English Theater

Mozambicans really love theater and Mozambicans really love English, so English Theater is the perfect Peace Corps project. Despite the overflowing interest, it takes a lot of work to make an event actually happen, and we’ve been building up to this one for months. Saturday, October 29 was the big day, but we left a day early to get details sorted out down at the mission in Moatize where the event was taking place. We made another massive withdrawal from the bank and rubber banded all the various stacks of cash for each expense. Most of the kids from our nine participating schools in Tete province could travel to and from the event the day of, but a couple of the schools four hours away needed to spend the night, so we greeted them and got them set up at their air conditioned hotel. We were staying at the non-AC mission, but at least we had a fan, essential during the hottest week so far in the hottest town in Mozambique (it hit 115 degrees). We didn’t get much sleep anyway, since we were up until 10PM moving pews over from the chapel, setting up the jury tables, and decorating with posters we borrowed from the Chimoio event which was held the week earlier. October 29th started at 5:30AM and Luc was immediately sweating in the epic heatwave temperatures. Janet started by signing all 200 some certificates for all the participants, judges, and special prize winners. Luc corralled some of the mission youths to help move our cookies, T-shirts, and dictionaries into the theater room. Students started arriving even before we got our breakfast, which was a good sign here in Africa when people can show up hours late even after texting to say their mini-bus is about to arrive. Luc commandeered a few students to buy extra cookies, pens, and other random last minute items and Janet started running around managing all the little details that constantly pop-up when you’re in charge of everything. As do all events in Mozambique, we opened with the national anthem, and treated the crowd to a special rendition of the US national anthem, which most of the Mozambicans had never heard before, and some students even recorded with their cell phones. Then we drew numbers from a hat to determine the order of performance. One by one the schools presented their plays that they had been rehearsing for weeks back in site, some more nervously than others. Our school had probably practiced more than anyone else, and it showed. Everyone of our students had their material down, and their costumes were much more involved than anyone else. Every volunteer in Tete brought a team, and we even had two schools with no Peace Corps affiliation prepare teams, one of which had our graduates from last year who were now studying 11th grade down near the city at the new high school with boarding facilities built by the coal mining companies to replace the one on top of the coal deposits they destroyed. Lunch arrived an hour and a half late, but that was beyond our control. Luckily everyone here is accustomed to waiting. After chowing down on some delicious beef and chicken, and leaving nothing but the bones, everyone reconvened for the exciting awards ceremony. We were thrilled when the jury gave our team second place overall! We came in last place the year before, so we really enjoyed coming out on top this time. Our narrator took the Best English Speaker, something he’ll cherish forever considering how proud he is of his language abilities. First place went to the team composed of our graduates, so we were proud of them too, especially since the team was entirely student initiated. After the emotions calmed down, everyone wanted their pictures taken in their new English Theater t-shirts. And with the close of English Theater comes the close of our Peace Corps responsibilities! School’s out, grades are in, and our big final project was a success. Now all that’s left in our last month at site is proctoring and correcting national exams, then packing and farewells!