Mennonite Central Committee

First Person: João Pedro José Capassura

(as told to Tim Shenk)
From the July–August 2008 issue of “A Common Place”

I was born in a town near Beira, the second-largest city in Mozambique, but left for boarding school when I was 14. After 12th grade, I moved to Chimoio to work for the Anglican church.

As coordinator for the preschool program, I travel to rural communities to meet with teachers, children and priests.

Preschools are a new thing in our communities. The Anglican church started 13 preschools in the last three years, mainly in rural areas.

Before, when parents went to their fields, they had to take their children with them. To go to the well, they had to take their children with them. The children just grew up learning what their parents knew. Now, the parents can go to their fields without having to take their children.

We teach the children to sing, recite poems, count and read the ABCs. We sing songs in Portuguese. Local people speak Sena, but Portuguese is the official language. It really helps to know Portuguese.

Children come back home singing songs they learned. It changes the parents’ way of thinking. When parents see their little child coming and singing in Portuguese, they think, I can learn Portuguese too, and then they go to adult literacy classes.

It captivates me to work with the church. It’s as if I’m with my brothers and sisters in every community where I go. Because I have better communication with people, I can better help them, teach them the little I know and give them love.

The areas where we work have much lower literacy rates and are less influenced by technology than the urban areas where I was raised. In my community there were discos for entertainment. In the communities where we work, people sing in a circle at night. Drums are more common than stereos. The food we had growing up was much more abundant and more varied than in the communities we visit.

One preschool, Chiro, is in a very dry region. During the dry season, the small rivers dry up and even digging wells doesn’t work. People have to walk for 5 to 7 kilometers to get water. Last August, the school stopped giving classes. Parents who live far from the church where the preschool is located were so busy searching for water they no longer had time to bring the children to preschool. Classes started again after the rains arrived.

In this community and in others, we try to encourage the preschool teachers — who all are volunteers — and give them ideas for songs, activities and even toys they can make themselves from local materials.

We talk to teachers and priests about how children of different ages learn. The objective is to capitalize on that time of life so that children can develop in ways we want them to develop — intellectually, physically, emotionally, morally and spiritually.

We have a routine — things we do every day. We play games with the children and tell them Bible stories or local stories. We have the children tell stories. We use little chalkboards or even the floor to write and draw. We give them the freedom to draw or write whatever they want. We just let them do it instead of telling them what to do.

We try to prepare children so they are ahead in school. By the time children leave preschool, they know the entire Portuguese alphabet. But when they just begin school with first grade, they might not know the entire alphabet until third grade.

The teaching methods in primary schools are very different from those we use in preschools.

In primary school the teachers are considered professors. They demand respect to the point that the children are fearful. Children are more concerned about how they may get in trouble than about what the teacher is teaching.

In the preschool, the child is the friend of a teacher. You call the teacher aunt or uncle.

The children can feel free to tell what they are thinking, whether they need to cry or whether they’re happy. They’re like birds, flying and free.

I love my job because I like to play a lot. Children are just so funny. I feel free with them. When they’re playing, they act as if I were their age or they were my age.

João Pedro José Capassura works for the Pungue district of the Anglican Church in Mozambique. An MCC worker, Sara Kauffman, developed a curriculum for the preschools, and MCC provides financial support for the preschool program through the Anglican Church.