The Big Competition

On the big day, we all met at our school before sunrise. Our students wanted to actually sleep in the classrooms to make sure no one's late arrival delayed our departure, but we wouldn't let them. Despite our own exhaustion, we were there by 4a.m., and somewhat miraculously we were ready to go by 5am. Most of our kids have never left Tete province, so a trip to Chimoio is a big deal. They were so excited they sang and danced the entire 10 hours we spent on the bus (including 1 hour waiting to cross the ailing bridge over the Zambeze). For our rural students, many aspects of city life were novelties, like showers, restaurants, stores, and big crowds. Every time we are in Chimoio, we climb the nearby rock formation which looks like the face of an old man; we continued the tradition taking our group to the top of the moderate slope. Despite the urban distractions, our main purpose was to present our plays. The competition took place in an old Portuguese theater, with a real stage. With 14 schools participating, the presentations took all morning. Luckily we drew numbers 4 and 5, so we didn't have to go first, or wait too long for our turn. Our kids got nervous with the big crowds, but did a great job delivering their lines. Our little school, which only goes to 10^th grade, couldn't compete with the big city schools with teams stacked with 11^th and 12^th graders: our teams came in last and second to last place. We had asked the judges to announce only the top 3 places, but Mozambicans love to publically read everyone's exact position. Although all the PCVs, as Americans, thought this was terrible, especially for the bottom kids like ours, students here are used to this type of public reporting of results and weren't too phased. Our teams were proud to be the only ones with 8^th or 9^th graders and pointed out everything they had learned from the big schools.