15/03/11

There is a brand new little munchkin at the orphanage who has been here less than a week. She is tiny, basically reaches my knee, and her stomach is huge and must be so full of worms. She is still a little wary of white people, but is warming up to me. With all the tons of volunteers and benefactors who have been around the past couple weeks, I’m a little scared of white people too at this point.
Last week we read English translations of three Mozambican poets and in one of the poems, the poet describes many things that he associates with Africa. On an English exercise this week I asked my students to name three things that they associate with Mozambique. I got some strange and annoying answers (strange as in the Mediterranean Ocean, annoying as in tons of students copied so I also got many “medaerrtn ocen” and such). But I also got some answers like: traditional medicine, witchcraft, poverty, traditional dances, and coconut trees.