Chega_Arroz: Holidays & English Theatre

Holidays and English Theatre

There are so many national holidays here I honestly can’t keep track of them anymore. Whenever there is a holiday though many students travel back to their villages (usually just a couple kilometers/days travel away) and skip school for the entire week. This of course is really frustrating but I’ve come to learn that I just cannot teach any new material on weeks when there is a holiday.

Aside from students skipping school, a holiday means an entire day (or couple of days) of people day drinking and hanging out. Usually when there’s a holiday I would escape and go to Chimoio to hangout with the other volunteers or I’d spend the entire day cooped up in my house reading a book and hiding from all the drunk people. Well last week, for FADM day I spent my day a little differently. I met my English theatre group at school and they practiced their skit a couple of times, then we walked to the town praza and they performed their piece for the community. Because their play was in English, one of the students also gave an introduction and summary in Portuguese before and after their piece, and it went so well! Even though people couldn’t understand what they were saying, they were very interested. When one person speaks English, people are curious, but when a whole bunch of high school students start acting and speaking in clear English, everyone runs to see what is going on. It was really neat, while my students performed there was a big huddle of people around them trying to listen in and see what was going on. After my students performed, and the little celebration was over everyone left the praza to go visit friends, eat food and likely day drink.

On my walk home I stopped to visit a neighbor, Joanna, who is an incredibly friendly woman who saw me walking one time, and just wanted to be my friend. Now I visit her about once a week just to catch up and sometimes we go to the market together. Well this specific visit turned into a pretty long visit in which I was fed breakfast and coffee and met her husband who was in town for the holiday. After eating and chatting we all watched the Mozambican women’s basketball team play on TV, that was kind of strange, I never watch TV here! After having breakfast with Joanna and her family I wandered home and picked up Amendoim so we could walk around town some more. I spent the rest of my morning visiting neighbors and talking to people. Then I went to a friend’s house and helped her cook this huge feast, which we shared with some of her friends from Zimbabwe. Overall it was a pretty awesome day, it helped me realize that I do have friends in my community. I don’t gossip with them, talk about sports or politics and I certainly don’t drink a beer with them but they’re my friends and they’re pretty wonderful. Oh I also ate some chicken and I didn’t get sick so that was pretty exciting. Talk about integration.

Three days after FADM day I took my students to Chimoio for the provincial English theatre competition. My students didn’t win any big awards; their piece was twice as long as it was supposed to be and they got a little carried away in their partying scenes but they had a really great time. (Some of the other volunteers told me they were really impressed with my groups English speaking skills too!) Initially my students were disappointed not to place in the competition but I reminded them that this was their first year competing and that many of the schools they competed against had been doing this for years. This seemed to lighten their mood a bit, and they are already talking about how much better their skit will be next year! So overall, even with the stress of having students show up hours late everyday for meetings, and completely ignore some of the advice I gave them, and feeling like my colleagues completely abandoned me with this project I think English theatre was a great success. Aside from actually practicing their English, my students got to spend a day in the city, meeting other students and teachers. I also met a teacher who works at the primary school in my village who wants to collaborate on projects next year and is actually reliable and excited about teaching! Oh and they are adamant about finally starting and English club. Cool, I can’t wait for next year!