Mozambican smiles

In the United States and in a lot of other countries we are trained to smile for photographs.  Whenever someone is taking a picture, our automatic response is to smile--even if we don't necessarily feel like it.  In Mozambique, it is the complete opposite.  There are have been many times when people have been smiling widely until it is time to take their photo and then they immediately sober up and look extremely serious.  This is sad for me because many people I know here have such beautiful smiles, but it is almost impossible to catch them smiling in a photograph.  "Sega!" I tell them, "Smile!" (Sega is smile in Nyungue).  Despite my best efforts, my coaxing is rarely successful.  For example, a few days ago I gave away some presents to the neighbor kids and they were all smiles until I asked to take their photos.  Here they are with some of their presents:

The best smiles I see are after I've taken a photo of someone and am showing them the photo on my camera.  I wish I had another camera to capture them smiling at the photos on my camera.

Sometimes I try to sneak photos of people smiling.  Yesterday I gave an american flag hat to a friend of mine and he was so happy I really wanted to get a photo of him.  I snapped a photo while he was smiling and it turned out great:

Senhor Cebola modeling his hat.

I was happy with the photo, but he didn't like it and wanted me to take another photo of him.  He said I had "caught him with his teeth out."  This is the one he liked best:

Senhor Cebola's comment about catching him with his teeth out was interesting to me.  I had thought that Mozambicans' reluctance to smile for photographs was simply that they weren't used to having photos taken of them, but maybe there is more to it. Maybe they consider showing teeth to be impolite.  Maybe by not smiling for photos they are showing respect.  I'll have to ask my cultural consultants Silvia, Albertina, Leme, and Servina.