International Children's Day in Mozambique

As I wrote last time, me and Barbara have been really busy last two weeks working to organize the Children’s Day and Olympic Games between 5 local schools (due to happen in 2 weeks time). The main thing we did was trying to find financial support for it (which means we’ve been visiting countless number of companies and factories in 100 km radius) and also some media attention. We managed more than 200 sweets for the children as prizes and I even gave an interview in Radio Mozambique which was on air twice (not that I would have heard it, but there were people who did). For the near future, we might get a big phone company as a main sponsor for the Olympic Games and also some prizes for it. Actually, we’ve become some of a partnership professionals as we also got a supermarket to sponsor “our” orphanage in Nhamatanda (first few hundred puddings have been handed over already) and hopefully more connections are on our way.

The Children’s Day itself was rather crazy. We had prepared a puppet theatre with 3 dolls and a big clown head with soft balls to throw to it’s mouth (you know the game) plus plenty of other sport games. About 36 hours before the event our project EPF got also involved and we got help from about 10 students. Finally, it turned out quite great. After all the local children had finished their common lunch that their families had prepared for them just for the special event, we prepared our games and competitions and other entertainment in the local primary school’s yard, about 300 (maybe more) kids rushed out and learning that we had sweet prizes and I was carrying the backpack with them, almost crushed and squeesed me. Somehow we managed to organize several games and competitions at the same time and more less distribute the sweets to the winners. I heard that nothing like this had ever been organized in the area so no wonder that the kids were so excited about throwing a few balls or racing to fill the bucket with water. It was rather sad to experience hundred small begging hands around me, hundred small mouths shouting “Me too, me too” and myself in the middle of it all, just having no other option than just to push the poor kids aside in order not be totally ran over by them. The whole thing lasted maybe maximum 2 hours, but I felt like I had been in a war afterwards.

Lamego, 1. June 2006