A Mozambican Derby

That should be read like, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  SO. Everyone knows that I absolutely love Kentucky (particularly Louisville) and that I rank the Kentucky Derby right behind Christmas and my Birthday for favorite holidays.  This was the second Derby that I’ve not been in Louisiville for (the first one I missed because of a Saturday morning Organic Chemisty exam – I was not pleased) and honestly I think it was the second most homesick I’ve been here! It sounds silly, but that’s such a cool time in Louisville – and I swear all of Kentucky is just prettier during those first few weeks!

So, my lovelyyy parents, knowing how much I love everything Derby, sent me an entire Derby 137 care package.  Complete with Derby glasses, plates, napkins, balloons, a tablecloth, a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon (a personal favorite) and mint julep syrup – it was prettyyy much a party in a box! So I had all of the Tete crew to Moatize for a Derby party (which, I’m pretty sure was Mozambique’s first ever Kentucky Derby party).  In addition to an abundance of improvised Southern food  (fried green tomatoes, Cajun sweet potato fries, baked cheese grits --- so. Good., sweet tea, mint juleps,  and derby pie) I made everyone pick a horse and explained alllll of the Derby traditions. I showed the pretty pictures of me and my friends and family at Oaks last year in all our pink and big hats…. Then I showed the pictures from when we went mud-diving in the infield on Derby day (which, btw, made me miss the whole Derby136 crew)

From a previously scheduled bet, I had Nehro and Mucho Macho Man (essentially forced upon me) and chose Animal Kingdom for my own horse.  So when, ohhh around 1 am, when I started yelling about how I had all three horses….well I’m sure Hannah and Amanda loved it! I did worry that no one would want to “play” derby with me anymore since it appeared that I rigged the betting somehow BUT I think the food and overall excitement won them over….. PCMoz goes to Derby, 2013!!!

The Thunta (Toon-ta) Walk

I feel like I rave about my school on a regular basis – we Dom Bosco is amazing and super progressive compared to the majority of Mozambican schools. Our school, which is Salesiano mission school, is very focused on “forming” our students into responsible community members and well rounded people.  That might sound like a normal high school in America, but here, where the majority of schools have teachers that just don’t show up and are where is often found in the highest authority figures….well, it’s kind of a big deal.  We have program for deaf students (and students who don’t speak) where my classes are signed as I speak.  Our students are constantly pressured to be professional looking and punctual (I can now pick out students who haven’t brushed their hair, kick out students who have their shirts untucked, and have had students sent home for the day because they showed up 2 minutes late to our morning assembly.  On the other “non-discipline” hand, our school is hella fun. We have random soccer tournements and basketball games between students and professors. We play chess and eat cookies during our morning interval (these kids just discovered chess, slash are obsessed with it). Anyways. I’m rambling. What I was getting at is that when our director asked if I would come on a “field trip” one Friday in May, I responded “um. Absolutely” (Oh and ps May is the “month of Mary” ---- rememeber, Catholic mission school --- so we have all kinds of crazy activities planned).

They told me that we were just going to “passear” (which means “walk” …. But its kind of leisurely, social type of walk). Easy! I did start to wonder if I should worry when my boys started asking “Teacher, vai passear con nosco?” (Teacher, will you walk with us?). “Sim, claro!” (Yes, of course!).  “Mais…..Teacher, vai consiger?” (But….. teacher, will you make it?) ……….. thanks for the encouragement guys.  I was like, shoot! Its just walking, how hard can it be!? If you’re not running or walking up a mountain, it cant be thatttt bad.  Well then I fould out that only like 9 teachers were actually going on this little walk.  Still, I wasn’t really concerned.

So Friday morning rolls around, and we all have to meet at school at 6 am – with a packed lunch and lots of water. Done. Then we take off towards the Zambezi river.  This is when I started to worry. These boys were doing what can only be described as power walking. And we were moving! We stopped about 3 k into the walk to stop and take roll and whatnot. Which is also when my students noticed that my face was BRIGHT red (my face turns red when I work out, shocking).  Apparently to a bunch of teenagers whose faces literally can’t turn red, this was, in fact, shocking.  Actually, one time my face turned bright red when I got really angry at one of my turmas (they were being punks) and they freaked out and started fanning me and told me to stop crying. So after I clarified that I was not angry, and that my face also turns red when I exercise (particularly in the heat of Tete), we continued on towards Thunta. 

I need to clarify that Thunta (as lovely as it is) is in the mato (bush). And therefore, the walk to Thunta is a little…..rough. So there we were, just cruising down a dirt “path” …. 300 students, 10 teachers, extreme heat. Oh, and a significant part of the path was sand –which, is super pleasant and easy to walk through in tennis shoes. Not.

After we had been walking for about 2 hours, I started dragging my feet a little. Luckily, I had one of my second year auto mechanics with me – Omar – and we were walking buddies. Omar is legit a full foot taller than any other student in our school and has one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen. Helen and I call him the gentle giant. And (this is the best part), his best friend is the shortest kid in the entire school. We regularly have to tell Omar to put Aurenlio down because he just throws him over his shoulder. 

Around 2 hours and 45 minutes, we finally made it to Thunta.  The bustling metropolis of Thunta consists of about 25 mud huts, a few farms, and a small Church on the bank of the river.  We sat down and rested for a while… I was legit tired and had some serious blisters forming on my feet. (I tried to mentally will my face back to its normal white self – which gets enough attention when its NOT red). Two of the Padres came with us and gave Mass in the little church – which included some sweet drum music, students giving the readings, and more aisle dancing (2 for 2 makes me think that’s normal).  Then we ate lunch, had a little assembly, and everyone was like “welp, lets head back” (are you kidding me?! We just walked 15 kilometers to eat lunch, go to church and walk back?!) For a while Helen and I though maybe there was a car somewhere we could get in – but then one of the Padres laughed at that…..so no-go on the ride home.  This is clearly why these boys were asking if we would make it!

So totally dreading the return trip, Omar and I started waking near the back of the pack. About 30 minutes in, some of the guys started asking if I was tired. Yes of course I’m tired. We’ve been walking forever!! So they said they could fix this problem. A pack of about 8 of them surrounded me, took both of my hands, and said that we were going to run like snakes were chasing us (they know I hate snakes). So. We took off running (and screaming and waving our arms and laughing hysterically) and passed the majority of the other kids.  And once you’re in the front of the pack, well, you can’t really slow down! Another one of my favorite kids showed up, and they started singing the “teacher Carolina” song (which consists of two parts : “Teacher Car-Car-Carolinaa” and “Eewhaaee”).  All in all, we finished strong around 5 pm. 

I may or may not have had to scoot around my bedroom floor that night because I couldn’t stand up and may or may not have limped for about 24 hours post-walk…. A

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