30/11/09

Had a session on stigma and HIV/AIDS today, all in portuguese. It's amazing to realize how much my portuguese has improved. I can understand it all and I don't even get a headache after. Unfortunately listening and understanding is drastically different from actually forming the sentences yourself. And of course there is often a disconnect between what you have in your mind and what actually comes out of your mouth. With my family if I don't know a word I often guess using my ground in spanish and latin. Sometimes that works really well and sometimes they just stare at me. It's amazing how experience can completely change one's attitude. In the short time I have been here I have come to realize that for me, electricity is simply a luxury, while water is a necessity. Electricity allows me to write emails and blogs, listen to my ipod, and use my cell phone. I enjoy doing all of these but could live without them. On the other hand, water is necessary all the time and for everything! You need it to bathe, to wash your dishes, to cook with, to wash your food, to wash your clothes, to wash your hands, and to drink. I don't yet know the electricity or water status of my future site, but I am just crossing my fingers that water is fairly accessible!

29/11/09

After doing my laundry for 2.5 hours this morning Rebecca, Erica, and I packed a "piquenique" (portuguese for picnic) and walked the 11ish mile loop. It seemed much shorter than last weekend when I walked it alone and life doesn't get any better than eating a bajia sandwich sitting on top of a ridge where you can see farther than 50 miles. It makes me sad that people I could see myself becoming good friends with are going way la (the portuguese word for anything that's not too close) and I probably won't see them again until midservice training. I do plan to travel the country and visit people, but I doubt I will get to do much of that during my first year. Whenever my grandma asked if I was afraid of the thunderstorms I always though she was patronizing me, but them tonight I watched her duck/flinch away from the window and cringe in fear during a particularly loud thunderclap. I would understand better if Mozambique didn't have an extended and incredibly intense rainy season. My cousin and I just opened a can of peas with a butter knife. I didn't know that was possible. We do have a can opener but nobody can find it right now.

28/11/09

Just about everyone in our group went to Maputo today. Some people went to run errands, other people just wanted the excuse to get out of the house for the day. A bunch of us got pictures of us with our families printed to give them as gifts because pictures are post of a novelty here. Mozambicans don't smile in pictures. So in my picture with my family everyone else looks either miserable or pissed off, and I look even more out of place than I would have otherwise with my huge smile. We ate at a Thai restaurant for lunch! It was delicious and just nice to have different kinds of tastes. I also got had cream today which is one of the biggest perks of going to Maputo. The lack of personal space here still catches me off guard. I just have to keep reminding myself that when my mom elbows me at dinner, or people bump me as they walk by, or every single person in my family bumps my chair as they're walking past it, that they don't see any of that as rude.

28/11/09

Today we ended classes early so a bunch of us made picnic lunch of the wonderful bread we have here and bagias (these delicious fried bean patties that are sold outside the bakeries here) and hiked up the mountain outside of town to the point where Swaziland, South Africa, and Mozambique all meet. Unfortunately it was pretty overcast so while the view was amazing for most of the hike up and down, once we got to the top of the mountain everything was completely shrouded in fog and we couldn't see more than 5O feet. Our sandwiches at the top of the mountain were just delicious and when we could we the view was gorgeous. When we are walking around town it is very common for the kids to yell "hey foreigner" in portuguese at us. Today when I walked by a group of kids, a boy "spoke chinese" (ching chong kwa) at me. This is very common for the Asian volunteers here, but I was just pretty impressed via any even knew I was Asian, especially without my hair which is about my only Asian feature.

26/11/09

We had our big american football game today to celebrate Thanksgiving in true american fashion. It was supposed to be health versus education (which education would have obviously easily won) but it just ended up being a mix of everyone. It was really fun. We played on the main camp in town and I'm sure all the Mozambicans who passed by thought we were crazy playing such a funny game. When I got home I taught my 13 year old cousin to throw a football. It doesn't feel like Thanksgiving at all. Not in a depressing way. It's just hard to remember that at home all the things associated with Thanksgiving, the leaves changing, the first frost/snow, hockey, the annoying Christmas songs and decorations, are happening when here everything feels and just is completely different. While we were playing in the yard my 13 year old cousin was eating a mango. When she was done she tossed the sit aside on the ground. A few minutes later I pc my 7 year old cousin eating a mango pit. Once I confirmed that it was the same one and he had picked it up off the ground and it was covered in dirt I got pretty mad at him. Are kids everywhere like that and I am just more sensitive to health and hygiene issues here? It's just hard to not be hypersensitive in a country where kids are still dying from things like diarrhea which is completely preventable but comes down to simple hygiene.

25/11/09

We got our site placements today! It was torturous, they waited until after all of the sessions because they knew we wouldn't be able to concentration once we had found out. Them they passed out a white envelope to each person, on the outside our name and a letter reminding up that we were Peace Corps volunteers, not club med members, and that they tried to place everyone in the sites that were the best fit for their skills, etc. Then once everyone had their envelope they gave us the okay and we all ripped our envelopes open! They had a huge map of Mozambique and had given everyone a sticky with their name on it so everyone labeled their site so we could see where everyone will be. In previous years apparently people have cried when they received their sites, but nobody in our group cried. I am in Inhambane province which is along the coast (though I am not sure how close to the ocean I will actually be). I am only five hours from Maputo which is great because traveling and visitors will be so much easier and I can easily get to the Peace Corps office. I am also only am hour from Inhambane city where I will have access to things I can't buy in a small town. I have two site mates: Emma a Moz 13 who is also a teacher, though not at the same school, and Ann from my year who is a health volunteer. It is a brand new site so I won't have to live up to the expectations set by the previous volunteer, but it is also a little daunting because I am creating my role in the school completely from scratch. The school is a mission school run by nuns, I think. My school director is a nun which I am a little relieved by because one problem women volunteers can have here sometimes is butting heads with an "old fashioned" make school director who doesn't appreciate women who speak or think out of turn. There are quite a few other volunteers in the area and in Inhambane province in general which will be nice, especially during the upcoming holidays. After all this excitement we celebrated Thanksgiving by eating more food than we should in a month.

24/11/09

Today I caught my three year old brother chewing on a battery. Scary. My lesson today was to review for their practice test. To say my activity crashed and burned might be a little dramatic, but it certainly didn't in as planned. There was too much information in the diagram and some of the students spent almost the entire period just copying it down. But I suppose that's what model school is about: learning what to do and especially what not to do. We have a practice exam in the second class. It was interesting to see how the kids fared and which concepts they really struggled with. A few of the kids got every single question right. One girl not only didn't write a single attempt at an answer, but didn't even copy all the questions down. We find out our site placements tomorrow!

23/11/09

Last night I heard something running around the floor of my bedroom. I just hope they are the lizards they have here, rather than mice. And I hope they stay on the floor. The Portuguese word for chalk is "giz," pronounced the same as the english slang "jizz." So the childish jokes are endless when we are constantly getting chalk all over our faces, shirts, and pants. We have one more teaching day of model school and them we are giving exams on Thursday. We are giving a practice exam tomorrow which is as much for us to learn as for them. A volunteer told us, "if you can't take the exam in three minutes, it's too long" (class periods are 45 minutes here). I now have three little brothers/cousins. One who just showed up is three years old and apparently always lives here, if just happened to be with an aunt for the first seven weeks I was here. Mozambican kids like to in through the trash and play with it. This is something all volunteers from all years have experienced. Girls have to be especially careful to properly dispose of all items, otherwise they will become a child's plaything. Today I came home from classes and found my seven year old brother chewing on my old birth control packet.

22/11/09

Today was the first sunny day in over a week, so I walked the approximately 12 mile route on the road the runs out of town, loops around, and then back into town again. I'm not sure how long it really was but it took me just over three hours. I walked briskly but it was also very hilly. On top of some of the ridges the view was literally breathtaking, all I could do was stand there and stare. I felt like I could see forever. The town, perched on the side of a small mountain, stayed in sight for almost the entire wall. It was exhilarating to be up that high and to look back at town, but to be so physically removed from it: from language classes, from model school, from homestay, from dirty laundry. Two any followed me for a about half a mile until it became clear that, despite being white, I wasn't going to do anything interesting. Coming back into town I walked along the barbed wise fence of the South Africa border for a few miles. That was the most free and relaxed I have felt in a really long time.

21/11/09

Today we went to the "curandeiro," the witchdoctor. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but I think the reality was a bit different. It was a round stone and mud hut with a thatched roof, about 12' in diameter. We took off our shoes to enter and sat on mats on the floor. Inside there were some of the things you might imagine a witchdoctor to have: some animal skins, a snake skin, some different stones and shells, some sticks, something with what looked like human hair attached to it, and of course all the traditional medicines. But all of the traditional medicines weren't kept in the gourds or animal skins I had imagined a witchdoctor would have. They were kept in old glass mayonnaise jars, ketchup bottles, liquor bottles, and soda bottles. And on the wall behind the curandeiro's head hung a certificate from the national ministry of health. To demonstrate the kind of head covering if was describing, if showed us a poster that had a picture of himself. It has been raining for six days straight now, I think. Our village has become one large red mud puddle. But I have no frame of reference: has it just been rainy or has the rainy season begun? I guess I will know for sure if it's still raining in three months.

20/11/09

I am a little frustrated because I feel like the kind of chemistry we are teaching the students is really on a need-to-know basis. Like, I'm going to teach you this rule, knowing that it doesn't apply here or to these elements, but we are just going to ignore the things that don't adhere to the rule because you won't need to know about them for a few more years. It frustrates me because I don't like that style of teaching but it is what makes the most sense right now and for the intellectual level our students are at. Or maybe this is how chemistry is always been taught and I just never knew any better. I found out yesterday that my 13 year old girl cousin failed her grade. It's frustrating to hear because secondary school is so hard to get into here (not in terms of academic standards, but because there simply isn't enough space for all the kids who want to go), and since she doesn't live with her own family and is in more of a maid's position, I didn't think her chances of going on to secondary school were very high to begin with. One of the factors taken into consideration for secondary school admission is age (they are more likely to admit the younger kids, i.e. The kids who have failed a grade fewer times). Failing a grade is actually pretty common here (a colleague Meagan's host brother was amazed to learn that she had never failed a grade in her life), but for someone like my cousin who is in a fairly precarious position, it could be the determining factor.

19/11/09

For the students in Mozambique, what the teacher says and writes on the board during class is the only information they will ever get on that subject. They have no textbooks. And all of the other resources I have always taken for granted simply don't exist for most of the students here (internet searches, encyclopedias, asking your parents, going to the library). So that puts a ton of pressure on the class periods. One thing I have learned this week in model school is that the kids write SO slowly. But you really have to wait for them to finish writing because they need to have that information in their notes. In my cohort there are ten chemistry teacher. Fun fact we just discovered the other day: of the ten of us, we have only one chemistry major and two chemical engineering majors. The rest of us are three physics majors, three biology majors, and one neuroscience major. So aside from learning about teaching in model school, most of feel like we have been learning as much about chemistry as the students! Sometimes when it rains really hard the roof above my bed leaks a little and I occasionally get hit in the forehead by drops of water while I'm sleeping.

19/11/09

For the students in Mozambique, what the teacher says and writes on the board during class is the only information they will ever get on that subject. They have no textbooks. And all of the other resources I have always taken for granted simply don't exist for most of the students here (internet searches, encyclopedias, asking your parents, going to the library). So that puts a ton of pressure on the class periods. One thing I have learned this week in model school is that the kids write SO slowly. But you really have to wait for them to finish writing because they need to have that information in their notes. In my cohort there are ten chemistry teacher. Fun fact we just discovered the other day: of the ten of us, we have only one chemistry major and two chemical engineering majors. The rest of us are three physics majors, three biology majors, and one neuroscience major. So aside from learning about teaching in model school, most of feel like we have been learning as much about chemistry as the students! Sometimes when it rains really hard the roof above my bed leaks a little and I occasionally get hit in the forehead by drops of water while I'm sleeping.

18/11/09

Model school began yesterday. We recruit 7-11ish grade kids from the community to come to school in the mornings so we can have practice teaching in a school setting. Of course the classes are only about 2O students rather than the 7O most of us will have at site, and these kids are very well behaved, so it's not entirely representative of what we will be facing. We give one lesson and observe three others per day. Giving lessons to real Mozambican students, rather than our american chemistry colleagues, is very helpful though. I think observing other peoples' lessons is most beneficial for me. There is just so much you see from the back of the classroom that you don't see when you're up front and your adrenaline is pumping. Today I was to give a lesson on the periodis table, which would have been straightforward if it weren't that the ONLY copy of a periodic table was the small one in my book. So yesterday afternoon my colleagues and i made a 4x6' periodic table with all 111 known elements, their chemical symbols, their atomic numbers, and atomic masses. Our supplies: one marker and no straightedges. There were a ton of elements I wrote yesterday that I swear I had never seen before!

16/11/09

I got viciously sick today. My mom was trying to figure out what might have made me sick and decided it was because I had eaten a banana first thing this morning. She said "here in Mozambique we don't eat bananas in the mornings." On a separate occasion I have been told that in Mozambique people don't eat oranges at night. We have had huge storms the past few nights. Lightning and thunder right on top of each other and pain so hard the sound is just deafening against the metal roofs. In the bathroom, which is not as well constructed as the rest of the house, you can see the outline of the cinderblocks where the water has seeped through the cement. Tonight my mom was telling of she has a bump or something below her arm that she has to go to the doctor's tomorrow. The word she was using wasn't in my dictionary, so instead she was describing it. She said it was "dura," like the dura part in your breasts. I freaked out a little and told her that breasts shouldn't have dura parts. I think we then decided that she was using dura to mean something closer to firm, rather than hard/solid how I was thinking. I hope.