Lemonade: Mozambican Prom

My cousin used to work at this restaurant in Bethesda a few years ago. I think it was called Newton’s Table, after Sir Isaac himself. All the dishes were so creative, it was like each plate was an ingenious concoction straight from the mind and workbench of Mr. Sir Isaac Newton himself. Ok, it probably wasn’t named after Isaac, but more likely it was the name of the chef or his mother or something. But I digress. Anyway, we went because my sisters are foodies, and the restaurant was new. Obviously, this was more than enough reason to drop $30 a plate on overpriced seafood, isn’t it? Well, that and my sisters have this overly aggressive need to know everything there is to know about every single restaurant and chef in existence. Shit again with the digression. Anyways, we went, and aside from the impeccable service from my man Perry, the only thing I really remember from the experience was the overdose of blue my eye’s digested over the course of the visit. Never before have I indulged in such a monochromatic environment. It was like we had walked in on a fresh crime scene where the blue man group had just drowned an entire village of smurfs with blue paint while playing that late 90’s classic “Blue” in the background. The walls, the chairs, the table clothes and napkins, the rim on the glasses and the trim on the plates, Christ even the silverware was Blue (in reality, the silverware was probable silver, but still, the reflection was blue dude, blue a-ba-de-a-ba-di.

So, last night, my Newton’s Table experience was one-up’ed by Mozambican Prom. Yeah, they have that here too, and last night, I went.

But it’s not your normal prom. You know how in America they are all about trying to limit the amount of alcohol consumed at the dance with the optimistic goal that everyone in attendance will show up and subsequently remain completely sober? So imagine that in Mozambique, but the complete opposite. Particularly when it comes to the teachers. For lack of better terms, or not, it was a complete shit show.

A day or so earlier, one of my colleagues, a fellow professor, stopped by my house to drop off an invitation. Inside a fresh envelope was a photocopied letter with my name written on the top. Dear Professor William, it said (side note: they never use my last name, because not only can no one pronounce it, but they can’t spell it either…), you’ve been invited to the “Baiale das Finalistas,” an end of the year dance at a local hotel honoring a selection of students (read: the ones who wanted to pay to attend) who passed the first and second cycles (tenth and twelfth grade, respectively).

Like most everything in this country, I’m pretty unclear on the exact details of how it works and what it all means, but from what I experienced, basically it’s a dance in which students celebrate the aforementioned achievement by preparing a whole bunch of food, feasting on it, getting the attending teachers (and later on, everyone else in the room) completely and utterly shit-house wasted on chefe beers, and then dancing until the sun comes up.

The students coordinated the entire thing, including their attire, the music, and a few dance performances they did. Purple was selected as this year’s chiquey-as-shit color. It’s not really my thing, but hot damn do the Mozambican youth know how to wear it. Since the students in attendance were mostly the ones that came from a little money, they didn’t seem to have much of a problem preparing their costumes. The girls all used the same shiny purple fabric to make extravagant ball gowns, each unique and customized for the person modeling it to the crowd. The men, in similar fashion, used the fabric to make a variety of vests, ties, suspenders, socks, and any other wacky accessory you could imagine that would go with some suit pants and a white button down (that it, except for the kid who had the brightest shirt in the room). One of my favorite kids decided to channel Prince and made a costume shirt and pair of shiny purple shoes. I think fabulous is a good word to use here.

So I arrive around 830pm, and all the teachers were immediately sat in a row behind some tables. Beer was dropped in front of use, and bottle after bottle continued to be delivered by students throughout the night. I was pretty confused by the whole thing at first, and the drinks didn’t help. “How come there were only 25 students?” I wondered. Where was everyone else? That’s when I found out that the entire event was paid for by the students in attendance and each person participating had to drop something like six or seven hundred mets just to attend. So yeah, it was a pretty selective crowd. Among the combined 700 or so tenth and twelfth graders, only a handful of “finalistas” (what we in Americaland call graduates) attended. Luckily a number of my 12th graders were there, so at least I got to celebrate with a few of them.

The All-Stars, my Colleagues.

Taking out seats.

We sat around for a while before the events began. First, my school director stood up and read a speech he prepared. Sappy stuff about the future and how he’s proud and how everyone is great. It was actually a pretty nice thing of him to have done. After that, he began calling students individually to the front to pin a banner on them. To my surprise, I got called up to pin the purple finalist banner on some 12th graders purple dress. Awkward. I had no clue who this girl was, nor did I know where to pin this girl. Hopefully I didn’t stab her, but if I did, hopefully there wasn’t too much pain. She didn’t scream or anything, so I think I did ok. Then again, you never really know with Mozambicans.

One of the Head Teachers hammin' it up while talking about the event. Those purple people are our Finalistas.

One of my colleagues trying not to stab a student.

Following the banner ceremony, the food came out. The students had spent all day preparing a feast of cultural dishes: grilled chicken, matapa, feijoada, cabbage salad, endangered fish, and of course, French fries (I know, I know, this cultural dish was commandeered…). We ate, drank, conversed, and then cut a gigantic congratulatory cake and devoured it. That’s when the dancing begun. It started with some presentations. First a couple’s dance, then a hip-hop group came out and broke it down for two songs. The dance floor was cleared after that and the DJ came out. He spent what felt like the next 15 hours playing the same 6 songs over and over again while the students got funky and the teachers got drunk. Then the students got drunk too. I was done by about 130am (not done like wasted done, done as in I wanted to go home cause it was 130 in the morning and I was tired done). Lucky for me though, the party wasn’t even close to being finished by then. So, instead of drinking more, I decided to take a bunch of pictures and dance. I made a fool of myself for a while trying to show them how it’s done, but only ended up feeling old. Finally, 430am came and it was time to leave. FINALLY.

We didn’t need our head lights as we drove home because the sun was just starting to show its shinny face. I finally climbed into bed around 5am.

Here are some more pictures!