31/08/11

Monday morning Ann and I showed up at the administration building for our meeting with the administrator and or the head secretary. We sat down to wait and heard some singing outside. Ann checked it out and said “I have no idea what it is, but everyone from the hospital is there.” After we had waited for a while, a nice woman (the same one from last week) came over and said that we would have to wait a little longer, because the administrator was going to take part in the ceremony outside. It turns out it was National Blood Donation day, so, as with all Mozambican holidays, people came to the town monument and there was a ceremony of placing flowers followed by speeches. We have a brand new town monument which is really beautiful. After all of that was finished we finally got to meet with the administrator in his very nice office. We discussed the mural and then he told us to go talk to the chief of sports, since our mural will be at the town stadium. The chief of sports has been really nice and helpful, he is arranging with the police to help guide traffic that day (the wall we are painting is directly on the national highway. Great publicity, but yikes!) and he was helpful with designs. We are going a little crazy trying to figure out getting all the necessary supplies, getting 150 people fed that day, and making sure nobody gets hit by a car, but it will all be worth it!
Tuesday was the end of Ramadan (sorry I don’t know what this is called). In southern Mozambique at least, most shop owners are of Middle Eastern descent. Many of them have been here for generations and are definitely “Mozambican,” but they are clearly not completely ethnically African. They are also all Muslim. Thus, on Tuesday, as far as I could tell, not a single shop in town was open (and by shop I mean real cement building with a door, luckily all the little stands were still open, because these are run by the ethnically African Mozambicans).
At Irmã Dolorinda’s request I have started English lessons with the littlest girls here in the orphanage. They don’t retain too much from lesson to lesson, but everyone gets a huge kick out of when they say “good afternoon!” Once, a girl got too excited and said “good sisternoon Albertina!”
This afternoon I was sitting on my porch when a student from the primary school passed me and said “good afternoon Sister Agnes.” I laughed. Sister Agnes is the director of this girl’s school. She is also black, wears glasses, and always wears her nun’s habit.