I’m walking up to Andy’s house around 5pm on a Friday night, after 5 hours of traveling to get there. When I turn the corner, and am about 100 ft away, some girls on the front porch notice me. They start to point and giggle and whisper, until the ring-leader of the group, Ercilia, notices me and takes off sprinting in my direction.
Mana Sarah! Mana Sarah! É Mana Sarah! (Miss Sarah! Miss Sarah! It’s Miss Sarah!)
The other 8 girls follow her, embracing me in a giant girly, giggly hug. Ercilia speaks next: “Miss Sarah. We are having a party tomorrow for you. We already decorated really nicely tonight and tomorrow we are going to start early! I’m going to make onion rice, with this girl right here [drags her friend over to stand next to her], and André is going to make popcorn and we are going to have beans and cake…so you can’t leave tomorrow because we are having a party!”.
She says, Não há-de viajar. (You can’t travel). In other words, you must stay here in Manjangue so we can do this thing!
Wini steps in and tells me, in a very sing-songy voice, that she is going to make beans that are muito saboroso (very tasty), and another girl says that Andy only knows how to make popcorn, so the girls will do the rest. While this is untrue, and I know that Andy can indeed cook, in Mozambican culture it’s typically the women that do the cooking and the men mostly sit back and wait to be served.
The girls want to come over to start preparing—cleaning, cooking, etc.—at 8am the next morning. However, tomorrow will be Saturday and my day is absolutely not starting at 8am. (Ok fine, I ended up going for a run at 7:30am but that’s besides the point). I tell them 11am or later; they rebuttal with 9am; we eventually agree on anytime after 10. I tell Ercilia: Vou te negar se vocês chegam antes de 10h. I will deny you if you guys show up before 10am. They agree to wait until after 10 to come knock on the door; they take down the pictures they colored from off the outside wall (so they don’t get stolen overnight—kid drawings are apparently a hot commodity around these parts), and head home as the sun goes down.
On Saturday morning, I had just finished mixing the chocolate cake batter when, around 10:45, we heard a couple tiny knocks on the door. Two girls, Jennifer (I don’t know the actual spelling of this name, but it sounds pretty close to Jennifer) and Charmilia entered and immediately demanded a rake. Well, turns out, Andy and David don’t have a rake, which happened to be our first #partyproblem. They explained that they wanted to sweep the yard so it “looks pretty”, so they are going to go home, get a rake and bring it back.
Let’s think about this for a minute. These young girls didn’t come to the house, enter, and demand cake or decorations or soda pop. They demanded a rake. To take it upon themselves to rake the backyard before starting any other party-related activity. Side note: Raking the yard is what students at my school have to do for punishment when they arrive late. It’s not fun. They turned around and walked all the way home to grab a rake and come back to tidy up the yard. It was then I realized that today, this party, was a really important thing for them and they were willing to work to make it perfect.
The other 7 girls arrived shortly after, around 11am, ready to start the planning process. They re-hang the pictures from last night, and some girls start coloring more. I work with Ercilia to make a list of things we need to buy at the market for our party. Here’s our list:
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| Tomato, pepper, onion, cabbage, pop (Orange Fanta), chicken stock, balloons and pasta. A grand total of 191 meticais. |
We sent the 9 girls to the market with 200mt to get all the things we needed. I told them that I expected 10mt as change, so they could only buy what’s on the list. After 45 minutes (gosh only knows why it took that long), the girls returned with all the things!!! and we got started cooking.
Sidenote: They also used their own money to buy chicken feet because apparently people really enjoy eating chicken feet. I mean, whatever floats your boat I guess.
Sidenote: The cabbage actually cost 40mt, so the girls used their own money to make up the difference, since they promised me 10 mets in change. When I learned that, I gave them back their 15mt.
These girls were all ready to work. Their plan was not to come, sit around and play while Andy and I cooked, waiting for free delicious food. Nope. Each of them wanted to have a part in preparing the party, and it was all-hands-on-deck from the very beginning. Except Andy did make the popcorn all by himself.
The girls pretty much did all of the cooking: Beans, rice, and chicken feet. Andy set up a chair right next to the stove so they could make themselves tall enough to see in the pans. The adults made the salad because I didn’t want the girls using a giant chef’s knife to cut the cabbage.
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| Cooking all the things! Ercilia, naturally, is the one on the chair. |
Imagine this: a tiny concrete house, filled with nine 8-12 year old girls, each of them doing what appears to be a chore, but to them it’s not a chore at all: Cutting onions, stirring rice, washing plates, cleaning chicken feet, setting up a straw mat on the floor with cups and spoons for everybody. To them, they are taking full responsibility of realizing their big vision of a beautiful festa for Sarah and Andy, each one proud and happy to contribute.
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| Some girls preparing the chicken feet. |
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| Proudly showing off the chicken feet. Yuuummmmm? |
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| Washing plates before we ate. |
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| Making sure there were enough plates and cups for everybody. |
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| Organizing everyone's plates and cups on the straw mat. |
The preparation was joyfully chaotic: girls half speaking Portuguese and half Xangana (the local Bantu language), ensuring that no girl has the giant knife in her hand; making sure the beans didn’t burn; letting the girls taste test the salad to ensure I didn’t put too much pepper; figuring out where to find 3 extra plates and 2 extra cups; making room for the 2-Liter of Fanta in the tiny fridge; explaining to Ercilia that if there is too much water in the rice it will be soupy; and racing against the clock because the girls had to leave by 3pm to go to church with their families.
We were all in go-mode doing this party thing up right; however, the girls did allow themselves a few breaks to blow up balloons, dance a little, color a little, pose for photos and read fun kid books, all while the pans of rice and beans continued to boil. Usually, you think that preparation for the party happens, followed by the party itself. But in retrospect I realize that the preparation was the party, and the food that came as a product of the party was just bonus.
When I asked a few of the girls separately “why do you like planning parties like this?” Here was the response I got from each one (without them hearing each other’s answers):
“Porque gostamos muito de vocês" (because we like you guys a lot). My heart smiled brightly. I’m here because of moments like those.
Amongst the joy though, there were a few moments that served as personal wake-up calls for me in terms of the circumstances in which these children are living.
- Most of them had a thick coating of dirt on their legs and feet; their clothes tattered and stained.
- When Andy made popcorn as a snack, the girls ran to the bowl to get as much of it as they could before it was all gone. This includes making a basket out of their shirts, filling it up, and running away.
- The girls asked for seconds before they were done with firsts, to ensure they got as much as they could before the food ran out.
- Each girl got two small pieces of cake; Ercilia put one piece in her pocket to take home to her sister.
- Three boys noticed the party and came to the porch asking for food. The girls told them no because they didn’t help with any of the cooking, cleaning or preparation. After Andy and I asked the girls, “are you sure? we have extra and they are hungry”. The girls still said no. We respected that it was their party and told the boys they could have an all-boys party next time I visited. They said ok but continued to hang around. Eventually Andy and I prepared plates for each of them and shared the wealth. The girls didn’t notice, or if they did, they didn’t mind.
- A little boy from the community (maybe 4 years old), also very dirty with tiny arms the width of my wrist, timidly approached the front porch where all the girls were eating. He kept one arm behind his back, holding something that I couldn't see. As he walked closer, slow step after slow step, I realized what it was: A plate. He was hungry. I picked him up and brought him into the house to fill his plate with beans and rice. We also gave him one piece of cake and told him that this is an all-girls party so he needs to go sit out with the boys while he eats. He didn't argue because that full plate of food was calling his name.
So, while this party was super fun and I loved seeing the light in the girls’ eyes as they hustled and bustled around the house, I must remind myself that this isn’t just another normal kid party that will be forgotten about once the next shiny new thing pops up in their lives. On the contrary, this party was a big deal. Every person in a family here in Mozambique needs to contribute to the sustenance of the family: young girls, old grandpas, and everybody in between. Because this is true, parents don’t have a lot of extra time to plan fun things to do with their children, and most kids around town are left on the weekends to find their own fun. So our party presented so much more to these girls than rice and beans:
It was something that they could take ownership of and make it exactly what they wanted it to be. It was a healthy meal that they chose. It was special American cake, which is a rarity here in Moz. It was a space where they could tell their ideas to adults, and be told yes. It was a reason to wear their favorite dress. They prepared and ate chicken feet, because they really like chicken feet, gosh darn it! They got to pop balloons and wear a silly light up headband and twirl around and teach adults how to do things. They had a thing that the boys couldn’t invade. They were listened to. They were respected. They were proud. They had fun on a level higher than merely daily boredom avoidance.
They were the owners of their party, the creators of their fun, and the enjoyers of their meal.
It was one of the best Saturdays I’ve had here yet, and I don’t think I will soon forget it.
