Baptism and Widows Drop

               The first Sunday I was in Pemba they had a baptism. 

               The whole church headed down to the beach after the service. 

     Can you find me in this one? (below)   I am walking with a boy in an orange shirt.

                There was quite a crowd.

         Everyone wants to talk to Heidi after church so it took her awhile to get there.

                It was a long wait until everyone got there.

                Heidi finally arrived.

 

It looked like a lot of people went to get baptized but it was hard to tell because a lot of people went out with them to pray for them.

           At least 50, maybe 100 people waded out into the Indian ocean. 

         The rest of us who stayed on shore worshiped to the sound of drums.

 I joined a group of young men and women who had made a circle around the drummers and started dancing. I didn't know the words to any of the songs which were in Makua but they were mostly very repetitive and easy to learn. As the people came out of the water in small groups the people on shore gathered to welcome and pray over them again. It took two hours from beginning to end and was a great celebration. Kids swam and shouted and danced and we worshiped and danced the whole time. We sang and danced the whole way back to church stretching out into a long line as we walked. 

Visiting the village widows.

Everyone got a chance to do what they call a Widows drop. If you are a widow in Mozambique the only way to make money is by prostitution. So these widows work for Iris Ministries either making jewelry, or in the sewing school making capalonas and bags, or making beds. Iris doesn't pay wages because the money rarely gets spent on the children or food and sometimes is stolen, so they work in exchange for a certain amount of rice and beans every week, and sometimes for clothes.

The widows drop is for the purpose of having us students learn about how the widows live and to help them. In exchange for letting us stay with them for a few days Iris gives them a box of food and a bed. The students can then sleep on the bed when we stay with them. We go in pairs and first meet at the church to help divide the food into boxes. At that time we are given all the rules and the widows are given them also. The rules are that there are no men allowed in the house at all while we are there. Sometimes a widow has lied and is not a widow at all so a husband may be there, or she may have remarried. They give us a cell phone and we are to call if there is a man in the house. The widows are not to ask for our things or any money and we are not allowed give them anything. They are getting food and a bed for having us. We are going to their homes to learn to cook and do chores. We are to follow the mama as they call them and she is to have us cook and do laundry. We are not there to evangelize in the village, unless the mama wants to. 

Here they are loading the beds onto the truck to go on widow drops.

 

   We were dropped off in a village with the food and bed at a tiny little mud hut with no electricity or running water and couldn't get the bed in through the door. It was such a small house and even the window was a tiny, about a foot square. We tried and tried to get the bed in but there was no way to get it in. 

   This is the mama we stayed with.

                This is her house.

     The mama told us to leave it outside and she gave us dinner which was sheema and chicken. It is a great honor to be given chicken because it is rare for them to have meat. Some guys came over and tried to put the bed in the house and they couldn't do it either. We got distracted playing with the children and turned back around to see they had gotten the bed in somehow. 

    This is the little bed we shared for the two nights we were there. We didn't get a lot of sleep. The bed wasn't that comfortable and the net touched us so misquotes would bite us.

    While we hung up our mosquito net a bunch of kids and two other mamas had come over. We tried to play with them. Some were afraid of us and babies screamed when they saw us. Two little kids caught another kid, covered his eyes, set him in front of us and uncovered his eyes. He shrieked and ran and we never saw him again. 

    Here they are holding up a baby who is screaming about seeing us.  I am behind the baby so at least she wasn't screaming about me.

     The women wanted us to play cards. We didn't know how to play but it didn't seem to bother them. It was really boring playing a game we didn't know how to play and it got so dark we couldn't see our cards. Then they wanted us to dance while they sang. We danced for while and tried to teach the kids a song but they didn't really get it.

 

     Then we played a game where they same a song and people danced in lines but we were bad at dancing. Then they wanted to play duck, duck, goose and tried a game like red rover but that wasn't a good idea. Then we went to a neighbors house where they had an old black and white television and we sat down for about 15 minutes watching TV we couldn't understand. We asked to go back to go to bed and they said OK. We went to latrine where there were rats. We brushed our teeth in the shower in the latrine which is just a rock you stand on (because the floor is sand) and a bucket of water.

    We went to bed but the mama called us back out because she wanted to tell us her story. It was hard because she didn't speak English or Portuguese but Makua. From what we could tell she had a husband and three children. Two of the kids died when they were little, then her husband and last child died recently. We prayed for her and she tried to ask us about our families and we went to bed.

The mom got up at 4am but we slept until 6am. The mom was sitting with some kids and we just sat with them and then had really good porridge for breakfast. Then all the people came back from the night before and wanted us to dance again and play cards again. We tried to play hand clapping games the kids taught us. We played some more duck duck goose and then sat in the shade and had a nap. 

  About an hour later when we woke up everyone had left and we got out our journals and tried to get the kids to come over but they wouldn't then Kristen got out her camera and took pictures and showed them a video on it which they loved. She tried to get them to teach her Makua and I painted their nails and the mamas nails. 

Then we had lunch and were getting bored when someone yelled acoonya-acoonya! which means whitey- whitey. We looked up and saw the other group had come to visit in this village was coming to our house. They only stayed about 10 minutes but a little later our mama took us to their house. They had a nice big courtyard with a hair salon in it and older girls that knew English. They showed us how to use Cassava root to make sheema and braided our hair. We went back to our mamas house for dinner and went to bed. 

     In the morning we ate breakfast, did laundry played with kids. 

    The other group came down the road so we packed up and headed out but we met another lady who led us all off so we ended up walking through the village not knowing where we were going. We ended up in a little church. We didn't know what was going on ; there were ladies in there singing. It was a baby dedication. They got a bucket of water and washed a baby and dressed it in new clothes. Then went outside and danced with the baby held upside down by it's leg. The baby didn't cry and no one seemed to see this as unusual. They set the mama and baby down and put capalona in front of her for people to give her things on. We gave a little money we had with us. They went out of the yard and danced in front of some men and the men also came and gave some money. And then they served huge buckets of white thick liquid and we were worried it had alcohol in it but they gave it to the children so we knew it was not alcohol. It was sour and we didn't like it but they loved it and all guzzled it down and filled bottles to take home with them. They had more music and dancing, then moms walked us back to the base.