Love is a Many Splendid Thing

No, I am not writing about some grand majestic love I have found here in Mozambique – although I have discovered that they aren’t all misogynistic loser men who prematurely spout their passionate love in your face. There are some gems.

Rather, I am talking about some cultural norms that my students have opened my eyes to. We are amidst a unit on relationships in my 11^th grade classes. Although we began with the traditional family tree exercise, in hopes of incorporating some life-skills into the unit I quickly steered the topic to gender roles, and healthy love relationships.

Although we talk about sex/HIV almost every day in my lessons, and my students display an amazing amount of maturity when discussing the subject - or perhaps they are just numb to HIV Prevention overstimulation. However, after beginning this unit, I had to implement a new rule in class:

No telling teacher Caitlin that you love her.

Those who break it have to cart water for me.

Now, in my short lived experience, brainstorming with any 11^th or 12^th grade Mozambican English class is like pulling teeth. With no anesthesia. Not even that laughing gas stuff they give you which does nothing but incapacitate you so you can’t tell anyone that you are in fact still in mind-numbing pain (Sorry for the dental digression, but I had a bad experience as a child).

Oh the looks I got when I asked “What makes a good girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife?” Add a word web into the mix, and wow. You are looking at a bunch of little African blank faces. Like most roads in Mozambique, the path to developing critical thinking skills is windy, bumpy, often flooded, and filled with disastrous potholes.

In one class it literally came down to me asking each person if they had a bf/gf/hubby/wifey, and then asking why they loved them. Here are the answers I got:

Night Class:
Money
They give
They help
They support
Do things for me (about 10 people said this)

Turma 1:
Kissing
Help and Support
Money
Do things for me

Turma 2:
Kissing
Money
Help/support
Do things
Give things
Respect

Well, I guess romance is dead in Mozambique. Especially when it comes to the mostly middle-aged students that study at night. I was envisioning a web of idealistic adjectives borne out of a communal attempt to sketch the perfect lover. Oh no, all verbs, usually involving ‘to give’.

Thank god for Julius in my second 11^th grade day turma who threw respect into the mix. I was losing my faith in humanity a little bit. But it is true what you hear, so many of the relationships I see around me every day are transactional in so many ways. But life is very difficult here. There is no money, there is no work, there often is no food, even if there is work, there is no money to pay the workers (ex: the teachers salaries are about a month overdue). If you meet someone who can give any of those things to you… I suppose it looks a lot like love.

Or maybe, in reality, it is. It is a more palpable, helpful, realistic type of love then the sort of inconvenient, consuming, can’t live without each other happenstance love, or romanticized exquisite pain that has been so drilled into the minds of westerners – ever since the era of courtly dragon slaying love - with every Shakespearean romance, glittery $5 Valentines Day card, romantic comedy, and multi-platinum Backstreet Boys album.

By the way, Backstreet’s back in Mozambique. Their major fan-base has shifted continents apparently, and world headquarters might be right up here on my little hill in the Chid. I wonder if they know.