South African Heritage Day and Mozambican Armed Forces Day.

Yesterday, September 25^th, was a holiday in South Africa and Mozambique. In South Africa Heritage Day was the 24^th but it was observed yesterday and yesterday, the 25^th, in Mozambique was a holiday for Armed Forces Day. I spent yesterday at the Funda Community Center in Diepkloof, Soweto as a guest invited to watch song, dance, drama, photography and other presentations by a youth group called "The Learning Together Project" who has spent the past few months learning about, debating and celebrating the South African Constitution which turns 10 years old on December 5^th. This group mostly made up of teenage students along with adult leaders first started meeting at Constitution Hill and after a number of meetings there moved to Funda Community Center, where I took part in the celebrations yesterday. I hope to join this group in October after the school holiday this week and work with them as the discuss topics such as racism, education, violence and gender relations and use art forms such as dance, photography, acting and music to ponder these issues and communicate messages. I took few photographs but my friend Iqbal who invited me to the event was the official photographer and thus I hope to get some images from him that I can share with you. I hope to write more about this group in future blog entries.

As for Mozambican Armed Forces day and other national holidaysI think anyone who has spent a significantamount of time in Mozambique, traveled the country a bit and knows some of the names of schools, towns or streets would be able to easily tell you the dates of some of the holidays in Mozambique. From Maputo, the capitol, to Chókwè, where I lived, there is a town called 3 de Fevreiro and I know of schools named 25 de Junio and streets like 7 de Setembro.

To learn more about holidays in South Africa you can visit http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blsaholidays.htm. For more information on the historical significance throughout Africa of days of the year you can visit AfricanHistory.about.com. Also to see what other holidays are observed in Mozambique you can visit the Mozambican Embassy website.