Easter

The weekend after her birthday party Teresa invited us to celebrate Easter with her family and friends at a potluck in Matola, the industrial hub next to Maputo that is surprisingly rural despite all the factories and concrete in the area. Ricardo and I signed up to bring a lasagne and a chocolate-coconut pound cake, and Teresa drew a map for us with the following instructions: "Turn right at the gas station in front of the Parmalat factory, then go into the village and drive straight until you see a big white house."

So after my big night out with Nana, I woke up early last Sunday and whipped up a spinach and meat lasagne and waited for Rico's plane to arrive from Chimoio. Once he arrived in Maputo, we got a taxi and headed out to Matola to find the big white house and Teresa's Easter party.

After about 20 minutes driving on the EN4, the highway that leads to the border with South Africa, we passed the Parmalat factory and turned off the pavement onto a dirt road full of holes the size of a small car. It was as if we had entered a whole new world. Behind us, the well-maintained toll highway, Pajeros and Land Cruisers zooming past factories and manufacturing plants somewhat forgotten since the colonial times but up and running nonetheless. In front of us, the bumpy dirt road leading into a traditional village full of reed and mud huts and barefoot children wearing rags running alongside our taxi to get a peek at the white visitors to their neighborhood.

A few minutes after entering this village on the side of the highway, we came across several other cars that were all pulling U-turns on the main dirt road. The taxi driver rolled down his window and asked if they were going to Teresa's Easter party. They all were. Apparently, the main road Teresa had drawn on the map for me was water-logged and impossible to pass with a passenger car. So our driver turned around as well and followed the convoy of cars in front of us down an alternate route to the big white house.

We were driving into the heart of the simple community. We passed women selling tomatoes and children playing an invented game involving a wheel frame and a ball made of pieces of trash tied together in a plastic sack. We drove past a hut where 2 women took turns using a giant wooden mortar and pestle to smash cassava into mash. Two young girls raced next to our taxi and called out to Ricardo, "Tio lindo, tio lindo!" Cute uncle, cute uncle! Perhaps they didn't think we understood...perhaps they were just enjoying the thrill of flirting with an outsider.

Our convoy of cars drove deeper and deeper into this community, the lead car pausing every several hundred meters to ask for directions. Apparently everyone knew where the big white house was. There was no hesitation - each person asked for directions would point emphatically this way or that, and our line of cars would follow suit. After a right turn down a skinny dirt lane, we came across a huge concrete wall with hundreds of cars parked in front of it. There were security guards all around guarding the enormous white residence just on the other side of the wall. Ricardo commented that it was like we'd arrived at an oasis. I couldn't have agreed more.

The "big white house" Teresa had modestly described to me was more like a complex. We walked inside the massive gate and felt as if, once again, we had stepped into a different world. The residence itself was enormous, a 2-story white mansion covered in ornate plaster details. Sprawling out from the house was a garden easily the size of a football field. On one end was a beautiful swimming pool and a blue tile fountain. On the other, there was a giant trampoline and a Moonwalk for the children at the Easter party to play away the afternoon. In the middle of the garden they had set up a white tent covering a buffet line, a full bar, and multiple tables and chairs already full of guests. All around the edges of the garden were manicured rose bushes, mango trees, palm trees and other colorful plants and flowers. A group of 4 peacocks strutted and pecked its way through the flowers, occasionally stopping to eat a fat worm or throw a cock-eyed glance at a partygoer. The whole thing was beautiful, but so surreal.

I set my lasagne and cake on the buffet line and Ricardo and I walked up and down admiring all the exotic dishes people had brought. I sampled several different curries, a mix of cassava leaves and coconut called mathapa, and some roasted goat meat. Rico played it safe and had a big piece of my lasagne and some spicy Indian appetizers. For dessert we had flan and a piece of my pound cake. All very delicious...

The Easter celebration was huge. There were at least 150 people at the party and everyone was eating, drinking, doing karaoke, and dancing to the Brazilian, Portuguese and Hip-Hop the DJ was spinning. At one point there was a huge Easter egg hunt for the kids (only chocolates and candy, not actual dyed eggs like in the US). It was a delight to see all these kids madly dash around the yard, yelling in excitement when an egg was discovered, then unwrapping it and eating it as quickly as possible, leaving a trail of colored foil all around the garden as the search for the next treat began immediately thereafter.

Ricardo and I made our way from table to table, chatting with people and trying to fit in. The party was fun, but we were definitely the odd ones out. Not only were we the only non-Africans at the party, I got the impression we were the only non-family members as well. Nonetheless, everyone was very nice to us and Teresa made quite the effort to introduce us to people and make us feel welcome. Nana was at the party as well, but I didn't get to hang out with her too much because she was one of the main people in charge of organizing the whole event. Poor Nana was on her feet all afternoon hiding Easter eggs for the kids, directing the help to clear the plates from the tables or replenish the buffet line, and generally keeping busy.

At one point in the party, Ricardo and I found ourselves alone at one of the tables. We were chatting and people-watching in general when I noticed some movement along the top of the big white wall. Several children from the community had managed to climb up the outside of the wall and duck their little heads under the lowest rung of the electric fence that ran around the residence. There, perched at that great height and with their faces wedged just below a potentially painful shock, they watched the kids inside the wall play in the pool, jump on the trampoline, eat cake and ice cream, dance to music, and go on an Easter egg hunt. They watched the adults make second and third trips down the buffet line, fill their cups with Johnnie Walker, and laugh together with friends and family. The children watched silently, intently.

It made me want to cry. The whole situation made my stomach tighten and my throat close. It felt so wrong that there would be a house like this in the middle of such poverty, that children from the community be isolated in so many ways from the pleasures and abundance of the Easter celebration. I desperately wanted to invite these onlookers to join in the festivities, to lavish them in attention and food and games for one afternoon. I remembered the big mansion in middle of the simple neighborhood where I used to live in Austin that would organize an Easter egg hunt in the front yard for *all* the kids in the area each year. I thought about how much the kids from Matola would probably love to participate in any Easter egg hunt, much less one in the huge white house that dominates their village. I feel like something along these lines is light-years away from happening here in Mozambique...

Ricardo and I eventually left the party and for the rest of the night I couldn't get the image of those kids on the wall out of my head. It felt wrong, and part of me hated the owners of the white house for their ridiculous show of affluence in the midst of such poverty. But another part of me remembered how these same people had opened their home to me and Ricardo, shown such hospitality to a couple of strangers, the only tie being that Teresa - the sister-in-law of the people that own the big white house - also used to live in Chimoio.

I think the hardest part about the Easter party was realizing that there are no easy answers. Just because someone is rich doesn't make him a bad person. Just because someone is poor doesn't make him a victim. Without a doubt I see Africa through Western eyes, upper-middle class eyes, female eyes, my eyes. I make my own judgments based on my experiences and values. I see small children excluded from a party and I want to cry. I see a mansion in the midst of a poor village and I think it's wrong. I think I know what would make a child from the community happy on Easter, but who's to say that chocolates or a swimming pool or a new dress would make a difference? Perhaps the child on the outside of the wall is already satisfied and happy and actually much richer than the one on the inside of the wall will ever be?