07/04/10

April 7th is Mozambican women’s day. A women’s day celebration for the town was scheduled for 7:30am at the plaza in front of the Inharrime government building and surprisingly started at 8:15am! Like all things Mozambican, there was lots of singing and dancing. Then a bunch of different, most likely important, people spoke and flowers were placed in the symbol of Mozambique. Unfortunately it was all in Xichopi so Ann and I didn’t know what was going on the entire time. Afterwards they played music behind the government building and offered free HIV testing to anyone who wanted it.
When I left I met up with the truck coming from the orphanage and Natalia, Idurre (the Spanish volunteer before Natalia who is back now working on another project), and I took the girls down to the lagoon for the day. The 50 of them sitting in the back of a flatbed truck sang loudly the whole way there. We had packed a lunch and afternoon snack, so we just spent the entire day there swimming, napping, and playing. As far as I can tell the lagoon never gets any deeper than two feet, so basically it is a mile-wide kiddie pool. Not great when you actually want to swim or cool off (the water is always pretty warm), but perfect when you’re trying to keep an eye on 50 young girls.