Rebel Attack! ... (not)

Tonight started out relatively normal. I went to night school, about a third of my students were there, and about a third of those remembered anything we talked about last class. So I started my explanation over for the third time.

A few minutes later, the students were busy looking up past tense for various irregular verbs, when--

BANG!

Everyone's head shot up. And then again--

BANG!

Before my brain could even register the thought "Sounds like a gunshot!" half of my students were out the door, running for safety. The other half had flung themselves on the floor or were cowered under desks, covering their heads, wailing "Muxungue!" and "Renamo!"

Laura, at home and innocently cooking dinner, realized something weird was up when a bunch of my students ran by, shouting "Helen's been blown up by Renamo!" as they disappeared into the bush at a sprint.

In the meantime, we had discovered that the sound was not a grenade or an AK-47, but merely a rock thrown onto the tin ceiling by a misguided youth. I popped home to tell Laura that I had not in fact been blown to smithereens, and by the time I came back to school five minutes later, most of my students were gone.

"Where did everyone go?" I asked one of the leftover students "It wasn't an explosion! It was just a rock!"

I will never forget what my student told me in response.

"Teacher, the gunshot was fake, but the fear is very real."

The chances of Mavudzi being attacked by Renamo, or anyone else for that matter, are next to nothing. However, the horrors of war are recent memory for most Mozambicans. Sometimes, I forget how much this country has suffered, both at the hands of outsiders and from within. It's easy to get frustrated with how things are, and attribute it to laziness, apathy, and disinterest from the local population. However, until we have lived through the same atrocities that these people have, we will never know what exactly it feels like to be in their shoes.

Something to keep in mind.

On a lighter note, to end this post, one might say that my class tonight ended with a bang.

Ba dum tshhhhhh.