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.