Skip to main content

May 24: Celebration Day


Today cannot be described in any other way other than Celebration Day. From dawn to dusk the communities spoiled us and showered us with joy and gifts, always with a smile and a song.
We started the day in the Banhine community where we joined the celebration (99% in changana dialect) of the Pentecost Day. From this point forward we didn’t stop celebrating. With lots of dancing, oranges, peanuts and capolanas (traditional cloths) we left the community with the car loaded. We talked about the importance of children’s studying and having the support of their families to enable them to make their future Little Gestures. Father Amine talked about the importance of charity. Everybody should give a little of what they have, if they do not have money they could provide other things. For instance a community Mom could, at the end of her day, help the little children practicing their ABC. It was a lively joyful visit filled with good ideas for the children’s future.

We continued to Nhancutse, where the party continued under the orders of Mom Florda. The children were thrilled and we joined the dancing. There were some absent children for health reasons but most of them was healthy and happy. We assessed the monthly basic basket and moved on for another celebration, this time in Bungane.
Bungane’s community is smaller, just over 20 children. It is led by Mom Marta who appears to be not only the coordinator but also the family of each children under the programme. We realised with concern the high rates of children with malaria and Mom Marta agreed on the need to provide more training to the families on the use of mosquito nets they already have.
Before ending our day, and after another dancing session, we visited the Bungane well which is unstoppable in the true sense of the word. They start collecting water from 5 a.m. and the last container is filled around 5 p.m. 12 hours of relentless work, in a time where the draught seems to make the job harder. I couldn’t resist joining Mano Arnaldo helping him to fill a container. After 3 minutes we admired the strength of women and girls who secure the provision of water for all the population.

We successfully concluded our day, as always surprised by the local strength to fight adversity!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Flying Sunday

It's been a while, I know. But time is really a precious asset and I have not been leveraging on it well enough... But today I did and I am proud. I threw all the plans out of the window and took the irrefusable offer I was made "Do you want to go flying today?". How does no work as an answer there? Here is one of the c. 30 airplanes you could see there. First reaction from our pilot: "Why are all these planes here, don't people realize it is an amazing day for flying?". Well, I had not untill he told me so! But the best is still to come, as the only girl in the group I got to ride in the front, get first view in take-off, listen to the radio of the air control all the time (we get Boston airport frequency), check the map, speeds, everything... I guess throughout the way we were some quiet passengers, in the wonders of realizing you are on air, the curiosity of identifying different places and the struggle to take the best pictures as we pass the Harvard...

The Best Self

The last classes in Leadership try hard to make you think and figure out what to do about yourself. So we talked about our best self, not just about what it is but more of when it happens. We had to ask a couple of former colleagues, friends and family to give us three examples of when we were at our best. The point is not to skyrocket your ego, don’t worry. It is about understanding what are the environments that make your strengths come out. Because if you know what they are, then you will look to pursue a future that exhibits these characteristics. A “what brings the good in you” kind of thing. It was interesting to get that feedback. More than interesting, it was insightful. It was amazingly consistent throughout and it was curious to see the examples that people remember about you. I do recommend to anyone in need to find a bit more of where they should go. The thing about the examples is that they do have something in common, whether they came from people I worked with recently o...

Short one: D-Day

It is D-Day today :-) I took out the braids, and the clock is ticking. Bernardo will be in Maputo in two hours. We have plans for the weekend and so much to catch up on. I doubt I will be blogging soon, hehe