The Governor comes to visit

Last weekend the Governor of Nampula province came to visit Nacaroa. The district superintendent of education asked Sambo (since he teaches art, kind of) to decorate the two pavilions that reception for the governor would held in. Sambo rounded up me and a few students to help him. What sort of decorations are appropriate for the Governor? Decorations similar to an end-of-year picnic for a 3rd grade class. The supplies: two boxes of brightly colored magazines (Box 1: magazines for parents about how to talk to your child about sex. Box 2: “The future begins today,” magazines for 5th and 6th graders about how to be safe, why you should study, how to resolve problems without violence, etc. Both boxes should have been delivered to an elementary school in the district, but apparently never made it.) and two staplers. BYOS. (Bring Your Own Scissors) Well we brought our own scissors, and we started cutting up those magazines, and stapling together paper rings to make chains to hang from the ceiling and wrap around the posts of the pavilions. I’m not saying it wasn’t pretty, but if I didn’t know the occasion I would have guessed a 10-year-old's birthday party.

Note that “ladder” was not included in the supplies list, so in order to hang the chains from the ceiling we got a table to stand on, which worked fine for hanging things from the edges of the pavilions. But the roofs were very slanted, so then we got a chair to put on the table to hang things closer to the center. But the chair on the table wasn’t enough to reach the roof in the center of the pavilions. So then we got an American (me) to sit on the chair on the table, and students to stand on the table, and another student to stand on the top of the back of the chair on the table, supported by the students standing on the table, to hang the garlands from the center of the pavilions. In my opinion, way too risky, but as the students explained to me, “Mozambicans are very brave.”

We were also lucky enough to have some help cutting and stapling from some very excited neighborhood kids. It wasn’t every day they got to use scissors! And staplers, they’d seen at school, but rarely had the opportunity to be allowed to use! And, to top it all off, the American was present! Now in Mozambican culture, it’s very normal and appropriate for any adult to ask any kid (who they may or may not know) to run any errand or do any favor at any time. (ex: you open your door and tell the first kid you see to go to the market and buy you bread) And man, these kids decorating the pavilion got so excited whenever I would ask them to do something. (ex: Me-“Go give this stapler to so-and-so.” Kid-“OK!!!!!” and he or she would run as fast as they could to the person, give them the stapler, run back to me as fast as they could, tell me that they had successfully completed the task, and follow me around and wait excitedly for the next order.) And at the end, we gave them each a magazine, which they were inexplicably super excited and proud to receive, despite the fact that very few of them could read.

I also gave leftover magazines to the students in my English Theater group. Despite being 11th graders instead of the 5th and 6th grade target audience, they were also inexplicably excited to have magazines that explained menstruation and wet dreams, what to do in case of emergencies, etc. And now they bring these magazines with them to all of the rehearsals, and read them while they wait for the other students to arrive. Which demonstrates that in a country where very few people have personal reading materials, people are super excited about anything they can get, weather or not the topics are particularly relevant or interesting.