17/05/10

We finally got to have our first REDES (girls in development, education, and health) meeting in the school library where the computers are on Saturday (every other time we tried the keys were M.I.A. or something else strange came up). Our group will be doing a 6 month exchange program with a group similar to REDES in Brazil. They already sent a Powerpoint presentation introducing themselves, and for the next 6 months we will once a month exchange a presentation on the following themes: youth, working, reproductive health, violence and gender, and technology. This is a wonderful opportunity because it gives our girls the opportunity to learn very useful technical skills (as of right now, only a few know how to turn on a computer), learn about and communicate with another culture, and all the while learning more about their own culture and experiences by taking the time to think about the discuss them. So Saturday we finally get to meet in the library for our first lesson on computers (I am fully aware that I may be making the first few presentations with minimal assistance while as a group we are still trying to master the mouse (little rat, in Portuguese) and Start menu). But of course, this is Mozambique. At this particular time on Saturday the energy decided to flicker on and off at about 45 second intervals. Almost comical. And the girls were so entranced by the computers (and granted they kept shutting off and restarting) that we couldn’t get any meaningful discussion going either.