Reporter Helder Macuacua and I enter the Maxaquene sports pavilion, packed with 5,000 believers, and we freeze. As if cued to our arrival, prophet Cremildo thunders from the stage: “Those journalists who criticize us, they are driven by envy, by evil, by the devil. They shall feel our wrath!”

Red carpet…a sea of tuxedos and dazzling, figure-hugging evening gowns…a phalanx of paparazzi looking for someone important or something offbeat to shoot.

But this black-tie event took place, not in Los Angeles but in a giant marquee on the lawns of Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika’s State House in Lilongwe, the capital.

The event in question was an awards dinner hosted by the state-owned and government-controlled Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), dubbed “Our People, Our Pride.” It is an annual ceremony to honor Malawians whose deeds have touched the lives of many—ordinary people

They look lovely, the heaps of sand in ochre, sienna, orange and yellow hues, glistening under the sun or the dappled shade in the markets and street corners of Maputo. Five meticais (US$0,10) will buy you a funil, a cone made of newsprint filled with silky sand, the colour – and taste - of your choice.

Yes, taste. For this sand is sold to be eaten. Eating soil or sand (geofagia) was a traditional practice among many groups, from Native Americans to Amazonian tribes.

Editors Note: Mercedes Sayagues discussing breast cancer and hospital/patient awareness.

For a change, I am happy to be queuing at the photocopying shop.

I could queue the whole day, for the shop is air-conditioned on this Hot-Sticky-Maputo-Summer Day with 36 degrees Celsius and 200% humidity.

I read a magazine, my pile of clippings on the counter. On top, last week’s story about breast cancer.

People here know little about breast cancer. HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and cholera get the lion’ s share of attention, information and money.

On the first day, only the girls in the afternoon shift at one classroom fainted. First one, then four, 20 by the end of the week. In the second week, the fainting spells spread to all the classes of the Quisse Mavota High School in the periphery of Maputo. Among its 4,475 pupils, only the older girls fainted. By the end of the second week, 120 girls were having fainting spells and these were spreading into the satellite school. Panic followed: parents, teachers and students alike were scared.

The girls explained that the ancestor spirits were upset.