Mini-Dictionaries and Ugly Jesuses

No matter how the play turned out, two things were inevitable: the phrase “what the heck!” would be incorporated somehow, and at least one boy would stuff his chest.

When we began writing a skit for the annual English Theater competition, I tried to explain why I thought an all-male cast presenting a play about gender equality would be a contradiction. I tried to use questions like “look around you – is there gender equality in this room?” but my blossoming male feminists were determined to use that particular theme.

Sometimes it’s hard for kids to understand why it’s so difficult for girls to get a good education. Students see their colleagues, who are mostly male, and conclude that boys are smarter than girls. But at home, children are expected to do a lot of work – cooking, cleaning, carrying water, taking care of younger siblings – chores which are usually delegated to the girls. It leaves little time for studying. In addition, many girls marry as teenagers – one of my strongest female students just got married at 14 – and as wives, there is no reason for them to continue their education, because their job is to have kids. Therefore, there are very few girls in our English group, and those that are didn’t succeed in memorizing the audition text I had assigned to choose the final group for the competition. Ideally, to communicate a message about the importance of gender equality, I would want half girls and half boys in the group. But maybe the fact that we couldn’t even get one girl shows how important it is for us to address the issue.

In our skit, the husband comes home hungry after working in the field to find that his wife has not cooked. Thus, the students were able to apply a recent lesson I had taught on calão (colloquialisms) and our favorite line “What the heck! You didn’t prepare the lunch?” (with a Portuguese/Lomwe accent) was born. The husband goes to his in-laws for advice, who say that “everyone must divide the jobs equally.”

Competition weekend started off with a giant pot of beans, which I, contrary to past attempts, did not burn. I delegated the preparation of the corn-meal mush patties to the students, because I haven’t been able to get the consistency just right (“I am not eating this,” my neighbor announced when she tasted my handiwork). After rehearsing one last time, the kids (9 boys between the ages of 14 and 19), my counterpart (the teacher I work with, also 50% of my friends) and I ate dinner all together. Since we had to leave at 4 the next morning, and some live an hour away by bike, I had the bright idea of having them all sleep on my living room floor.

Unsurprisingly, Mozambican slumber parties are just like US slumber parties: there is no slumber involved whatsoever. My dear, studious, well-behaved boys shut their eyelids for a total of about 17 minutes. The rest of the night, they were rocking out on my guitar, listening to Michael Jackson and Hey There Delilah on repeat, reading all my text messages, and chatting animatedly in 73% Portuguese, 84% Lomwe (their native language) and 43% English. At midnight, a solid 4 hours after the entire town had gone to bed, they put on leotards and danced in the street. At 2am I heard, “I feel like going for a walk,” so 3 boys disappeared; five minutes later the other 6 were wide awake and dancing the Macarena.

There were 7 groups at the competition, all presenting skits with this year’s theme “We are all equal.” We didn’t win, or get second place, or third, or fourth, but they each received a mini-dictionary and T-shirt, which they have been carrying and wearing proudly every day since the competition. It was their first time acting, but they got their message across, showed some strong potential for next year, and made me laugh until my stomach muscles were tired. My favorite line of the weekend: one kid put on a coat that looked like a robe and pranced around, and another kid declared, “You is Jesus. You is ugly Jesus!”