This week I am down at training for Moz 15, the new group of Volunteers who are beginning their sixth week of training and being in country. The first few trainees who I met immediately said “oh Scooter, I read your blog!” and one trainee eventually said “I think everyone read your blog…” The new group is great, I love them. It’s nice coming during week six because they have settled into life in Mozambique and aren’t shell-shocked anymore. At the same, time my measly one year of experience as a teacher in Mozambique just makes me an expert and wealth of knowledge in comparison to them. This year, for the first time, there is a group of math teachers, five guys, in addition to the biology, chemistry, and english teachers. When my technical trainer for chemistry saw me for the first time today and found out that I am teaching no chemistry and only math he said “I trained a runner to compete in the Olympics and I trained them to run the 100m dash and then they showed up and found out they were running the mile.”
After all of the sessions were over I met up with my host mother’s boyfriend/father of their two kids who gave me a ride to their new house which they just moved into on Saturday. They had just begun construction on the house last year when I was still in training, but I had never seen it before. Their new house is difficult to get to and pretty small, but it is cozy and warm and you can tell that everyone (my mom, her boyfriend, and my 4-year-old host brother) is so proud to be living in their new and very own house. The house is completely painted and furnished already (they must have done that all ahead of time) and has electricity and running water in the sink in the kitchen. Baby Anata reportedly loves to eat and she is looking beautiful, big, and healthy and slept the whole time I was there. Since we only finally sat down to eat at 9pm I had plenty of time to talk and catch up with everyone, including my 14-year-old sister/cousin who lived here while I was here but has since moved to Inhambane province to assist in the caretaking of an uncle and who I hadn’t seen since I left last December. It was wonderful to see them so happy and proud to be in their new house as a family.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
07/11/10
Last night Emma, Joyce, and I were lucky enough to attend the Marine Ball in Maputo. One of the times I was down in Maputo last month one of the Marines I am friends with had mentioned that we should come. We were excited about it until we found out that tickets are way beyond the budget of a Peace Corps Volunteer. Only rarely in life is being female an advantage, but this was one of those moments because the Marines offered to sponsor us for the Ball, an offer we happily accepted! Emma and I got to sit at the same table as the Ambassador which was both exciting and intimidating, and we got to meet a number of nice and interesting people, many of who are RPCVs.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
03/11/10
Wow, is it November already?
Classes ended last week so now begins the not fun two months of grading, national exams, grading national exams, and final grading.
Today I utilized my elite liberal arts education to make name tags for all of the faculty at my school to wear next week while controlling the national exams. It actually wasn’t bad at all, and I like to think that I was building sustainability because I let my colleague do all of the work on the computer and I just helped out when necessary. It was a huge test of patience too (which I aced!) because watching someone operate a computer at what seems to you a snail’s pace without interfering is quite difficult.
When I had finished making all of the nametags someone walked in, picked up a nametag, and, in typical Mozambican fashion, immediately told me I had done it wrong. I smiled and patiently demonstrated how to arrange the nametag correctly.
Classes ended last week so now begins the not fun two months of grading, national exams, grading national exams, and final grading.
Today I utilized my elite liberal arts education to make name tags for all of the faculty at my school to wear next week while controlling the national exams. It actually wasn’t bad at all, and I like to think that I was building sustainability because I let my colleague do all of the work on the computer and I just helped out when necessary. It was a huge test of patience too (which I aced!) because watching someone operate a computer at what seems to you a snail’s pace without interfering is quite difficult.
When I had finished making all of the nametags someone walked in, picked up a nametag, and, in typical Mozambican fashion, immediately told me I had done it wrong. I smiled and patiently demonstrated how to arrange the nametag correctly.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
01/11/10
First day back at work today after missing the last week. Turns out that my director hadn’t told anyone where I went or why (I left in a hurry Sunday morning) so everyone just thought I had gone on vacation or something. I was a little annoyed. Since I had missed the last week of classes one of the guys in the secretary’s office had collected the kids last test corrections for me. I received them this morning so I sat down and began to furiously correct them and update the grades, since this should have been finished last Friday (though to be honest only a few of my colleagues were actually finished grading). The idea of sitting and working quickly and quietly without chatting or taking breaks is a bit foreign here. my colleagues kept commenting, “wow, you are concentrating so hard!” I just smiled at them and ended up finishing my work by early afternoon.
One of our colleagues got married over the weekend. All of the faculty at the school had pitched in to buy a really nice gas four-burner stove with an oven, so today after work we all piled into two trucks to deliver it to his house. In true Mozambican fashion the stove was presented with lots of singing, clapping, and dancing. Afterwards a couple people gave small speeches and the new couple thanked up. My director thinks it’s funny to single me out to ask if I have anything to say in situations like this or morning announcements with the students, but I politely said no.
As I was writing this it sounded like all 52 of the girls from the orphanage ran by my house, I have no idea what they were doing down here at 8pm. As they ran by my window basically every single one of them yelled, “tchau Mana Anata!”
November 1st, first day of the hockey season. Good luck this season whockey, I’ll be checking your scores as often as I can. Go U Bears!
One of our colleagues got married over the weekend. All of the faculty at the school had pitched in to buy a really nice gas four-burner stove with an oven, so today after work we all piled into two trucks to deliver it to his house. In true Mozambican fashion the stove was presented with lots of singing, clapping, and dancing. Afterwards a couple people gave small speeches and the new couple thanked up. My director thinks it’s funny to single me out to ask if I have anything to say in situations like this or morning announcements with the students, but I politely said no.
As I was writing this it sounded like all 52 of the girls from the orphanage ran by my house, I have no idea what they were doing down here at 8pm. As they ran by my window basically every single one of them yelled, “tchau Mana Anata!”
November 1st, first day of the hockey season. Good luck this season whockey, I’ll be checking your scores as often as I can. Go U Bears!
31/10/10
After a week in Maputo we had recovered enough that the Peace Corps doctor allowed us to go home to Inharrime. We got a ride from a Portuguese man who has been living in Mozambique (Maputo) for the past 19 years. When he found out that Ann lives in a reed house his reaction was, “Get out! Really?! I have to see that!!”
When I got back to the mission I saw my director who welcomed me back and asked what I had ended up having which I thought was strange because I had texted her as soon as our blood test results came back. Turns out that “tick fever” without one of the letters is a slang way of saying you have an incredibly high fever. Apparently she had been slightly appalled by my language, but thought it was hilariously funny and was showing everyone at school and the mission my text.
When I got back to the mission I saw my director who welcomed me back and asked what I had ended up having which I thought was strange because I had texted her as soon as our blood test results came back. Turns out that “tick fever” without one of the letters is a slang way of saying you have an incredibly high fever. Apparently she had been slightly appalled by my language, but thought it was hilariously funny and was showing everyone at school and the mission my text.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
26/10/10
Like I said yesterday, Ann and I are down in Maputo due to tick fever. We will be here until Thursday at the earliest which is sad because I wish I had known that last Friday would be my last day with my students. Also I have been pretty nauseous for a couple days so I haven’t been able to full take advantage of being in Maputo (in other words, all the good food).
A few weeks ago my bike was stolen. From the way it was stolen (from inside the mission, which is very secure, and between 6pm and 8pm) it was apparent that whoever stole it was a person from within the mission. The bike resurfaced about a week later, one of the guys who works at the mission called me and said he thought he had found my bike. A boy (about 17 years old) who does yard work on the mission had it, though it had been stripped of all stickers and the bike rack that made it easily identifiable. He claimed he had bought it from someone in town the day after it was stolen from the mission, though he said he didn’t know the person who had sold it to him. Initially I just believe him, but the more I talked to other people and the more I thought it, I realized his story didn’t make much sense. And nobody else believes him, everyone else (because this has become the main topic of gossip around the mission) keeps telling me he’s lying and that he’s the one who stole it. I have asked 8 Mozambicans who I really trust and they have all told me that it is impossible for him to have bought something in Inharrime (not a huge town where everyone pretty much knows each other) and not know the person who sold it to him, especially something as big as a bike. The head sister at the mission wants to fire him saying “a bike today, tomorrow a car” and I understand that, but I don’t want it to be because of me. What we have done for now is put the bike into a neutral location and told him, you have until the end of the month to find the person who sold you the bike, if you don’t then we have to believe it was you who stole it. He said he had tried finding the person without success, but I find that hard to believe. Since we know it had to have been someone on the mission who stole the bike and they are all talking constantly (Mozambicans love to gossip), it’s impossible that he wouldn’t have heard by now who it was. We’ll see what happens. What has made me really happy about this whole situation is the fact that all of the other people at the mission (Mozambicans) have fiercely stuck up for me and taken my side, telling me to just take the bike back and that the boy stole it. I was a little afraid that people might not necessarily have sided with him, but have wanted to stay out of the situation, simply because he is Mozambican and I am the foreigner. But it was nice to know that people value me enough as a friend and part of the community now that they handled the situations as if it had been between two Mozambicans.
A few weeks ago my bike was stolen. From the way it was stolen (from inside the mission, which is very secure, and between 6pm and 8pm) it was apparent that whoever stole it was a person from within the mission. The bike resurfaced about a week later, one of the guys who works at the mission called me and said he thought he had found my bike. A boy (about 17 years old) who does yard work on the mission had it, though it had been stripped of all stickers and the bike rack that made it easily identifiable. He claimed he had bought it from someone in town the day after it was stolen from the mission, though he said he didn’t know the person who had sold it to him. Initially I just believe him, but the more I talked to other people and the more I thought it, I realized his story didn’t make much sense. And nobody else believes him, everyone else (because this has become the main topic of gossip around the mission) keeps telling me he’s lying and that he’s the one who stole it. I have asked 8 Mozambicans who I really trust and they have all told me that it is impossible for him to have bought something in Inharrime (not a huge town where everyone pretty much knows each other) and not know the person who sold it to him, especially something as big as a bike. The head sister at the mission wants to fire him saying “a bike today, tomorrow a car” and I understand that, but I don’t want it to be because of me. What we have done for now is put the bike into a neutral location and told him, you have until the end of the month to find the person who sold you the bike, if you don’t then we have to believe it was you who stole it. He said he had tried finding the person without success, but I find that hard to believe. Since we know it had to have been someone on the mission who stole the bike and they are all talking constantly (Mozambicans love to gossip), it’s impossible that he wouldn’t have heard by now who it was. We’ll see what happens. What has made me really happy about this whole situation is the fact that all of the other people at the mission (Mozambicans) have fiercely stuck up for me and taken my side, telling me to just take the bike back and that the boy stole it. I was a little afraid that people might not necessarily have sided with him, but have wanted to stay out of the situation, simply because he is Mozambican and I am the foreigner. But it was nice to know that people value me enough as a friend and part of the community now that they handled the situations as if it had been between two Mozambicans.
Monday, October 25, 2010
25/10/10
In Maputo right now. Ann and I, being the Siamese twins we are, managed to get tick fever together. On Saturday we both became covered with small red bumps that looked like chicken pox and although we have both had chicken pox before, my brother managed to have chicken pox twice and in Mozambique, anything is possible. The good news is that we aren’t highly contagious, just feverish and covered with little red bumps.
Just now we were sitting in the Peace Corps office when we heard the some terribly loud noise on the roof. Looking out the window we realized it was hailing! Apparently it hails in Mozambique. Hail the size of nickels.
Just now we were sitting in the Peace Corps office when we heard the some terribly loud noise on the roof. Looking out the window we realized it was hailing! Apparently it hails in Mozambique. Hail the size of nickels.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
22/10/10
Matt, the leader of JOMA (the co-ed/boys equivalent to REDES, our girls’ group) quoted a line from my youth that I had said after I tried switching from playing on boys’ hockey teams to girls’ for the first time (and decided it sucked). I had said “Boys are stupid, girls are mean. Stupid is better.” He said this after REDES pulled their second successful prank on JOMA. Score: two- zip.
21/10/10
Today I was sitting on my front porch grading exams and listening to music while Margarita and Isaura (see video and picture) colored when an 11th grade student came over to talk to me (my front porch is about 30 yards from the school which has its advantages and disadvantages). I knew him by face, I have talked to him a few times before and helped him with math homework. “Teacher, I really need to learn English!” He explained that he does well in English class and can thus write it pretty well, but he has trouble speaking. And he is interested in studying in South Africa after he graduates from here next year, but he has to be able to speak English for that. Due to great interest and participation from colleagues and students during English Theater this year, I will be starting an English Club at the school next year (there is only one week left of classes) with the aim of improving students’ conversational English, so I told him that. I lent him a Portuguese-English dictionary and children’s book in English and told him to try reading it, and after we could discuss it and I could help explain what he didn’t understand. His concern is legitimate; many of the better post-high school options are outside of Mozambique (South Africa. This used to include Zimbabwe but I don’t think so anymore). And I really want to help, I just don’t know how to go about it.
I called a friend from home to wish her happy birthday (happy birthday Scam!) and during our conversation she asked if I can tell that Portuguese is starting to take over my English. “Your blogs are funny to read” she said “because sometimes you’ll just kind of use the wrong words.” I thought that was a very nice and delicate way of phrasing it.
I called a friend from home to wish her happy birthday (happy birthday Scam!) and during our conversation she asked if I can tell that Portuguese is starting to take over my English. “Your blogs are funny to read” she said “because sometimes you’ll just kind of use the wrong words.” I thought that was a very nice and delicate way of phrasing it.
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