English Theatre

This year I had several projects that I wanted to accomplish. First was my English group for my colleagues, which I saw a natural precursor to a community English group. It failed. My colleagues failed to show up reliably, or eventually at all, and I failed to plan my lessons, hoping that I could go in shooting from the hip. I was wrong. The project sunk in about two months.

My second two projects were directed at the students in my school. I will now tell the tale of my first successful project in the Peace Corps.

English Theatre is a competition started and managed by Peace Corps Volunteers. Spread throughout the country there are three regional competitions, each with about ten groups of more or less ten students each. We heard about this in March at a conference we attended, and since then I decided that this would be perfect for me. My school is a professional school, one of those professions being Hotel and Tourism, and what could be a more useful skill than English in that industry? Mozambique is literally surrounded by English speaking countries, and you can bet with certainty that all of the tourists that come here to spend money are English speakers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, America and so forth. English Theatre would be a fantastic opportunity to practice English with a motivated group of students while doing something fun. Theatre is deeply rooted in Mozambican culture, it was a perfect match.

Now even better, a group of students approached me. Here I was thinking I would somehow have to scrounge up a group of students and one falls into my lap! They had heard about ET (English Theatre for you citizens) from the year before—the volunteer I replaced had done it as well—and decided that they wanted to do it. I accepted, certain that I had a motivated group that was anxious to get started. We celebrated by playing some Mozambican games, singing songs and dancing. It was awesome.

And I planned WAY in advance. This group was not to fail. I set two days a week to practice, and we would only speak English during practice hours. Sure, it would be hard at first, but they would be forced to learn and adapt. They would be my cadre of English speakers. Then after some practice we would write a script. Somehow.

But despite our biweekly planned meetings the students simply would not show up. About half the group would show up on any given time. I would inform them the day before, during class and every other opportunity. They would always respond, “yes teacher I will be there,” but hardly ever would be. After several absences I would ask the student if they wanted to continue in the group: “Yes, yes Teacher, I will be there tomorrow.” Then they wouldn’t be.

Now I should say that at any meeting about half the group would be there. Nadia, the queen bee, always showed up. She was the unofficial boss of our group, almost as tall as me, with a huge voice and domineering personality. She does not hesitate to criticize me in any way she sees fit and bosses everyone around, myself included. Nadia’s clique, under her constant leadership, would also always attend.

But of course they wouldn’t memorize their lines. All they wanted to do was play games, sing songs and dance. I don’t even think they really understood them for the first weeks of the process, which was strange because wouldn’t they want to know if they were spreading AIDS awareness or if I had them memorizing instruction manuals? Three weeks until the competition and they weren’t even close. Two weeks came and I was legitimately worried.

“Teacher Colin, don’t worry. The week before the competition we’ll really practice. It’s all good,” they would say again and again. But the students still weren’t coming to practice. I started feeling like I had done something wrong. Maybe it wasn’t structured enough, maybe they didn’t respect me. I had started planning so far in advance and now I was staring failure in the face, and I didn’t feel that there was anything I could do about it.

So I told them, four days from the competition when they still hadn’t come anywhere near memorizing the lines, that I didn’t know if we were going to succeed. I wasn’t angry at that them, I even told them that I liked them and wasn’t mad. Just that I was worried that if they hadn’t memorized their lines, hadn’t been showing up to practice, that maybe it was too late. It had a sobering effect, “Jeez Teacher Colin. You didn’t have to say it like that,” Nadia said to me.

But it had the desired effect, and they really started giving it serious attention. It was clear that they weren’t going to memorize their lines, so I told them to improvise. Who cares if the English is bad? Just make it work, became my new ideal. They stopped playing games and singing songs and dancing and practiced every day, and everyone finally showed up. On the last day of rehearsal they were still quite weak on their lines, but the improvement was vast. We wouldn’t be the belles of the ball, but at least they would go out there and do it, and that’s what counted.

I had arranged for a private car to take us to Massinga where the competition was to take place. It’s about a four hour drive, and we had to arrive before eight am, which means leaving at the unfortunate hour of 3:30 am.

“Don’t be late!” I lectured them, “3:30 does NOT mean you are going to leave your houses at 3:30. It means you will be there at exactly 3:30. Not 3:35, not 3:45, but 3:30. Do we understand?” They groaned, but punctuality had not been a strong suit of theirs up to that point, and this was something they couldn’t be late for.

That night before bed I was nervous and excited. I just wanted the kids to do ok. I didn’t care if all of their lines were straight, or if their pronunciation was good, I just didn’t want them to embarrass themselves. On my way to bed the bar behind my house was blasting music so I put my earplugs in. After all, I’d need my sleep.

I awoke in the middle of the night. I knew I had to get up at 3:30, so I checked my watch to see if I could squeeze in another hour or two of sleep.

3:52.

Nothing makes you feel more awake then waking up late. I leapt up with an adrenaline jolt. I scrambled for my phone and called one of the students.

“Teacher Colin, where are you?! We are all here and we are waiting for you!”
“I’m on my way! Tell the car to come to my house!”
I packed my bag as fast as I could and ran out the door, sweating and guilty. I had given them an earful about punctuality. I had put my earplugs in, what a stupid thing to do! I felt awful. The car was out front. I through my bags in and immediately started to apologize, when Nadia interrupted:

“Teacher Colin, we want to give an oration”

I use the word “oration” because she used the word “oração,” the equivalent word in Portuguese. An oration? What did she mean? Had they prepared a speech to chew me out for being late after I had given them so much heat the day before? I froze.

And then they joined hands and said the Our Father, and the Hail Mary. An oration.

Then they started singing. We pulled out of our town in the middle of the night, the students singing in chorus in languages I could never hope to understand. And call me corny, but it was joyous, and I could have listened to it the whole four hours there, I was so grateful to be with them. Thirty minutes later we were all asleep.

We bleary eyed, just one of eleven other groups flooding into the courtyard of the tiny university in Massinga. In classic fashion my group immediately formed a circle and started playing games, singing songs and dancing. They were making a ruckus, but I noticed that out of all of the groups, and the over one hundred students from different parts of the country, that my group was the only group that was playing games, singing songs and dancing. Shamelessly, almost obnoxiously they danced and sang, completely unprovoked. I even joined in, which I normally felt that I couldn’t do as the responsible adult. And it all made me love them.

We were one of the last groups to go, and as our time approached I could tell that my students were nervous. I shot down a dozen last minute panicky changes, and reassured them that they would be fine. And I really wanted them to be fine. Just to not embarrass themselves. I didn’t care that they hadn’t shown up, that they hadn’t put in the hours. I just wanted them to have some fun. As I sat there pale-faced rubbing my sweaty palms on my pants one of my buddies said that I had “stage dad” syndrome.

And they went up and performed. They did great. Yes, they forgot a lot of lines and had to limp through some scenes using faulty improvisation, but all in all it was fine. I was so relieved, and as they left the stage I ran up to them to ask how they felt.

But they didn’t feel good. I could tell they were a little shaken, and a couple students even told me that they didn’t do as well as they hoped. I was crushed. But I patted their backs and said “what’s a line here or there? The important thing is that we understood.” And the crowd had understood. It had gone fine, but I couldn’t stand the thought of them feeling like they had failed.

All of the participants got a gift bag with t shirts, English-Portuguese dictionaries and some school supplies, but there was also an awards ceremony for the top three groups, best actor overall and best actress overall. I sat with my group and I could tell they were already feeling better. We joked around and I relaxed. I loved these kids. I was pissed that it had taken me this long to appreciate it, but happy as a clam all the same.

And as the awards were announced I zoned out. So I was more than a little surprised when my group leapt up and started screaming. We had won first place. The cherry on top was our leading girl had won best actress as well. The elation is hard to describe.

If I thought they had danced and sang before it was nothing compared to after winning first place. “We told you everything was fine teacher Colin!!” Nadia screamed at me, dragging me into the group. Louder than ever they played games, sang songs at the top of their lungs and danced with every fiber of their bodies. And I did, too. Call me corny, but I felt just about as happy as I could hope to feel.

On the ride back they sang until their voices were hoarse. “Teacher Colin was worried we weren’t going to succeed” they ribbed me the whole way home. We joked and laughed and they complained about how they were hungry and I bought them all food. “Stage dad” syndrome made me feel vulnerable, and I think they knew it. They saw how nervous I was, and it brought us closer together.

Was it right that they had been so unprepared and still won? What was the life lesson being learned with this victory? I put those questions away—it was better just to enjoy it.

When I said goodbye to them I realized that at the end of the year almost all of them would be graduating. These students had been with me my whole first year, and I might not see some of them again. Thinking about how well I had gotten to know them made me realize how long I had been here, and just how far I had come in my first year as a volunteer. I told them that they were a special group, that I had had fun with them, and that I was proud of them. And I was.