Ole What's-His-Name

Today I had a comic breakthrough with my colleagues. The two men I hired to help with the kids’ groups have always been nothing but respectful and humble with me, too polite almost, pleasant reverent and submissive to the point of making me feel awkward. But today, I got my first genuine laugh out of them. They’ve chuckled and smiled before, but by Mozambican standards, what I coaxed out of them today could be considered a hee-haw. And it was achieved simply by admitting that with all these men running around with ‘A’ names – Armando, Armandinho, Adolfo, Alberto, Albano, Alfredo – I often can’t remember who is who, even the people I work with on a weekly basis. I’m normally so good with names, but this alias alliteration is too much. I was very glad I admitted it, however, because the reaction that it elicited was worth having to ask your own mother a thousand times – “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

Also, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I asked one of my kids’ groups to prepare a drama, and told them that I would come prepared with one as well. Theatre and role-play are extremely useful learning tools here; kids that merely stare at their hands folded in their lap when asked basic questions will take on a whole new persona when it’s their turn to stand in front of the group as an ‘actor’. While my drama was short and agriculturally themed, theirs went on for nearly 8 minutes (doesn’t sound long, but it actually is). Eight minutes of adlibbing about a man who had 3 kids, one boy and two girls. He sent the boy to school to learn and the girls to work as prostitutes. The daughters brought home money, the man drank it away, and all was peaceful on the home front. Until the girls were diagnosed with HIV (communicated by curling up into fetal positions on the ground and whimpering) and the father learned his lesson. Depressing, but relevant, and I certainly couldn’t accuse them of not following the prompt; it’s just that love and sex mean different things to rural African children than they do to American children.