18/04/13

            Yesterday some of the younger girls were braiding my hair. Isaura, the really bright one who I would give English lessons to was sitting nearby, and one of the girls called her over to help. She responded that she didn’t know how to braid hair, to which all the girls responded “WHAT?!? You don’t know how to braid hair?!” Isaura very literally turned her nose up and retorted “I do well in school. It’s much more important to pass grades than to know how to braid hair.”

            One of the older girls who was in my REDES group and who no longer lives here is back visiting now. She left when I did, so I haven’t seen her in 1.5 years, so it was great to see her again! I learned last night that one of the girls from the orphanage who left pregnant last fall had her baby boy and he is healthy, though her living situation seems a little unstable.

            Today some kids from an orphanage in Inhambane city came for the day (the kids are on school holidays this week), which was a fun break in routine for all of the kids—they had so much fun playing games and dancing all day together. When I lived here, the youngest girl, who I was really close to, was Margarida. When she arrived she was a chubby little three-year-old who didn’t speak a word of Portuguese and had no idea where she was and what was going on. When she began talking, she would always chatter on about her twin brother Fabião, who was at another orphanage because ours is only girls. If she was playing with a doll, its name was Fabião. If she pretended to call someone on my phone, she called Fabião. After the holidays spent with their families, she would excitedly tell me about everything she had done with Fabião. She was super chubby and had a big belly, so I would always ask her what was inside her belly and she said it was a baby named Fabião. Well today I finally got to meet the famous Fabião himself, along with another brother who’s a year older than they are, because it was their orphanage that visited!

Above: Margarida (in blue), the famous Fabião in orange, and their older brother in the middle