REDES!

The day after my birthday I rolled out of bed, still full to the gills with chicken and other Mozambirthdaydinner goodies and caught the 5am train.  Around 11am I had covered about 120km to the site of my very first REDES conference.  REDES is a girls' group here in Mozambique.  It stands for Girls for Development through education and health.  (ooobviously that's the English, otherwise the group would be GfDtEH.  Which doesn't sound very pretty when you pronounce it...).  It's basically GirlScouts in Mozambique.  The girls get together a few times a year and have weekend workshops where they learn about raising money for their groups, how to avoid HIV and unwanted pregnancy and other important healthy-living type things.  They also goof off and do the typical stuff 13-15 year olds do when there are 50 of them in one room, nail painting, goofing off and lots and lots of dancing to popular music.

At the end of the conference I hopped in a chapa with 15 of them and headed home.  They sang the whole way home.  They know a lot of songs.  Enough songs to fill a 3 hour chapa-ride.  Since REDES is Girl Scouts in moz, this isn't surprising.  But, remember?  Chapas are public transport. 15 girls and me are not enough to fill a chapa so we stopped a few times to let other people on.  More than once potential passengers said "thanks but no thanks" as the chapa full of 15 girls singing at the top of their lungs pulled up.

I felt bad for the cobrador (the money collector on the chapa) who has to stand in the door-well and hunch over who ever is in the front seat like the L-shaped TETRIS piece.  I was sure he was going deaf.  I was sure he would eventually snap and throw one or three of them out the window.  Nope, not in Mozambique.  A country full of people with gigantic hearts and endless supplies of patience.  He started singing too.

So, I guess now I'm working with the REDES troop in my town.  They're going to be raising some money to do a recruitment event in the next town over from us that doesn't have a REDES troop yet.  Is anyone interested in buying some handmade bracelets, earrings and headbands?