This happened last week but I forgot to write about it. My students and I were practicing the times tables and I showed them the finger trick for multiples of 9. It took a lot of them to understand why I was wiggling my fingers at them, but I happened to be watching one boy when a look of understanding washed over his face and he broke into a huge grin because he realized how cool and useful the trick was. It was one of the best feelings I have ever had.

Most of the kids live in town and walk over 40 minutes each way to school every day (or twice a day on the days when they have physical education in the afternoons).

12/03/10

Today during the last class of the day, with about 15 minutes left in class, one of the girls came up to me and asked if she could leave. I asked why. Mozambican girls often do this thing where they get really shy, cover their mouth with their hand, look down and away, and mumble too softly for anyone to hear. And so this girl did that and I was frustrated because I would have been happy to let her go if she had a serious issue, we weren’t learning any new material but just doing practice problems, but I also wasn’t just going to let students leave early without a reason, so I had to tell her no.
Today while waiting for my kids to finish copying from the board I was spacing out a little and looking at the blackboard in the back of the classroom. Then I realized that that blackboard had what really looked like Japanese writing on it (it wasn’t actually, but looked so much like it, as if someone had been imitating Japanese writing). I asked my students “who wrote that?” But none of them, so it must have been someone from the afternoon class in that room. I said “it looks like Japanese writing. Do you guys want to see my name written in Japanese?” I wrote my name in Japanese on the board for them and I don’t think I could have impressed them more.

11/03/10

When role is being called the kids usually respond with “estou” (I am) or “presente” (present). Today one of my kids responded with “presidente” (president) instead and it caught everyone so off guard we all burst out laughing.
And the student who had his chair pulled out from under him last week got his perpetrator back today. Wish I knew how to say “payback’s a bitch” in Portuguese.
Today after classes Ann’s mom took Emma, Ann, and me to Zavora beach for lunch and then to hang out at the beach for a little bit so that she could swim in the Indian Ocean. Ann and Emma went for a weekend once before, but I had never been since I had had a faculty meeting that Saturday. It is a breathtakingly beautiful long and secluded beach, so we were literally the only people. The waves were huge (too bad none of us had a surfboard) and it was a struggle just to avoid getting knocked over. Actually Emma did once, haha. A wonderful afternoon.

09/03/10

This morning during announcements before classes, one of the teachers scolded the students, “yesterday I took the chapa to [the town north of us] and it was full of students from this school and ALL of the students were speaking to each other in Tchopi! When I go in the library here at school and students are studying together and you are all explaining things to each other in Tchopi! How shameful!”
Language is a bit of a problem here. Portuguese is the official language, but for 99% of Mozambicans it is not their first language and they don’t consider it “their” language. I do think it is fairly necessary for a country to have a national language because without it, a person here can travel 50 miles up the road and not speak the local language anymore. But it also is a problem to have a nation full of people speaking a language that they learn only when they start primary school, nobody speaks particularly well, and nobody takes much pride in because they don’t consider it their own.

08/03/10

Today I peeked outside while the kids were copying and excitedly turned back to my class and asked “what’s it called in Portuguese, the thing like this with all the colors?” They looked at each other and giggled, who is this crazy white lady? “Arco-íris” they said. “You guys want to come look at it?” I asked. They giggled and hesitated for a second thinking surely she can’t be serious. And then there was a mad rush for the door.
I find helping the girls with their English help very interesting for a number of reasons. Sometimes the things they have written (that their teacher said or wrote on the board) are in an English that only exists in English grammar books and that nobody actually speaks. Sometimes it’s wrong and that troubles me. And then trying to explain to them that the English they are learning (British English, perhaps) is very very different from the English I speak, and sometimes I don’t actually know if something is wrong or just sounds funny to me.
A student from another class came to my door today while I was teaching and said “our math teacher isn’t here, we are asking for some math exercises to do.” I was incredibly impressed by their initiative, and annoyed that my colleague hadn’t left them with anything.

07/03/10

Life at the orphanage is fun, is funny, is hectic, and is certainly always interesting! Natalia and I have “class” every afternoon with the girls where we help them with their homework and studying. And there are two types of students: some girls just want you to tell them all the answers, and some girls really really want to learn. And the latter of the two are just a pleasure to work with and almost make up for the former. And of course I am helping one of the 8th grade girls with her homework and in the middle have to reach over and make the 3-year-old spit out the little pieces of dirt or perhaps bugs she has been picking off the table and putting in her mouth.
Today one of the 10-year-olds came up to me and showed be the huge wound she has on her knee, really three large circles missing skin. I asked “when did this happen?” and she said “yesterday.” And she clearly hadn’t told anyone or done anything for it, because there was a huge amount of cotton fabric (from her sheets I am guessing) stuck in the blood and pus of the scab. So I had to go try to track down the rubber gloves, but it took me 20 minutes to find the sister who had the key to the dormitory where they were. Then when I returned with them I was told that the giggling 5-year-old has decided to just pull down her pants and pee right there on the cement next to the building, so I took her and delivered her to another sister to be scolded. Then I had to pull all the cotton out from the wound and then it took us another 10 minutes to track down the gauze and bandages. But in the end we had the floor cleaned, girl scolded, wounds all cleaned up and covered, and hugs for everyone.

06/03/10

This morning (Saturday) all the students came to school to clean up the school grounds. Schools here don’t have janitors, so the kids are responsible for keeping their school clean, cleaning the classrooms daily, and then doing grounds work occasionally. The first time did this, I didn’t understand why all the kids were, with their hoes, uprooting all of the grasses. But now I understand that while grass might be more attractive than the bare red earth, anywhere there is grass there are likely to be snakes.
Sometimes I get frustrated that a lot of my students seem to be lacking any sense of wonder or excitement. But today a bunch of the girls were hoeing and then one girl said “oh look!” (pointing at a small bunch of leaves that looked like all the rest of the weeds to me) “I think it’s an orange tree. Yes, smell this leaf it is!” And then she carefully hoed around it and continued on.
On days like today, our responsibility as teachers is to be constantly telling the kids to get back to work, to go pick up that pile, to stop sitting against the building. A lot of the kids were playfully trying to see how little work they could get away with doing which didn’t really bother me. But I told one boy to come do something and he deliberately walked away, pretending not to hear me, and then tried to hide behind the wall. It upset me because it was INCREDIBLY disrespectful and no student would EVER have behaved that way toward a Mozambican teacher. So I decided to deal with it in the manner a Mozambican teacher would have. I walked over to him and grabbed him by his ear, saying loudly enough for everyone to hear “have you no shame?! Have you no respect for your teachers?! You heard me talking to you, have you no shame?!” and we briskly walked back over to a pile of yard waste. Not something I ever ever dreamed of doing, and not something I feel really great about. But it was very effective and he worked hard for the rest of the time, and the interesting thing was that he didn’t appear resentful at all, but rather seemed to know that he had deserved it.

05/03/10

In the homeroom class I am director of I have been having two problems with my kids. They are divided into five groups and each group is supposed to clean the classroom every day, but a lot of the kids have been shirking their cleaning duties. Also, on the days when I see my homeroom twice, first for math class and then later for homeroom meeting or “life group,” a number of students have been just leaving after classes. Today we had a double class of “life group” so I decided to try to deal with these problems. When the bell rang for the interval between the two hours I wouldn’t let them leave and some of them got really upset. I said “those of you who are upset that you can’t leave right now, you should talk to your classmates. I know that if I let you guys go outside right now some of you won’t come back, so nobody can leave. It’s because of your classmates who always run away that nobody can leave, so figure it out amongst yourselves.” Then I let go all the students who weren’t on my list and physically barred the door to keep in the kids on my list, who had either not cleaned or skipped a homeroom class at some point. I shut the door and basically locked us in there for the remaining time. Then, when it became time to clean, I gathered all of their bags and notebooks and held them hostage until the cleaning was finished, knowing that they wouldn’t run away without their stuff. It certainly seemed to get through to them, so we will find out next week how effective it was.
This afternoon Natalia, Ann, and I bought half a kilo of fresh shrimp for 35 Meticais, about a dollar, and made a wonderful shrimp and vegetable stir fry. I am quite sad that mango and pineapple season are ending, but the consolation is that avocado and orange season are starting up and we made the most amazing guacamole with four fresh avocados.

Spider

This is embarrassing, I have never done this before and never in my life imagined I would do this. I just jumped up on top of my chair and screamed as a result of the 4-inch spider that just ran into the room. I am not exaggerating. I even jumped on the chair with my shoes on, so those of you who know me well can imagine how out of sorts I was.

04/03/10

Today during the large morning break I was hanging out in the faculty room with my colleagues. One of my colleagues asked me if I was planning to learn Tchopi, the local Bantu language. If you’re white and you speak Portuguese, Mozambicans will love that because most white people they interact with are the South African tourists who make no attempt whatsoever to speak or learn Portuguese. But if you want to make a Mozambican’s day, speak in their local language. It doesn’t matter what you say, they will just think it’s the greatest thing ever that you cared enough to learn even that. When I was in Maputo in an ice cream shop I was talking to the guy behind the counter. When he found out where I live he said something to me in Tchopi. I responded with the only thing I know how to say in Tchopi: “I don’t know?” (It’s really the most useful thing to know if you only know one phrase!) The whole ice cream parlor LOVED that. My colleague today said something to me in Tchopi and I again responded with my signature line. The whole room erupted in laughter. I said that I am planning to learn it, but not until after I have really cemented my Portuguese. One of my colleagues said “I think it’s impressive that she is willing to try to say something in our language when she has only been here and learning it a short time, and all of you guys took English for 5 years and are still too shy to try speak.
Yesterday after taking statistics with my class we had time to kill, so we played “Heads up, 7 up.” Lots of kids were cheating yesterday, so I was very busy with my erasers. The 7 kids at the front were helping me by scribbling on the board with chalk because I had to keep re-chalking my erasers. The 7 kids who were selected stand up and guess who picked them one at a time. During one round the very last boy had been caught cheating so I told him he couldn’t guess. “Come on teacher, I didn’t even see!” Everyone is laughing as he tries to get the chalk out of his hair. “No, cheaters don’t get to play. Sit down!” Then VWHUMP! The kid behind him had pulled out his chair, so he is lying sprawled on the floor. And it was one of those moments where, as a teacher, I am supposed to scold the boy behind him and remind him that someone could get hurt, but I don’t think anyone took me seriously trying to say all that with tears of laughter in my eyes.
When I was a child I learned that the world has seven continents. And I always took this as a pretty universal fact, like the fact that the world has two hemispheres or Africa is a continent and not a country. I had written out some facts for my homeroom class to learn during our “life group” class tomorrow. During my Portuguese lesson today (with Natalia, who is Spanish, and our teacher who is of Portuguese descent) I asked our teacher to edit my Portuguese, and found out the according to the European model, there are only five continents: America (both north and south together) is one continent, and Antarctica is not counted. I had no idea this wasn’t universal!

03/03/10

My director watched my first class today (coincidently with the same class that Lauren watched yesterday). Not surprisingly, they were much better behaved in her presence, but thankfully their participation was great.
The third of February is the day that all of the schools here make their official statistics. This includes just counting the students to make sure each homeroom has more or less the same number of students, see who has transferred schools, etc. But there are also more personal statistics that are, for an American, slightly mortifying to have to ask the students. The cultural gap is always interesting. When I ask for more explanation on something and they ask incredulously “what you have never done this before? You guys don’t do this in America?” “well no, we don’t do this in America (and in this specific case, some of these questions might be illegal to ask in America).”
I had to ask the ages of all the boys and girls and who was a new eight grader and who was repeating, but all of my students were new eight graders. Then I had to list the disabilities in my class: visual deficiencies, auditory deficiencies, motor physical deficiencies, learning problems, mentally retarded, behavior problems (like OCD), then whose mother had died, whose father had died, and whose both parents had died. I have one boy whose legs are incredibly bowed and he is pigeon-footed such that he has trouble walking. I have another student whose feet are completely turned around backwards. And I had to ask who had motor physical problems and have them stand up. Then I found out that I have one boy whose father died. Three students whose mother died. And one girl whose both mother and father are dead.

02/03/10

Want to make a correction: our school is not a private school as I mistakenly said, but a community school, which lies somewhere in between a public and private school here. There is a small tuition fee and the school was not built by the government, but everyone’s salaries are paid by the government. At my school and at Emma’s, many of our colleagues have not received their salary yet this year. This also means that even if there is someone working in the school who is known to be corrupt and stealing money from people and the school, my director does not have the power to get rid of them, but would have to appeal to a bureaucratic system in the government.
I got called Irmã Idurre today on my way into town. Irmã means Sister, like a sister of the church (nun) and Idurre was the Spanish volunteer before Natalia. But close.
Lauren, a volunteer who lives near me, extended for a third year and her official title is PCVL (the jury is still out on whether the L stands for Leader or Liason), so she is part-volunteer and part-PC staff. Part of her job this year is doing site visits with volunteers who live nearby and watching and evaluating lessons of education volunteers. She came today to watch two of my lessons and it was the hugest event ever of the school. All of the students were running out of the classrooms to see the OTHER white girl who was with the white teacher. I had to shut the door of my classroom (which makes it just miserably hot inside) because of the crowd of students peering in. My students were incredibly riled up to have a white visitor in the classroom, and thus were VERY enthusiastic during the lesson, but it went well.

01/03/10

It’s so nice now that my Portuguese is getting better (more importantly, I am able to speak faster, without having to think as much beforehand). Today I let one girl go home early because she was very visibly sick. Then a boy came up to me saying “teacher I am so sick, please let me go home” (he obviously wasn’t). And I responded “no you’re not sick but I’m going to beat you (I promise that’s a really normal thing to say here) and then after you will be sick.” The whole class laughed and he smiled and returned to his seat.

01/03/10

The new head sister here at the mission arrived on Saturday. I was a little worried because I really love the former one, but she is really sweet and so I am much relieved.
After finishing grading my tests the averages for my classes were between 9-11 (out of 20). This was actually better than I expected, but still bad enough to please my colleagues who are under the impression that Americans give out points the kids don’t deserve. I told Mary, the volunteer before me, what our colleague had said and her response was “I was just a damn good teacher and that’s why my students got good grades! ;)” I had one 20, which was wonderful, and only one 0, so not desired but I am glad I had only one. There were quite a few 17s and 18s and also quite a few 1s and 3s. Oh well.
The mission has a guitar that I have been playing pretty regularly. The girls love it when I play “Hallelujah” because the chorus is just “hallelujah” over and over and they can all sing along with me.
Small bursts of rains all day today, I think my class thought I was nuts today when I ran outside during one brief downpour expecting a rainbow. Finally this afternoon I got my brief but beautiful rainbow.