my neighborhood kids.

Kids love playing in my yard. I think they like it as much for my mango trees as they do for the opportunity to play with the neighborhood’s mazungo (the Sena word for branca, white person; this word completely annoys me as I feel its offensive, but here it is completely acceptable to use instead of a name). There are a few groups of kids that come by, and each has there own distinct characteristics.

There is Five (who when he introduced himself said “como (like): one, two, three, four, five; it is one of my favorite English word names, second only to my friend “Give”) who comes by with three little girls. They like to play with Nehru and always tell me when I have ripe fruit on my trees.

There is a group of about eight seven-year old girls who like to come by and see if I will dance with them. They always ask if they can have my hair and tell me the days when I am looking particularly “sheiky.” I see them sometimes on their way to school and they get so excited that I will say hi to them on the street because it makes them look very cool in front of their friends. I also taught these girls how to whistle with grass, a talent that has now become somewhat of my trademark as they clearly told their friends who told their friends, and all of whom have come by to learn how. I never knew the trick my dad taught me when I was little would soon become such a hot commodity.

My next door neighbor has two quiet girls and Nino, a two year old boy. Nino always brings Nehro home when he walks into their yard, and the girls are always joking with him about it. Unlike the other neighborhood children, these girls rarely come to play in my yard, except when there are lots of mangos falling or when they are playing tag. Twice, however, I have gone and helped them have a “picnic” (a word they use) in which they cut coke cans in half, put a little bit of charcoal in the bottom of one have and random leaves and water in the top half and cook them until they are ready to “eat.” This is perhaps one of my favorite Mozambican games as it reminds me of the “stews” I used to make out of dandelions and grass when I was little.

And lastly there are the boys with the tires. These boys were my least favorite group until recently when we reached an understanding. The group consists of about seven boys under the age of seven. As you can imagine, a group of this demographic has the potential to be great playmates, but they also have the potential of being little brats. When I first moved in, the boys would roll up with their three old tires, which they always seem to have and can do some pretty awesome tricks with, I have to admit. They sometimes stack three of them against a tree and use them to climb up and then jump back down into the center. They can also clear the three stacked up if they run and jump (all but one who usually falls and makes everyone laugh). Anyway, they would show up and just stand outside my house chanting “mazungo, mazungo.” I tried to tell them that my name was Naomi, and they seemed to love the fact that calling me mazungo seemed to frustrate me, so they obviously kept doing it. They also did not treat my kitten very nicely, which is common here, but I have no patience for. I eventually just started telling them to go home and that made them laugh even harder. They would leave and then come back and repeat exactly what I had said to them. They were infuriating.

Finally, last week, one of the boys came up to my house by himself. I talked with him about calling me “Tia” instead of “mazungo” and he agreed. Then I taught him how to play rock, scissors, paper and played in the sand with him for a while. The next day, he brought one other friend and we all made faces at each other for about an hour until their moms called them home for dinner. I was finally getting through to them. Little by little more boys would come, call me Tia, and play for a little while at my house. They still like doing things like hitting each other and throwing sand in the littlest ones faces, but I think they were starting to understand when I would tell them that was really not a nice way to play.

I sometimes feel like I have about 15 kids. Sometimes I do not understand how I can possibly be entertaining enough for them to hang around all day long, but for some reason they do. Though I sometimes wish I didn’t have so many little kids around all the time, its pretty nice to have the company, even if the company sometimes throws sand.