JUNTOS

After spending an afternoon reading and catching up on documentation of my business trip, I traveled out to Mangunde, yet another site with no organized transport in the middle of nowhere.  Like Mandy, these guys live on the school grounds so there is always something going on.  I can see that getting tiresome, but it's AMAZING for secondary projects like JUNTOS and REDES.

I went to two JUNTOS meetings.  The first was a theatre group creating and practicing a piece for an exchange they're having this weekend.  There had to be at least 25 kids in the room, and they all helped with the creation of the story, even though only about 10 of them would get to perform.  After only an hour and a half they had a pretty solid piece- I was impressed.  The second group was working on creating songs for an upcoming meeting.   They were singing in Portuguese and Endow, the local language in this area, so that they can use these songs to take into the communities to teach lessons about health issues.  I'm not a singer, not even a bit, so I really admire the way they can sing as a group, letting one person start a tune, others fall in, harmonizing, and just going and going, adding verses. It's like when I first heard the 11th and 12th graders in Hokwe harmonizing during the national anthem.  Where do they learn that?  They sound fantastic! Of course, not ALL the time, but a large majority.  Then they added dancing on top of the singing- I loved it.