My hat tips off to you little one

I think you can all tell by now that I am in full time work mode by my frequency of posts.  Starting tomorrow, week 5 of school will start.  There are midterms this week.  I feel as if I just got on the plane for Moz, and here I am almost 5 months later, a teacher.  I do apologize for the infrequency of blog posts these last couple weeks, I didn’t know how long making three different lesson plans would take, and then translating them into Portuguese took a solid amount of time as well.  I’m getting fast and faster each day and my Portuguese is drastically increasing even more.  But enough of that, this post is about the children, not teaching. 

The children of Mozambique are wonderful hellions.  The neighborhood children—consisting of professors children, nephews, nieces; other children from across the street, and then some of the younger students living in the internato—have vast stores of bundled up energy.  They run in gangs, the oldest leading the youngest trailing behind, but never left behind.  Yet, you can see the chain of hierarchy within the gang.  Here, the younger children are included and looked after much more so, rather than being left behind for their lack of maturity or ‘coolness’.  I have never heard one child here say that another is annoying, it’s incredible.  I want to correct myself, they don’t run around like a gang, they run around like a pack of wolves.  The alpha male leading, the others following loyally behind, even the youngest are always protected and taken care of.  It’s pretty wonderful to sit back and observe. 

Many are not old enough to be in school just yet, so while the older ones are studying, the younger ones run around, jump in puddles, run into the trash pit, find old cans or plastic cups and go to town digging through mud puddles.  Once the older kids arrive, the efforts are coordinated in buscaring (finding) things to make houses for grasshoppers or makeshift swings.  The older ones set the idea, but then everyone plays an equal part in the finding of supplies and making of the houses. 

One of the best (and sometimes worst) parts of my day is when the children are on our porch yelling “tia Ana, tia Amanda!  Queremos escrever” (translation: auntia Hannah, auntie Amanda.  We want to color!)  In the beginning they would just keep yelling our names until we came out.  Now, they have upgraded to saying PLEASE we want to color.  Next month they need to ask us how we are doing before telling us that they want to color.  Manners manners manners.  All in all, they are a handful, but they are always so excited.  They are always yelling about wanting this color or than color, that will probably be dealt with next year, sharing that is.  Baby steps. 

(Above is Manuel.  He is a wonderful growing boy.  He is 10 years old, and is the alpha pack of the group.  He has amazing manners and is constantly patient and mature with the younger ones.  I really enjoy talking with him.  His parents sent him to school here, so he likes in the internato, but he plays in our neighborhood.  He also knows a a solid amount of english considering he isn't old enough to have learned it in school yet.)

Now that the older children that attend school are living in the neighborhood (before only the ones too young to travel for holiday break were around, so it’s refreshing to have older ones we can communicate with), they want to read books as well.  The volunteer before us left behind a few children’s books in Portuguese that they love to read.  The older ones read out loud to the younger one’s, and occasionally they ask the definition of a word which is slightly ironic considering their first language was Portuguese where as we’ve only been speaking for less than 5 months. 

Gigantinho, son of Gigante, eating sugar cane 

 The House of Grasshopper.

 

                                                                             Flor, the sweetest little girl.  

I call this little guy Poop Face, but in reality his name is Alonie.  One day he tottered over to our porch when all the children were coloring and just stood there, pooped with his shorts on, and then walked away.  The other children had a riot with giggles and horrified faces running to get his mother.

The two pictures directly above are of Zemi.  He is absolutely adorable, with the cutest smile ever.  Now if just learned that he can't grab markers out of other children's hands...

They're pretty amazing children.  I’ve realized that when I have my own children they don’t need the bells and whistles on all the toys to be happy.  Give them a stick, plastic bags, and cups and they’ll be entertained for hours.  They are incredible at finding new ways to pass the time whether it be playing a  version of cops and robbers, or finding free ways to make 6 swings to hang out of trees.  They’re pretty ingenious too.  A few weeks back I saw them playing with sticks attached to balloons.  In reality the stick was a banana leaf stem that they used rubber bands to attach to the opening of the balloon.  Apparently they are easier to blow up like that.  Also, one of them found their parents condom collection, or rather their parents gave them the condoms to play with.  I haven’t figured out which is the truth yet.  It makes sense though, parents have to buy balloons, or they can give their children (more or less) the same exact toy for free because condoms are so widely available to battle HIV/AIDS rates. 

                                 

Another example of their ingeniousness is in the bikes.  There really aren’t bikes widely available for 2-4 year olds, and then another size bike for 4-6 years, and so on.  There are basically only adult sized bikes that are widely available.  This means that if the smaller children want to ride one, they have to adjust things a little…

 

This kid was amazing.  I’d give him 3, maybe 4 years max.  His head is barely above the seat of the bike.  In comparison, my legs are about 3 or 4 inces above the top of the seat.  There he was riding a bike that is a perfect fit for an adult.  Unbelievable.  He started by running along the handles getting the bike moving, then he jumped onto the pedal on one side of the bike.  As the bike glided slowly along, he slipped his other foot under the bar of the bike and placed his other foot ontop of the other pedal.  Then instead of completing full cycles (circles) with the pedals he brought his left foot down a quarter turn and then he back pedaled a quarter turn with his right foot and stopped, returning his feet to their original position.   Then he would continue this over and over: leftt foot a quarter pump down, right foot a quarter pump back, left foot a quarter pump down, etc, etc.  It was pretty unbelievable.  In America I would wonder where on earth this child’s parents were, here I just want to applaud him for learning how to overcome and adapt.  I tip my hat to you little one, and all the other children of Mozambique.