Dia da Mulher (Women's Day)

I am often called a bad wife by our neighbors for letting Luc do
things like cook, clean, wash clothes, or other sorts of traditional
women's work instead of letting him relax while I slave away. Well at
least there's one day a year when this is not a problem: Mozambican
Women's Day. This remnant of Mozambique's socialist past (along with
Heroes Day and Workers' Day) commemorates the day Josina Machel died,
wife of the first president and father of the independance movement,
Samora Machel. We had no school for the day and instead gathered at
the town center for a ceremony with the whole community. Luc and I
have been working with our youth groups school to prepare a play for
the occasion discouraging early marriage, a common problem here. Our
groups also made songs and dances to go along. The celebration was
typically disorganized: it started two hours late, had no real agenda
and no one was sure who was running the whole thing. But there was a
large audience and after a lengthy flag ceremony (20 minutes and the
flag was upside down still), greetings from all the political parties
and local groups (1 hour), and switching venues, our students finally
got to perform. With the eager audience inching in on all sides of our
performance space, our actors had to plow through 8 layers of kids to
enter or exit a scene. But everyone enjoyed their performances and our
kids felt very proud afterwards. In the afternoon there was an
all-female soccer match - teachers vs. students. Being the only
secondary school female teacher, I felt major pressure to join in with
the primary 'professoras', much to my students' delight! I didn't do
anything great or anything stupid (thank goodness). Luc made sure to
tell lots of people at the game that he was going to make me dinner
for Women's Day... It was unclear if he inspired any other men to do
the same!