Today I played Ultimate frisbee with one group of orphans, and taught a different group how to do basic sewing. These experiences perfectly summarize my feelings about my career in Mozambique. I have been educated to do so much, but I feel helpless. Instead, I’ve fallen back on what comes naturally — being goofy, running around, and being domestic.
I remember once watching Jamie Foxx on “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” He was telling James Lipton how his grandmother had always made him go to church to sing, take piano lessons and play on the football team. Each of these skills came to be vitally important in the development of his acting career. He didn’t understand his grandmother’s insistence then, but when she died just a few days before he received the Oscar for “Ray,” it dawned on him: sometimes we have tools sharpened for when the opportunity arises. They don’t make sense until the project comes along and we have what it takes to get the job done.
I never thought playing a year of Ultimate frisbee in Tempe would come in handy in Manga, Mozambique — but boy did it. The orphanage is run by a middle-aged American man (saint, really) who cares for 35 orphaned boys. The boys are not only expected to do well in school, but they are also taught how to do construction, plumbing and other vocational skills that will make them highly employable once they are done with high school. When we arrived, a group of boys were working on a concrete fence. They were all too pleased to pull out their frisbees and challenge us to a match. I was the only girl to take the bait and by the end of an hour, I was wheezing but thankful that I run. I think they were a little surprised to see a girl hang with them and to be honest, I was a little surprised myself. PE used to be fun; now running around for an hour leaves me sweaty and pooped.
The sewing has been a delight too. We are working with a separate group of girls, teaching them basic sewing with the idea that they’ll be able to secure work when they are done with schooling too. Between entertaining the little kids outside of the machesa (a grass structure we use for community education) with a game of Raton! Raton! Gato! (like duck, duck, goose — but with animals they know), we taught a bunch of girls how to sew basic puppets. They learned to sew buttons for eyes and how to sew right sides together. It was fun and I couldn’t help but laugh that the last two tools I thought I’d be using in Mozambique would be frisbee and sewing.
Go figure. And yes, it makes that last little bit of school debt that much more annoying.
I will be home this time next week and I am excited and sad. I miss my bed, eating healthy food, my gym friends, the bagel boys, and of course my family and the Ya Yas. I don’t miss the heat, the commute, being way too attached to my Blackberry and NPR, and feeling like a cultural abnormality in a sea of MTV girls living in Tempe. It should be an interesting transition to American life. In the meantime, I’m savoring these last few days of African life.
Cheers,
Kelli