05/04/10

The way the Mozambican school schedule is set up, we had final exams last week but then we still have two more weeks of classes before the trimester ends. So you may be wondering why kids would even bother going to class these last two weeks then, and what I have been told by other volunteers is quite simple, they don’t. I think that because I have the youngest of the young kids, my attendance will be better than, say, the 11th graders, but I am still planning my lessons to keep the kids occupied for two weeks without covering any new material. It actually works out okay because most of my kids are failing so I will use these two weeks to give lots of exercises and group work to give them the opportunity to boost their grades.
I have gotten so accustomed to the power going out every day, multiple times per day that I often forget that this didn’t used to be normal for me. Now I have learned to keep everything as charged as possible and always have a backup plan when breakfast is coffee but your electric water boiler is useless. And I know I shouldn’t complain because many of my friends have no energy at all, but expecting to have light and then having to grade 90 exams by candlelight is literally a headache.

04/04/10

Thanks to the many packages I have received from friends and family, I was able to prepare a little goodie bag for all 53 girls in the orphanage today. While the girls were inside eating lunch Ann and Emma helped me hide/distribute them around the courtyard. Then before the girls left after lunch I told them that in America our parents would hide eggs or other candies and we would have to find them, so outside there were 53 bags and each girl had to find the one with their name on it. Lovely chaos ensued in the courtyard, all of the older girls helped the younger ones find their gifts, and everyone was so appreciative.

03/04/10

Twelve of the girls from the orphanage got baptized tonight during Easter vigil. Because of the larger crowd, mass was held outside which was a huge blessing because it was a hot night and would have been sweltering with all the bodies inside that small reed church. It was so fun seeing all the girls all dressed up in their best dresses and with their hair all done. Margarita (the 3-year-old) was wearing a beautiful white dress and Irmã Albertina said, “you look like you’re getting married! Who are you marrying?” and Margarita said “Mana Anata!”
The baptism ceremony was beautiful and powerful. All of the girls’ godparents, some aunts and uncles and some godparents through the orphanage’s sponsorship program, came for the ceremony and to visit them at the orphanage. The girls were so excited to have their godparents there and to be the center of attention for once. All day today whenever a car would pull up all the girls would go running out to it yelling, “it’s my godparents!”

02/04/10

The beauty salon. With Easter coming up and 12 girls getting baptized there was even more hair-doing than normal.
Mozambicans never miss an opportunity for theater, so for today’s Holy Thursday mass a group of teenagers actually acted out the Stations of the cross and the whole congregation walked around the Salesian technical school’s campus, stopping at each station. I have never seen anything like that and I thought it was wonderful, especially for the girls who found it fascinating.

04/01/10

It was finalized last night that I won’t be able to attend the big annual REDES conference. It is scheduled for the one week between the first and second trimesters which is the only time it could be since we are supposed to bring two girls from our group to the conference and pulling girls out of school for a week isn’t quite justifiable. But the problem is that this is the time teachers do all of the grades (keep in mind this is a HUGE process with over a thousand students and all of the grades been entered by hand). In previous years the break has been two weeks long, so the grading could happen the first week and then the conference the second week, but this year the school schedule changed. I asked if I could finish everything before hand, but the problem is that many of the teachers at our school also teach at the other secondary school in town, and since the other secondary school is even huger than ours, they will be working there that week. I think that also they don’t want to let me miss that week because they know for sure that I will show up and work hard, whereas they can’t be as sure of some other colleagues, and we will already be short teachers. I understand and there is no one to be mad at, I am just incredibly frustrated and disappointed. I spent two weekends planning the conference, so I was incredibly pumped up for it and looking forward to how good it was going to be.
And someday. Someday. I will learn not to believe a Mozambican when they tell me something will happen quickly and not last long.

31/03/10

This week is final exam week so we haven’t had any classes, instead the students take two classes per day. Eighth and tenth graders take two exams in the morning, there is a short break, and then ninth and eleventh graders take two exams in the afternoon, and the schedule is such that at any given point, all the kids in the school are taking the exam for one discipline. Teachers are randomly assigned to control the tests so I am seeing some new faces. This could possibly be fun in other circumstances, but here where I am the only white teacher in the school and some of these have possibly never even spoken to a non-Mozambican before, it’s a bit of a pain because they have to test how far they can push me and how much they can get away with. A couple of times I heard something as I was approaching the classroom so when I walked in I asked, “does anyone here know my name?” Eventually one brave soul would raise their hand and answer. And I would respond “yes, my name is Professora Anata. It is NOT mulungo. Understood?” At this a couple of boys would giggle until I glared them into silence.
As the classes are so large and the ability range is so great, some kids will finish their tests in the first 15 minutes, while others are still scribbling as I grab their tests away from them after an hour. These kids who finish early are generally bored out of their mind and spend the next 45 minutes looking for something to entertain them. And that is usually me, the strange white lady with a funny accent. So I have to be careful to not register any facial emotions whatsoever, or all of the class will look around to try to find what I was looking at. This was rather difficult today though when I saw one of my students, bored out of his wits, having a thumb war with himself.
Mail is once again coming to Inharrime! The rumor amongst PCVs is that America and South Africa were having a little spat and thus Johannesburg was holding all American mail for about a month. We are all still missing a few packages, but after over a month of no mail at all, it’s nice that it’s moving once more.

29/03/10

Returned to Inharrime today. I think the perfect vacation is when you are both sad to be leaving and happy to be returning and thus I had had the perfect vacation. It was wonderful to see all my friends and get a little break from day-to-day life in Mozambique (air conditioning, Thai food, Chinese food, ice cream, etc), but Inharrime has really become my home now and I wanted to get back. And that was only reaffirmed when I returned to girls running up to me for hugs, yelling my name excitedly. One said, rather sadly, “where did you go? We thought you left. Are you going to leave us again?” Some days here it drives me nuts to say hi to every single person I walk past, but in Maputo I really missed it. And I hated my anonymity in Maputo. In Inharrime many of the kids in town greet me by name, most of the people around town know I am a teacher, and even those people who don’t know exactly who I am or why I am here know I am not just a South African tourist. But in Maputo I am just another white South African tourist, back to being harassed by street vendors calling out “hello my seesta” and other phrases in broken English. And as if to reaffirm this, I had only been back in town for a minute when I heard someone call out “Professora Anata!”
Today on the bus the man sitting behind me must have heard me speaking on the phone in English because he tapped me on the shoulder and asked “are you with the Peace Corps?” And then in surprisingly good English he asked “pardon me, I am asking if you know how to find the address of a Peace Corps teacher. I tried emailing the Peace Corps. I know only that he lives in Chicago.” I laughed only in my head and politely apologized and told him no.

27/03/10

I have noticed that a lot of products in Mozambique have Thai writing on them, toiletries, candy, non-perishable food items, etc. Was wandering around Maputo yesterday when I stopped in a shop and saw a strangely familiar-looking sequined elephant. “hey that bag is from Thailand, my mom is from Thailand!” It took the salesperson a second to process what this crazy white person was blabbering at her, but after a moment she smiled and said “yes it is, actually everything in this store is from Thailand.” And I looked more carefully at the strangely familiar skirts, shirts, and bags and realized she was right. Strange, who knew?
In the afternoon Alice and I headed to Xipamanine, the famously huge and crowded shopping area in Maputo, rife with pickpockets and cat-calling men. Taking very little with us and tucking out zipped bags tightly under our arms, we endured two hours of men cat-calling, kissing at us, and sometimes even reaching out and touching us. And it was well worth it. Everything in the world is sold there: kitchen stuff, clothes, shoes, and then the best section: the curandeiro (witch doctor) section. Calves feet, chicken feet, monkey feet, cow tails, ostrich heads, ostrich eggs, some unidentified jaws, snake skins, animal hides, bones, teeth, etc. It was incredible.

26/03/10

After the reconnect conference I headed down to Maputo for another REDES planning meeting this weekend as our big yearly conference in April draws near. The meetings don’t actually start until Saturday, but traveling in Mozambique is such that it made much more sense to come straight down to Maputo, so we got to kill yesterday in the city. Did some essential Maputo shopping in the morning, getting the couple things that simply don’t exist anywhere else in Mozambique, then spent the afternoon just walking around the city. Even as a female by myself in broad daylight, on the major streets, and with my bag tucked very tightly under my arm, I felt perfectly safe just walking around for 3 hours which is not something I would have expected before coming to Africa. Walking around Maputo is a nice little change because, unlike at site where everyone stares at me because I am the only light-skinned person within 50 miles, nobody stares at me here. That being said, I am apparently beginning to shed my look of a tourist because less and less often do I get accosted by the men on the street selling “African” masks, necklaces, and drums. I have also mastered the Mozambique finger wave to tell them no, so they back off when I do that. And being in Maputo is funny because in some ways you could be in any city in the world. It has the same little shops, crummy buildings, and people on the streets trying to sell you sunglasses or peanuts. But then every once in a while you are reminded that you are clearly in Maputo and not New York: two 8-year-old boys try to sell you exotic-looking green and blue birds they are carrying in crudely made cages, or the guards (untrained men who were just looking for any means of employment) in front of every bank and other official building holding fully-loaded (yes, this has been confirmed) semi-automatic weapons.

24/03/10

Sorry for the break, I have been out of town for a Peace Corps conference! On Friday the 19th all of Moz 14 headed to the reconnect conference, a little check-in after our first three months of service. Mozambique is divided into three sections, north, central, and south. The 16 south (Inhambane, Gaza, and Maputo provinces) education volunteers were in Xai-Xai at a hotel on the beach, so really nothing to complain about. But every single other person in our group (south health, and north and central health and education) were all together in Nampula for their conference, so the 16 of us (while happy we got some serious quality bonding time together) felt a little isolated and left out. We had four days of meetings and sessions, but getting to see everyone and hear their stories and their methods for dealing with poorly-behaved students made it a very fun four days. Plus we got to go to the beach every day after our meetings were over. I am not the only person teaching a subject I wasn’t trained for during training, two chemistry volunteers are teaching physics, one is teaching physics and English, one’s status is still up in the air, one biology volunteer is teaching English and computers, and another is teaching English in addition to biology. Flexibility is a very important quality for Peace Corps Volunteers. Most people are doing incredibly well, are happy, and are making many new friends. We all have our share of frustrations and challenges, but I don’t think that will be changing anytime soon.

18/03/10

Natalia, the Spanish volunteer here, went for a run this morning. At one point she had to basically jump off the road to avoid being hit by a semi-truck because the drivers here drive like f-ing maniacs. When she turned around to head back to the mission she came across the same truck, stopped this time because it had hit and killed a young boy in his school uniform, walking to the primary school at the mission.

17/03/10

I gave my second test today and most of my students did quite badly. I suppose there is nothing more crushing as a teacher than thinking you are teaching really well and your kids are really learning, and then realizing that they have learned nothing.
I caught my first student cheating today. It’s such a disappointment because she was using a multiplication table, why didn’t she just memorize it? We have been practicing the times tables during class. And even if she didn’t get a single multiplication correct, she probably would have still gotten better than a zero, which is what I said I would give anyone caught cheating. But I think I was sadder about catching her than she was about getting caught, and of course that is that problem.
One of my students wrote “good luck [his name]!” on the bottom of his test, I laughed out loud. Another left me instructions: “turn page” at the bottom of one page and “end” at the end, quite thoughtful.

16/03/10

I was carrying avocado peels today when two of the younger girls from the orphanage came running up to say hi. “What are these from?” I quizzed them. They responded but it wasn’t the word I knew for avocado so I corrected them. They both said “oh, that was Changana [a Bantu language spoken in Maputo province], I don’t know the word in Portuguese.”
A little while ago four of my female colleagues were spending the weekend together at a house where I have been many times and always felt incredibly safe. The bathroom of this house happens to be outside (which is normal here). As one of the girls was leaving the bathroom that night, a man grabbed her from behind, putting her in a headlock and pressing a rusty screwdriver into her neck. He led her into the house and basically created a hostage situation, demanding money and a camera from the other girls who only wanted him to stop pushing the screwdriver into their friend’s neck.

15/03/10

Last night I woke up to the sound of the hardest downpour I have ever experienced and I was incredibly thankful that I have a roof and walls that actually keep water out, unlike many of my colleagues’ houses.
Over the weekend I had to complete the grade sheets for my classes, now that all the class lists are finalized. We are given photocopies of a list that has a space for each student and their grades on each exam, and then I got photocopies made of my five classes so I would have the students’ names to write into the spaces. And as I am painstakingly writing by hand all 225 names of my students, I wonder why, if both of these pieces of paper came from a computer originally, why we couldn’t have just cut and pasted the names while both pieces of paper were still on the computer. And then I realize that I have left out student number 27 of one class, so I have to write all 45 names again.
The homeroom that I am director of was being a little unruly during class today, including their elected boss/president/chief/leader (“chefe”—the word doesn’t translate very well) who I have always been on the fence about. She seems to be constantly torn between trying to look cool and really getting into what we’re doing. I caught her mimicking me so I told her to get out (kicking students out of class for misbehavior is common here). First she tried to blame it on the boy next to her, and then she tried to ask please and say she wouldn’t do it again. Like with the ear-grabbing incident, this was another situation where she was clearly acting out of line with a teacher because she thought she could get away with it with me. The class knew she was out of line and was kind of interested to see how it would play out, but also were worried about missing the lesson since it was a review for our test this week. I told her, “we are not conversing and I am not asking, get out.” When she still made no move to leave I walked back to where she was sitting, took her stuff, walked back to the front of the classroom and threw them as far as I could out the front door, and continued to teach. She left and everyone else in the class was incredibly well-behaved for the rest of the period.
Some fellow volunteers are good friends with and in many ways help take care of a neighborhood boy who hangs out in their yard every day. They had long suspected that he was HIV positive, but every time they tried to take him to get tested they ran into roadblocks with the family. They were finally able to take him today—sad results.

14/03/10

I met a fellow volunteer for lunch the other day and she told the following harrowing story. She has been here for a year already and is very close friends with her maid. (Background: having a maid here is very normal and even expected of anyone who has any sort of income.) She and her maid had gotten some weird rash, but while she had recovered pretty quickly, the medicine was not helping her maid and her rash had gotten so bad that her legs were completely covered and she was in so much pain that she couldn’t walk. My friend went to her house with another health volunteer to try to figure out if they could do anything. The health volunteer asked to see her doctor’s records. She asked the maid if she knew what medicine she was on and the maid said yes, I’ve been on such and such for a couple years, it’s for high blood pressure. “No…” the health volunteer said “it’s anti-retroviral…it’s for HIV/AIDS.” She didn’t know she had HIV/AIDS. She had gotten tested in 2006 and tested positive, but whoever had given her this piece of paper and her medicine had failed miserably in explaining what it meant. And so she has been HIV positive since at least 2006 and had absolutely no idea.