Mozambican Police Day

It seems like every week here features some sort of national commemorative day. Last week was Mozambican Nurses’ Day; previously we’ve commemorated such days as International Malaria Day, Mozambican Children’s Day, Southern Africa Development Community Day, the passing of the Mozambican Unity Torch, none of which had the stature to command a national holiday, but needed to be celebrated at some level nonetheless. Although we only cancel school for top tier holidays, commemorative days often require the presence of our school administrators and various teachers who also double as local hot-shots in the ruling party. Preparations often monopolize our computer lab and our best computer students for the typing and printing of various official documents with our ever-scarce school toner. Also, at any moment a big-wig could demand some sort of song and dance or theatrical presentation from one of our youth groups, so commemorative days usually end up interrupting our work lives regardless if the official agenda says classes are to proceed as normal. This week we had Mozambican Police Day. As normal the Vice-Principal, who also serves as the Local FRELIMO Chapter Leader, came into the computer lab dressed in his finest, desperately seeking to co-opt typists to digitize various pages of scribbled manuscripts. Luckily we’re between computer classes so the lab was free and we didn’t have to involve ourselves personally in the desperate dash which usually delays whatever ceremony is being planned by at least a couple of hours. Even though school was not canceled, the police and border guard forces challenged us teachers to an afternoon soccer match to commemorate their day. Obviously we all showed up to play the game, and coerced all of our students to come cheer us on, so whatever classes or youth group meetings were scheduled for after 3pm were canceled, except for Janet’s 8th grade biology which she taught despite the commotion from the soccer field tugging away the less disciplined members of her class. We all had fun, who doesn’t enjoy a spontaneous work stoppage with no consequences? The local police chief, who happens to be the roundest and jolliest man in town, took the field for his side, but immediately called for a switch after kicking off the game, which was for the best considering that the size of his belly and the size of his soccer shorts were in no way compatible. Our buddy who was coaching the teacher side took the game way too seriously and wouldn’t let any of our subs into the game until deep into the second half, after we had secured a 2-0 lead despite the crowds chanting to see their American teacher take the field. When Luc finally came in for the last 15 minutes he got big cheers every time he touched the ball, which was only about 5 times, but one of them was a defensive header to clear a corner kick from the goal area, so that got people excited. The police threatened to arrest every teacher on the field for not carrying their official Mozambican ID cards if we didn’t let them score at least one goal, but we didn’t let them, especially when we discovered they had sneaked two Malawian boarder guards onto their team. The next day the teachers lounge was abuzz with stories of our favorite moments from the game, and friendly jabs at those who weren’t running hard enough or could shed a few extra pounds. Luckily as foreigners we’re immune from any critical analysis of our game, the novelty of having a white player on the field being contribution enough to the effort.

Being Married in Peace Corps Mozambique

Marital status is a big deal in Mozambique, every official document requires you to disclose whether you are married or single, and in case we’re ever curious about our colleagues, its even posted in our teachers lounge. Even in casual introductions people will volunteer this information or ask about it. Many Americans are guarded, considering marital status something a little more personal, and take some offense when “Are you married?” immediately follows “What’s your name?” and “Where are you from?” but here it’s totally normal. Young female volunteers usually try to keep their status from entering the public domain if they are single to prevent potential suitors from getting their hopes up, but its impossible to keep this a secret unless you are willing to make-up a fake husband, which some of our friends here have done. People love the fact that we are married. Normally fear from all the expenses associated with hosting the requisite wedding banquet discourages people from getting married. Much to the consternation of religious authorities, most couples just live together “in sin”, hoping one day to save enough to officially sanction their union. Our school principal just got married last year after years of waiting and saving. This year another teacher colleague did the same after convincing the school administration to make him a loan from our operating budget. Apparently we have to wait for him to pay the school back before we can buy more printer toner for our computer lab. When the English Royal Wedding was broadcast on Mozambican TV people wanted to know if that is what our wedding in America was like. We told them it was similar except a little less extravagant, and outdoors, not in a church. The entire Catholic community is still waiting for us to get married again, this time in the church and right here in Mozambique so they can all celebrate with us. Most people are sad for us when they realize we have been married for three years but have no children, assuming we are barren. Family planning is still an alien concept in this part of the world where children are wealth and considered the ultimate blessing and status symbol. Others assume we have children, but left them in America and want to know if we miss them. Having only one wife is also a foreign concept to many here. Many of our teacher colleagues care for and have children by multiple women. They keep telling Janet she’ll understand once Luc gets his second wife. Our school has already asked us multiple times to extend another year, something we keep denying, but they keep insisting. Finally we told them that we are not allowed to have children while volunteers. That immediately convinced them. Now they are focused on trying to get Peace Corps to send them another married couple to replace us. It’s for the best; our house is too small for two single volunteers to share, unless they’re willing to sleep in the same bed. Most people here simply refer to us as o casal, the married couple, and we don’t mind. Even other single Peace Corps volunteers are jealous at times of our built-in support network, and that we’ll have at least one other person around who understands this defining experience for the rest of our lives.

Blog Maintenance

Since we have excellent email access this weekend at our friend's house, we've been doing some maintenance on our blog. You can see a box on the right hand side called Networked Blogs. This is a feature that will hopefully publish our blog posts on our facebook profiles. You can also sign up to follow the blog through this link. As always, if you want to get our blog as an email, you can click the link under our picture to receive email digests. Finally, we've put up new pictures on our Picasa page, our more extensive photo website. Check it out here
Thanks for following our adventures!

Saying Goodbye

Zachariah, one of our best students, just finished a computer class with us, so we had been seeing him everyday for the past two months. In addition, Luc had been taking Chewa lessons from Zach in exchange for helping with his English vocabulary. The two of them would spend at least an additional few hours a week together on the porch or the shade of the mango tree using various dictionaries and Malawian textbooks to capture as many useful words as possible and laughing frequently during every session. Now he has gone to Tete city to try to find work. We're hoping it goes better this time. Last year he tried to find employment only to come back a few weeks later empty handed. We've been training him in the computer lab, helped him make a CV, and given him all the pep talks we can, so hopefully he'll fare better this time. Still, sending him off was a little sad, we felt like parents letting our student leave the safety of our little nest. Our emotions may have been heightened by the general hecticness in our busy lives. We had to scramble to print his certificate, our school toner is running so low Luc had to retrace by hand in ink the most important parts of the diploma, and then get all the official signatures and stamps. He's only about 100 km away, but considering all the difficulties with transportation and communication here, we've basically lost one of our closest Mozambican friends. Another friend, a Canadian volunteer serving for another organization, is also leaving this weekend, so we went into the city were she lives to have a farewell party with some of the other Peace Corps and expats we're friends with. We always encounter so many culture shocks coming out of the bush and into contact with non-Peace Corps lifestyles. Its hard to be conscious of all the little things, but running water (Janet took a bath in hot water in a bathtub!), access to exotic food products like ice-cream and restaurants with menus, listening to American music, using computers with internet all stand out as things that seemed like normal parts of our pre-PC lives and now seem the ultimate in luxury. The weekend turned into an eating fest starting with beef curry with real beef and real Japanese curry, steak and eggs for breakfast, chicken burritos for lunch, sausage pizza for dinner, and ice-cream with freshly baked cookies for dessert. Basically more calories and meat in a 24 hour period than an entire week in site. As with most Peace Corps get togethers, bed space is at a premium, so we piled 5 of us into 2 twin beds slumber party style.



City life has its dark side, we all had a scare when ten armed bandits broke into one of our expat friend's fancy home and stole all her electronics and money while she hid in the bathroom the night after our party. Luckily our Peace Corps lifestyle and simple home makes much less of a conspicuous target. Several of our best Peace Corps friends are getting ready to leave in September and really counting down their time. We still have a huge amount of projects left to accomplish at site and some big family visits. This is a very rich and full time in our lives, and we're trying to keep up with the hectic final-sprint pace we've set for ourselves. We've got until December, but we're also starting to see the end in sight.

International News

News from outside Mozambique rarely makes it to our little town. The only stories people here try to pick out of a broadcast, which to locals is usually just background noise letting people know that someone is fortunate enough to own a TV or radio, are those related to top tier European football. Our town experienced a brief hiatus from its provincial ways during the build-up and execution of the South Africa World Cup 2010, when people all of a sudden showed great interest in world geography, wanting to know why there are two Koreas, or which continent is bigger, Africa or America. Since then our town has lacked any semblance of an international orientation. We stay in touch with the world's biggest stories via the BBC, but the freedom revolutions across the Arab world, the disastrous earthquake/tsunami and nuclear scare in Japan, the formation of a new country in South Sudan, the Royal wedding, all of the biggest global events impacting people's lives across the world have failed to make any impact here. This month has been the big exception, we have not stopped hearing about the killing of Osama bin Laden. It makes sense since Obama and Osama are the two most recognized names here. There's even a bread named after them. Originally the fluffy white roll came to be called “Osamas,” people claiming they looked like the stereotypical turban associated with him or that they were as sought after and difficult to find in rural communities as bin Laden in his mountain cave hideout. Subsequently when Obama was elected president of the USA locals swept up in all the Obama-mania, which saw Obama's face adorning everything from Tshirts to chewing gum wrappers, just switched the name of their favorite bread from Osama to Obama. Obama is so adored and renowned that most people here outside our circle of teacher friends and town bigshots actually only know about America because of his fame and Africa connection. The night the news broke we were with other Peace Corps volunteers celebrating the workers day holiday weekend, we were tipped off by several near simultaneous international texts at about 5am. Americans across the world were placed on alert status, and even in the absence of any danger or possible anti-American reprisals in our corner of the globe, Peace Corps did the same. Mainly Mozambicans were very happy and excited for us. We have been asked countless times to tell them the “good news.” At first we were confused as to what they expected from us, were they hoping to see us dancing in front of our house waving our American flag? Actually, they just wanted us as Americans to tell them the real story. Not surprisingly considering the muddled news clips and gossip most our neighbors rely on for information, most people were highly confused; we had three students wanting to know why Bin Laden was living in a house under the sea. Several times at school after polling students for questions about the French or English material we presented during class they have asked us to tell them what really happened to Osama. Even our school principle called us in to his office, of course it was nothing related to school business, he just wanted to share his theories on the events. He had imagined several scenarios explaining how the world's most wanted man had eluded justice for so long mostly focused on how Osama must have been using “Super Black” on his beard, a hair dying product commonly used here. Now that a couple of weeks have passed the hysteria has died down although we still get occasional comments. Our community has reestablished its self-imposed news quarantine, with curiosity rarely breaching the confines of walking distance from home.

Tragedy for the Fathers

During our trip to the city, we split our weekend between the derby party with Peace Corps friends and the Fathers at our Catholic mission. We lost one of our priests in a car accident last month, so we wanted to reach out emotionally to the other two fathers still grappling with the emotional tragedy. They have supported us so much during our service that it was nice to return the gesture. Plus they invited us to stay at the mission, which is always a treat since we get our own room with a shower and toilet and actual running water, and eat delicious meals together. As Peace Corps Volunteers we're used to roughing it and sleeping on cement floors and going without bathing when water is in short supply, so when we are pampered from time to time it feels extra special. Temperatures in the usually sweltering Zambesi valley have descended into the tolerable range for the winter months; so the fathers insisted we take two blankets; we only used a sheet.

Derby Day and Unexpected Cross-Cultural Experiences

Going into Peace Corps we expected to learn about African culture from our Mozambican hosts, and we have. Just this weekend our Congolese priest called us in front of the 500+ people congregation at the main John the Baptist mission church down in the district seat to tell everyone how integrated we have become in our community, making everyone laugh by telling them that we have become like Africans, eating local food and communicating fluently in Chewa, which is stretching the truth a little. All Peace Corps Volunteers strive for real connections with their host communities, so hearing this public recognition of our cross-cultural achievements confirming the success of the often times unappreciated efforts we have made to bridge so many cultural divides gave us a little glow. What we weren’t expecting coming into service was to learn so much about own country and American culture, but that is exactly what has happened. We have colleagues representing all the varied facets of our nation, with individuals of every race, sexual orientation, geographical origin, language group, religion, and political bent our vast nation nation has to offer. Last weekend it was our chance to learn about Kentucky as our Peace Corps cluster celebrated Derby Weekend with one of our volunteers who grew up not too far from the famous Churchill Downs. She introduced us to such southern staples as cheese grits, fried green tomatoes, sweet potato fries, and mint juleps. Apparently the derby has its own pie, which has all kinds of unavailable ingredients, like pecans and chocolate chips, but our proud Kentuckian made a delicious Mozambican version with local substitutes. We got to hear all the lore associated with the event, see pictures and hear anecdotes, and even receive live updates from our buddy’s family back in Kentucky. Neither of our equine picks did much in the actual race, but that failed to put a dent in the good times.

African Women

Luc’s computer student, Beauty, who is from Zimbabwe, wrote a poem called African Women. It is very beautiful so we thought we’d share it with you.

AFRICAN WOMEN

BORN AND BRED UNDER AFRICAN CUSTOMS
LIFE A TOUGH JOUNEY
HUSBAND IN THE CITY LOOKING FOR JOB
OBEDIENT TO HUSBAND
SUPERIVISED BY FAMILY MEMBER
SURVIVING ON BORROWED SALT
MAKING DO IN WILD VEGETABLES
RAIN COMES IN FIELDS
WAITING TO PRODUCE GOD CROPS
WEARING A DIRTY TORN DRESS
BABY ON HER BACK
SCORCHINGS FROM HEAT OF THE SUN
CHRISTMAS COMES
STANDING ON A BUS STOP
A CLOUD OF DUST CAN BE SEEN
ON A NARROW ROAD
HERE COMES MY HUSBAND.


Here is a picture of Beauty with the other students in Luc´s computer class this trimester.

Life is pretty tough here for everyone, but especially for women. Most women here are dependent on the men in their lives for support. Beauty’s parents both died a few years ago, one year apart from each other. We don’t know if it was HIV that got them, but it is likely given their age and proximity in death. Beauty was sent from Zimbabwe to live with an aunt and uncle here in our town. She was looking sad and tired one morning, and when we asked, she said she didn’t sleep because her uncle came home drunk and was fighting with her aunt. She doesn’t speak any of the languages here, and is isolated socially. Also due to these linguistic issues, Luc had to give the entire computer course in English and Portuguese. As we mentioned in previous stories, our neighbor and landlady, Marcelina, lost her husband, Nelson, last year. She luckily got to stay in her house, but her lifestyle is much simpler now because her husband used to earn the money for the family. As a widow in our culture, the extended family would be supporting her in every way they can, but here, the extended family is trying to get things from her. Because it is so communal, they were also receiving money and help from her husband, so they feel entitled to ask her to share what her husband left. Her husband’s brother is in fact lobbying for her to move out of her house so he can have it since it is bigger. He would care for her five children and she would go live with her mother on the other side of town. This seems shocking to us, but it isn’t strange at all here. Marcelina bears her suffering pretty well, and has been increasing her activity in church to help her stay positive. She blasts her hymn CDs every morning, singing along for all her neighbors to hear. Our female students also have it tough. They are taught to be quiet and passive in this culture, which translates to not participating at all in classes. Getting a girl to ask a question in class is like pulling teeth. Not to mention the fact that only about one-third of our students are girls – others have dropped out to work at home, getting married and have babies. Women are also entirely responsible for household tasks and raising children, even the professional women. We are one of three married teacher couples at our school. The other two teacher wives cook, clean, go to the market and care for their children in addition to teaching a full course load, while their husbands teach but are free to hang out with their friends, play soccer and go to the bar when not in class. Again, this sometimes seems shocking to us, being from a country where women and men share so much more, but here it is normal. Women don’t resent their roles, they are proud to be mothers, to keep a clean house and yard and to have fat, happy husbands. But that doesn’t mean that we have changed the way we interact with each other. Lucas is quick to tell other teachers about how he does the dishes and cleans the latrine and Janet has explained many times that the fact that we don’t have kids is indeed a choice we have made as a couple to wait, not that we are barren, as they assume since that is the only reason married couples don’t have kids immediately here. We try our best to involve our female students in class and we won’t on gender issues with our theater groups as well, but it is difficult as outsiders to make a large difference in the lives of women here. We hope that just seeing us as an example of a different model of being a couple will at least plant some ideas.

Sketchy Electricity Follow-Up

Even though our house was in its own personal blackout during our first week back, coincidentally the whole town was without power during 5 days during that time. It seems a worker got sucked into one of the turbines while performing de-silting maintenance at the hydroelectric dam in Malawi that supplies our electricity leading to a work stoppage at the plant. The main issue for us isn’t having or not having electricity, we can deal with either scenario; the worst is expecting to have electricity and then loosing it without warning. The utility had cut our power due to some unrelated confusions, but after pleading at the chief of electricity’s house he sent someone to reestablish our connection, or so he thought. Actually, some wires had come loose in the disconnecting/reconnecting process and with power cutting out everyday, seemingly right when the electrician would arrive, we couldn’t get it fixed. I think the electric company felt embarrassed that we had no power, especially since everyone knows how regularly we pay our bills, so they made a big effort, and eventually just retightened every wire. We were already in bed when the current started flowing again, illuminating all of our bulbs. We were so excited after 5 days with no power that we didn´t mind the wake-up call and immediately got out of bed, made popcorn, and starting watching a movie.

Second Trimester Confusion

Students never really know when they are supposed to come back from inter-trimester break, so we usually lose the first week of the new term waiting for the word to spread that classes are back in session. This trimester was no exception, with the added effect of a collective community hangover from Esater celebrations. On multiple occasions during the first week we were the only teachers doing any teaching on the entire campus. To add to the confusion the school rearranged everyone’s schedule to accommodate a national literacy/numeracy campaign, which killed the second week of the term as well and put all of our colleagues in a bad mood as the administration had to keep drawing up new versions each time a teacher found he was assigned to two different classrooms during the same period. We had to reconfigure our youth group meeting schedule, so now all of our young activists are confused and showing up for theater practice while we’re stuck in the classroom. Our group’s sub-par May 1 performances celebrating Workers’ Day reflected this commotion. Luckily standards here are pretty low, so no one really cared that our girls flubbed the words to their poems or started giggling when they forgot the second verse of their song. So now in the third week of the trimester, classes are just beginning to normalize and we have one week to get our kids ready for the first midterm exam.

Home Again Home Again

It’s funny to think that a small town in Africa with which we had no connection at all previous to December 2009 feels so much like home now, but it does. During the last few days of our epic journey, hitching with various degrees of success and sleeping in random beds, our dreams took us not to America, but to our little African home. We finally got back the Thursday of Holy Week, after a last stop in an idyllic little border village with primitive rock art thousands of years old recently declared a World Heritage site. It was great getting home, except for all the drama. Romão lost one of our knives which he leant to a “friend” who turned out not to be his friend, so he’s feeling guilty about that. Plus he wants to go to the city to try and find his dad, who we thought was dead but apparently isn’t, so he’s feeling very emotional about that. Electricity cut the power to our house while we were gone. We had tried to pay our bills, but the first time the utility entered the wrong number code and credited our payment to our neighbor (who hasn’t paid us back), and each subsequent trip payment was unavailable for one reason or another, either power was out so they couldn’t access their records or the boss was out in the city or a virus had incapacitated their computers or one day the guard had no explanation at all, he just said try again tomorrow. So we were without power for Easter and for hosting our Peace Corps neighbor. Luckily Os is from a bush site that never has electricity, so he’s used to it, and we borrowed the keys from the computer lab and took our toaster oven down there to bake our special Easter cake with the carrots we bought in Malawi. We had an elaborate menu planned, but without power we settled for a more modest fare, just beans and rice cooked on our charcoal barbeque. We celebrated Good Friday with our community commemorating the 14 stages of the cross with a procession on the main highway into town under the hot tropical sun, kneeling on piles of chewed sugar cane and assorted town trash which litter that dirty road while minibus and big-rig traffic did their best to dodge the faithful congesting the street. After the commemoration of the Passion of Christ, we sat through an extra-long mass involving even more kneeling and kissing an image of the Holy Crucifix. Due to the power outage the Fathers cut the ceremony short as daylight expired. We returned home in the twilight dehydrated, hungry, and tired, but spiritually fulfilled.

Over Land and Lake

After our Nyassa visit, we headed back towards home via the lake (known as
Nyassa to Portuguese speakers and Malawi to English speakers) crossing
the skinny strip of water from island to island. Likoma island with its century
old cathedral, which is still the largest and most graceful church in Central
Africa, and extremely friendly locals was a welcome respite from our frenetic
Peace Corps lives and a nice place to catch our breathes. Water transport in
Africa is as crowded, uncomfortable, and full of surprises as land transport.
We took a motorized canoe for the first streach, a traditional swahili type sail
boat on the second streach, and the legendary Ilala ferry, which has been plying
the waters of Lake Malawi for the past fifty years, on the last strech. The
ferry showed up four hours late, blowing its baritone fog horn at 1AM to wake us
and the other potential travelers who were all dozing on the beach guarding
their piles of baggage. Everyone simotaneously scrambled for the skiffs
which shuttle passangers from the shoreside to the massive boat, which can't get
too close for fear of getting stuck in the sand. Once on board we squeezed
through the humanity in search of a spot on the floor not covered in dried fish
or nursing mothers. We eventually found somewhere we could fully extend out on
the cargo deck where the air was fresh enough to breathe. We slept
shallowly, clutching our valuables, for the five hour journy to the Malawi
mainland, or at least until a morning downpour aroused us from our uneasy
slumber and everyone tried to crush into the already full second class galley.
At one time the Ilala must have been an elegant means of getting from place to
place, but with at least ten times the recommended number of human beings on
board at all times, its more an exercise of endurance these days. Of course
most of the foreigners and white people or anyone else with enough money to
spare to pay three times the base fare, can escape the dingey underbelly of the
boat and relax on the airy upper deck, next to the bar. We could have afforded
this luxury, but Luc's strong ideological stubborness got in the way. We made
it all the same to Nkhata where Janet immediately found a bed and slept for the
next five hours while Luc scouted out the transportation situation for the rest
of the overland haul to the Peace Corps Office in Lilongwe. Although Mozambique
is all about the beaches, since we live deep in the Tete interior, we're fairly
isolated from the postcard paradise beaches, so this return voyage offered a
couple piteresque spits of sand to watch the day close while sipping a sundowner
beer (or water in Luc's case).

Fim do Mundo

Anyone who read this blog regularly last year knows how we struggled while
serving in isolated Tete province so far away from Peace Corps Mozambique. Well
this year Peace Corps opened a new province, Nyassa, and the six volunteers
there have stolen the title of serving at the edge of the world. Since Luc is
the local volunteer Peer Support Network representative, and with just
skinny Malawi seperating Tete from Nyassa, we decided to give the newbies a
visit and share the coping strategies we developed during our solitary existance
last year. So after a 4:30 AM start and six different transports, we
successfully made the international jump, landing in Nyassa by mid
afternoon. Our last transport was an open-back truck, which took us up switchbacks with great views of the lakes behind us as we ascended into a misty cloud, which unfortunately meant we got a little wet. But we did see some baboons and the sun finally came out for the final piece of our journey, a seven- kilometer walk across a no-man´s land between border posts. Nyassa is the most forgotten neglected province in the country, and the infrastructure reflects this. The roads are terrible. Several people commented unsolicitedly that the Cuamba to Mandimba dirt road is the worst stretch in the country, confirming what our sore butts already knew. The province is beautiful, and the sites are great for Peace Corps service; they are just isolated. The new volunteers are coping all right, despite some rodent issues in one site. Volunteers always show each other plenty of hospitality, so despite sleeping on the floor, they made us comfortable with whatever spare
mattresses, blankets, or padding they could scrounge and we ate at the nicest
restaurants available, but most of all we just enjoyed chatting and sharing each
other's company.

Women´s Day Take Two

So once again its April 7th and we're celebrating Mozambican Women's Day with
our community. As usual, our youth groups prepared a play, and some songs and
dances. Our theater group has improved dramatically over the past year. With a
little prompting from us, the kids chose to present a piece on being boyfriend
and girlfriend without having sex entitled "Sexo, Liga Mais Tarde" (Sex, Call
back Later).We've been doing exercisizes to get them to focus on more body
movement and gesturing and voice projection and enunciation, and it shows. We
had two canadian visitors who speak no Portuguese watch a practice and they
totally got what was happening just based on our kid's non-verbal skills. Come
April 7th we were all down at the star shaped monument for the ritual of mostly
disorganized holiday celebrating. The women's group forgot their anthum, so
after the first line they just all looked sheepish and mumbled while the local
dignitaries shook their heads in shame. Our groups, on the other hand were all
primed and ready to go. The girls sang and danced with Janet's counterpart,
decked out in various 2011 Women's Day wraps, and then it was time for our main
act. Unfortunately, our compelling theater performance inspired so much
excitement the entire audience tried to squeeze to the front row resulting in a
choking mosh pit crush. Then we all witnessed Janet transform into the
incredible hulk, stop the entire holiday, and parted the seas of squirming
youths so that the show could go on. Wow, that was really exciting, I think our
kid's were impressed with Janet's ability to establish order in such a chaotic
setting. After, the drum corps starting beating their tribal rythms to summon
the Nyau dancers and everyone starting boogie-ing in circles Mozambique style.
We quitely slipped out the back.