02/09/10

September 3rd is the day of Laura Vicuña but we celebrated today because my director knew that if the holiday were a Friday nobody would come to the festival, but instead leave for the weekend. The festival kicked off at about 8am (impressive, since it was planned to start at 7:30) with a procession down to the concrete stadium seats and basketball where the festival was held. The day began with a full mass with six priests which surprised me although I guess it shouldn’t have. After mass was the theater production of the life of Laura Vicuña, an extremely pious girl born in Chile who grew up in Argentina with Catholic Sisters there. When she learned that is was a sin that her mother was living with a man to whom she wasn’t married, Laura asked God to forgive her mother and said she would offer up her own life in exchange for her mother’s salvation. She died not shortly after.
After getting the seriously stuff out of the way the festivities began. My college was the MC for the day and began with this joke: “how do you call an elevator in China?” (in English this is the equivalent of saying “what do you call an elevator in China”) this was followed by a number of fairly offensive suggestions by students and faculty until he revealed the punchline: “the same way you call an elevator in Mozambique! You just push the button!” I thought the joke was pretty funny, though I was surprised that anyone knew what an elevator was, the only one (and literally only one) I have seen is in Maputo. Afterwards followed presentations by representatives of each of the grades that varied from dances to poems to jump-roping. My REDES group danced, some students danced and sang, there was a French competition (students in Mozambique learn French beginning in 9th grade), the list goes on. At about 1pm everything finally ended and everyone went up to receive their piece of sweet bread before heading home. I saw my student who cannot read or write and asked him “how is it that you never come to classes, but you manage to come to the festival?” His colleagues laughed at this.
Yesterday demonstrations started in Maputo as a result of the price hikes (averaging about 50%, so they really jumped ridiculously) of food, fuel, and transport. It’s hard to get accurate news here, and I am not sure how much I would say even if I had accurate information, but it seems things got out of control on both sides, leaving civilians dead. Today the demonstrations had moved up into Gaze province (the one south of mine) and there was fear that they would spread up or spring up throughout the country. Ann and Emma both happened to be down in Maputo for medical reason this week and have been confined to the hotel since the demonstrations started. One of my colleagues has also been stuck in Maputo for two days now, even though she has her own car and isn’t even depending on the public transportation (which has been suspended). Being overly cautious the Peace Corps has told us which radio stations to listen to, should cell service go out, and to have extra money and food on hand, but it is hard to tell if these problems will travel as far north as I am.