The one about Vampires

The vampire craze has officially hit Mozambique. Nobody here is quite sure why vampires are all of a sudden popular, but then again I’m not quite sure why they are popular in America either. The other day I witnessed several kids using cut out paper in their mouths to represent Vampire teeth. To understand why the kids are suddenly into vampires, we need to backtrack a little bit.

The kids used to have a TV in the cafeteria. I think it is because somebody took it from Victors house when he was away in America, but nevertheless it was there. The TV serves three main purposes that I’ve order them from least important to most important.

-Least Important: News. Many Mozambicans (and Africans in general) live in a bubble. Seventy percent of the population here can’t read, and my top-secret internal governmental statistics say that 75% of the people in our Province don’t even have a radio. When people hear of things it is because of word of mouth. Unfortunately most of the news people here is completely trivial. I consider major news to be scientists discovering that the species of mosquito responsible for carrying malaria is now genetically classified as two distinct species, creating a whole new set of difficulties for treatment and eradication. People in Nampula consider major news to be that, due to weird marriage laws in France or Asia or somewhere, some lonely single girl married a pillow while another gal married a photo of a celebrity. Anyways, we feel its important for the kids to know about what is really going in their country, the rest of Africa, and the world.

-Semi-Important: Tom & Jerry. Every day at 7:50am (why an odd time, I don’t know) until 8:40am is a full 50 minutes of commercial-free Tom & Jerry cartoons. Everything the kids are doing stops so they can sit around and watch cartoons. I too and glued to the TV for this part of the day. Why is it so great? Its great because Tom and Jerry can’t talk so the kids understand it and its always slapstick humor that the kids really enjoy.

-Most Important: Soccer. At least two to three times a week there’s a soccer game on TV. Sometimes it’s a Mozambique league, but often there’s a bootleg broadcast of Portugal, Champions League, or even a UEFA game if we’re lucky. This is the highlight of the day, but nobody can every predict when they’re going to be on.

With the TV came one rule. That rule was no watching soap operas (tela novellas). These are kids, and as many of the programs come from Brazil they are way to over-sexualized for kids (or even adults in the super-conservative culture we have here). Well, after repeated warnings Victor caught all the kids sitting around watching a program called “Os Mutantes” and took the TV away. It’s hard to figure out, because the plot was a little thin in places, but I think “Os Mutantes” a show about Vampires that work in a hospital. I'm not sure exactly, because I may be confusing it with the other two vampire related programs I've seen so far here.

Mutants: Ways of the Heart

Well, as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, it wasn’t long after discovering the program that some of the younger kids started making fake vampire teeth and running around pretending to bite each other, or in the case of Jose they were actually biting each other. Rumor is we can get the TV back sometime around the New Years (yes, in January). I’m going to look into if there are any big soccer games coming up as an excuse to to see if we can get it back earlier. Its not because I miss soccer, but because I miss Tom & Jerry.

On a related note, I asked the kids if they were on team Jacob or team Edward and they said that both Edward and Jacob were stupid.

Pictured: How Twilight should have ended.