invited us to her house for the day – and as usual, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. So we went over around noon (with some cupcakes, because, ya know, I don’t like to go places empty handed) and she put us to work peeling about 40 potatoes. Hint number one that this was not a small-ish gathering. Rosa is 29 and married with two absolutely adorable little boys (ages 3 and 5. Precious) and teaches computer classes at Dom Bosco. She’s probably one of the most welcoming Mozambican women I’ve ever met – which is how we ended up at this little party for Rosa and her sister-in-laws.

When the rest of the women showed up (and promptly kicked Rosa’s husband out of the house….this is woman’s day remember), we all sat around in the living room and feasted on all kinds of delicious foods : 3 types of chicken, fish, pastas, salads….. well done Rosa, well done! Not only did about 5 other Mozambican women come over, but we probably had about 15 little kids/babies there too(mostly girls, of course).

After we’d eaten and talked to everyone for a while (it was about 4 o’clock), we told them we were heading out (we have “banditos” in our neighborhood and therefore have been strictly warned by our overprotective army of students that we are NOT to walk around after dark…..so that kilometer walk from the main road to our house any time after 6 pm is a no go). Well. These ladies were having none of this. They freaked out! “Someone will take you home later!” “We have a car!” “But we haven’t danced yet!” So…. Clearly we weren’t going anywhere. At which point I accept it and crack open another beer (I mean, if I’m going to have to dance ……) And they were not kidding about the dancing. They started blasting music and breaking it down in the living room. Naturally, I’m totally incapable of dancing like a Mozambican but they made me try. So there we are. Just dancing and drinking with a bunch of Mozambican women around Rosa’s living room. I’m not kidding, this went on for ohhhhh 3 hours. We listened to Mozambican music, traditional music (the dances for those songs are crazy hard ps), Michael Jackson. You name it, we listened to it and danced to it.

At one point, they broke into chants (slash songs?) about Mozambican women and Josina Machel – who was the First Lady of Mozambique and is the main cauase of Women’s Day. And afterward the oldest lady with us cracked open a bottle of champagne and we toasted to women everywhere. Around 9:30, Rosa’s husband (who had been banned from the house) drove us back to Moatize. All in all – such a great holiday!! Why don’t we have a day off work that’s designated to just have fun girlie parties?

Unfortunately, Eduardo (or other roommate) greeted us with some bad news at home. Padre Eliseo – the priest that is Eduardo’s boss and owns our house – was driving a mission truck with some local Moatize kids (none were students at Dom Bosco). He had just given a mass at the Catholic church for Women’s Day and was headed to the city when he failed to make a turn in the road. His truck rolled off the road, and even though they eventually made it to the hospital, he had passed away. The kids he was are in the hospital with some broken bones, but apparently they’re in decent shape. All of our “games” were cancelled at school today because of the tragedy, and instead, our carpentry students built a casket and our auto mechanics received the totaled truck to see if they could spare any parts.

Please send good thoughts and prayers our direction – that the community will be able to fill the shoes of this caring man. Sorry this ended on a sad note, but I guess that’s the way it goes sometimes.


Lots of love to yall back home!

The “break” that wasn’t

This week at Dom Bosco was “interopçõa lectiva”…. Basically it is a week long break in between the 2 quarters of this semester.  Helen and I talked about going somewhere fun since we have this random free week.  However, I am a very skilled procrastinator and didn’t get around to making any crazy plans. Which is good for two reason. 1. This “break” was not an actual break… I have been at school every day this week (except Thursday because that was a national holiday – more about that later!). All of the teachers have been working on recording grades in the “livros de turma” that contain hundreds of tediously written grades for each homeroom. For real, writing grades out for 40 kids in pencil and then writing them all again in pen? Its kinddd of a pain. But what are ya gonna do?! And reason number 2 my procrastination has paid off : our visas expired about two weeks ago and Peace Corps put all Moz15 volunteers on Stand Fast. That’s code for “you can’t leave your site.” So really, it’s a good thing I didn’t plan anything! Some things just work out that way…

In other news, the students this week took turns working around the school and having little “mini retreats” where they play games and watch movies and whatnot for the day.  So since I’m not a “director de turma” and I don’t have my own fancy grade book – I’ve been creeping around school seeing what everyone else is doing. I’ve been roped into playing something that resembled Simon Says and weaseled my way out of the Moz version of Duck Duck Goose that has been modified to include throwing things at the runner. I’ve worked a little – mostly just because my students think its funny for me to use a hoe out in the fields.  The last time I had to “control” students was before I knew any of them, the first week of school. Well this week, not only were they excited to have me there with them – but I knew all of their names and could actually WRITE their names down! Which is a HUGE improvement from not being able to readdd their names. I mean, when there and N’s and G’s and H’s all next to each other – I don’t know what to do with that. Ha!