Dia da Criança

Here in Mozambique we have a day for everything. June 1st for example was Children's Day. Like all holidays here it involved parading through town, speeches by local dignitaries, laying flowers at our plaza dedicated to national heroes, and singing and dancing. The Administrative Chief organized a soccer match between the primary school and our 8th grade students. Unfortunately it was scheduled during morning classes and about 25 kids skipped French to cheer on our team; Madame Janet was not pleased. Only the elementary school had the day off, but many of our high schoolers claimed to still be children to try to get out of classes. In reality many of them are already adults, in their late teens and early twenties; some already have their own children. The match went into extra time and ended with our side winning in a penalty shoot-out. We missed the first hour of afternoon class. For our victory the Chief presented our school with a beautiful red ball
sporting the FRELIMO (Mozambique's highly visible ruling party since independence) logo. Everyone celebrated on the field, singing and dancing and hugging our players, and about half the kids eventually made it back to school for classes.