I might as well put this in my blog too.

Hi everyone, Im sorry it has taken me this long to give you all an update. For those of you who have emailed me but not gotten responses I am sorry, I have read the email but I havent responded yet because Sussendenga does not have internet and internet on phone is very slow!

So as you probably know I am done with training and now I am living in Sussendenga, province of Manica. Sussendenga is about a 40 minute drive south of the fifth largest city in Mozambique, Chimoio. In Chimoio I can pretty much find anything I need, granted with a bit of trouble, such as appliances, internet, and food. The drive to Suss is gorgeous but the road is dirt so its a bit of a bumpy ride. On the way to Suss you pass mount Zembe, which I hope to climb one day.

Suss is a small town, I tried asking how many people live there and I didnt really get any responses. Maybe 7000? I really have no idea. There is one secondary school, I think 3 primary schools or more, a big market and a couple smaller ones, churches, mosques, a police station (which is not a good place to go I found out), a hospital, and beautiful scenery. I put a bunch of pictures on my blog so be sure to check them out. As far as jobs go, I believe most people farm.

So what are my living arrangements like... when I came to Suss I didnt have much because the volunteer here before me decided she needed some extra money before returning to the states and sold almost everything in the house. I do have electricity, although it fluctuates and sometimes goes out for brief periods, on the whole its pretty good though. I do not have running water but there is a faucet next door at my neighbors house which I can get water from in the mornings - I fill up 2 big jugs and that lasts me for the day. My house is relatively nice, concrete, and has a ceramic roof, not tin, which means it doesnt get screaming hot in the middle of the day. My house is three rooms, bedroom, living room (with a table!) and a kitchen that is seperate (you have to go outside on the porch to enter). There is also a bathhouse in the back and a latrine, which is pretty much a hole in the ground.

So some people have questions which ill try to answer now. How far along are you integrating into the community? I have met many people in Sussendenga mostly including students and teachers. Sussendenga has had volunteers since Moz 4 (I am Moz 14) so many people are familiar with Peace Corps. A couple of my friends were friends with the previous volunteers. One friend has a niece named after the previous volunteer, Alyssa. I hope to meet more teachers and friends once the school year starts, since now things are a little slow. I try to get out of the house a lot (sometimes finding the motivation can be difficult) to go to the market, meet with a friend, or walk around. I still havent gone to any bars so that is something to look forward to... The past couple nights I have been watching BBCs Planet Earth (thanks, Mom) with my friend Caetano´s family and my friend/helper/empregado Christopher (who speaks a good deal of English and is very helpful). Last night I counted 7 kids on the floor and two uncles, all intently watching the wildlife documentary. For many of them it was their first time seeing animals such as whales and bears.

Are there any other Americans around? Are you the only caucasian in Suss? No. Yes, its been an interesting experience.

Whats the weather like? Right now its summer since Moz is in the southern hemisphere, which means its very hot mid day and occasionally it rains.

Why did the previous volunteer terminate? Not because she didnt like the site she said. I hear from a lot of volunteers that Suss is a fantastic site. She left early to prepare for grad school and she also mentioned that she had some family matters to attend to. Why she decided to sell the stuff at the house (apparently while knowing that a volunteer would replace her in Moz 14) is anyones guess. I still might write her an email about it.

When do you start teaching? What are you teaching? January 15th. I believe 9th grade chemistry.

Are you ready to teach? What about your portuguese? My portuguese is certainly improving and since moving to site I think I have already made strides. However it is still very limited and sometimes the thought of teaching students full time is daunting. After a couple practice lessons in training I felt a little more comfortable. One thing that helps is that I can go very very slow and even then the students may not keep up. Many kids have trouble with chemistry because they havent learned skills in other classes such as math. The troubles stack up on each other - if a kid doesnt know how to multiply or divide, even simple numbers, how can you expect him/her to calculate density or molar mass? Recognizing these problems however can allow me to go back and teach what the kids really need, whether it is adding, multiplying, or chemistry from previous years.

Do kids have to go to school by law? Does the government enforce this? Yes, kids are supposed to go to school however I do not think its enforced. Many kids skip class and I hear that the later the class is in the day the less kids attend. This same principle occurs with teachers as well, although I do not know for the school in Suss.

What is the grading system like? Students recieve 0 to 20 in a class and 10 is passing. The process to determine if a kid passed the grade is labyrinthine. Generally, however, if a kid failed a single class he cannot pass the grade. This is bad news for my friend Caetano who passed every class in 10th grade last year except math so he still has to take all of the same classes again. I wasnt positive about every word when he explained it to me but I asked him if he had to take the all same classes over again and he said yes. The inexperienced teaching, insanely hard tests, and complicated grading system can mean some students retake the same grade many times. Caetano will be 20 and still in 10th grade next year.

What will your class size be? Dont know yet, could be anywhere from 40-70. I have heard of classes as large as 90-100 in Nampula province.

How will you teach? Do you have any flexibility in your teaching style? I am excited to teach in a way that will interest the students and engage them. Many teachers do not do demos or experiments and there are no resources for lab (or books... cant really blame the moz government for not spending enough money in education when the country is poor and they dont have things like a bridge over the zambezi river where the main highway crosses so there is still a ferry supposedly until next year). So I plan on doing demos whenever I can and relating everything to real life. It can be hard though with so little resources. In Namaacha I did the experiement with baking soda and vinagre and showed how it could fill up a balloon and the kids LOVED it. I also plan on giving the kids a lot of practice problems which both helps with the class material and improves critical thinking skills. I also have ideas for the school, mainly a giant timeline (perhaps running down the main road in Suss) and a tree of life (could these things be combined?).

I hope this answered a lot of questions and satisfied at least a bit of curiosity for everyone back home... I wish you could all come visit! Keep up the emails and thank you for your interest.

Meu sito: Sussendenga

View from the top of a hill of most of the town. Mount Zembe is in the background.

The view behind my house, with a casa de banho and a failed chicken coop secondary project.

One day we decided to climb this hill

This is the main street, at the bussiest Ive ever seen it.

My house with my new friends Christopher and Caetano.

Final Days of Training

Time for another post. Training has been a whirlwind of events. We are doing model school now and I’ve been very busy the past week making lessons and giving them, watching and critiquing other volunteers, and going to technical training. It’s been chilly and raining for about 6 days straight. It actually just stopped raining and the sun is shining but the power went out again so I will have to pause writing this for a bit…
I am really glad the rain stopped today. Luckily my sister washed my clothes right before the rain started… they didn’t get fully dry but dried in my room over the next couple days. Many trainees weren’t so lucky and now they are wearing the same clothing for the nth day. Being constantly damp and walking around in the mud gets kind of tiring too. There are rivers of rainwater flowing down the roads and pathways. Some of them look reminiscent of the chocolate river in Willy Wonka’s factory.
I have taught 3 classes in model school and I have 2 more to go (and then hundreds more when I get to site). It is a lot more fun to teach students than teaching PCTs who don’t want to be there. It’s also a lot more interactive. My group is teaching two eighth grade classes. Peace Corps gives kids the incentive to go to model school by giving them a certificate of completion, notebooks, and free lanches. There are a lot of kids who are too young for eighth grade but they are all smart and on the average more motivated than the kids I will be teaching in school since they aren’t required to go to model school.
With three lessons down I already feel more comfortable giving lessons in Portuguese. The first day I talked about matter in general (for many students it was their first exposure to chemistry) and pretty much read off my sheet I had prepared the night before. The second day I talked about the periodic table of elements (after the PCTs in my group covered other topics) and read mostly but occasionally came up with some explanations on the spot. The third lesson I gave was mostly impromptu which I was proud of but I also have problems with enthusiasm while giving lessons, and it didn’t help that Friday it was raining for the 5th day in a row and I was first up to teach in my group with only three students. It can also be difficult identifying what the students are having trouble understanding. Some of them are very quiet talkers (I think they might be scared of me…) and it doesn’t help that I’m still learning the language.
It’s been helpful to watch other PCTs teach their lessons. Everyone, I think, is already decent at teaching, which some of us may not admit, and we have all received a fantastic education from the U.S.. Anyway we will all become comfortable with teaching soon enough. Site delivery starts in 2 weeks which is very exciting. I should know my site Wednesday which I will post on my facebook page.
There are huge differences in the Mozambican and U.S. school system. The most obvious is the lack of resources in the classroom. At the secondary school in Namaacha, where model school takes place, the classrooms are limited to desks and a chalkboard. On Friday, when it was raining hard, there were puddles on the floor and drops of water were coming from the ceiling. One trainee in our room put her wet jacket too close to some electrical wires and class was interrupted by a loud shock.
The teaching style in Mozambique is also very different. The classes are lecture style format and the focus is on rote memorization. There is minimal student engagement. High-school teachers in Mozambique are only required to complete high-school and attend a year long teacher training course, while elementary school teachers are only required to finish 10th grade followed by a training course.
Since my last blog post I also went on site visit with one other trainee. We went to Chicumbane in Gaza Province. The first day we were there the volunteer we were staying with toured us around town. We met many people who were excited to see our volunteer and meet us. One man was walking with a wheelbarrow and stopped to greet us. He asked for my friend Gary’s name and then tried to repeat it without success (Garr… Garrehh!). He then asked my name and I said David, to which he yelled Daviiid! and dropped his wheelbarrow to shake my hand. The next morning he even remembered my name but not Gary’s. People in Chicumbane seemed pretty nice as a whole, even when they couldn’t remember your name. We also met our volunteer’s friend who goes by Big (named for his size and his reputation). He worked at the local rural hospital educating people about health topics such as nutrition and childcare. Big even gave us a tour of the hospital on the last day we were there.
One morning in Chicumbane our volunteer decided it would be good for us to control a national exam. He even told the director of the school that we wanted to control an exam each for ourselves but luckily the director thought it was better for us to be with one other Mozambican teacher. I was happy when I found out it was an art exam because the student’s can’t make cabulas (cheat sheets). Although it was art and the questions were fairly straightforward, a lot of the students felt the need to look at other student’s exams. I did my best to look intimidating, walk up and down the isles, and tell kids to look on their own papers.
What else do I have to say? There is less than 2 weeks of training left and they will pass by very quickly I’m sure. We find out site placements tomorrow (it took me a couple days to write this blog entry…). I am excited but it is a little intimidating to think that everything will change again, right when I was getting used to things. I think I’m becoming slightly more comfortable with Portuguese and the volunteers from previous groups say that going to site makes you learn much faster. I have also become much more comfortable with giving chemistry lessons - these few lessons in model school prepared us well for what is to come.
I will try to write again soon! I’m curious to hear how people are doing in the states and I still haven’t gotten any snail mails (besides my big package from Mom). Até logo!

Check out my friend's blog

www.themillsinmoz.wordpress.com

More Pics

We had permaculture training so I was excited to start my own mini-garden.

My Family and I on my birthday - I was also Bam-Bam for Halloween.

Hello everyone

Hello everyone and thank you for your interest in my adventures in Peace Corps, Mozambique. I’ve been in training for about 3 weeks now so I think I’m due for a blog post. I will try to update this blog once or twice a month.

Training takes place in Namaacha, a town at the southern tip of Mozambique. Take a look at some of the pictures of around town in my last post. I will be here living with a host family, attending language class, and learning technical and cross cultural skills until December 9th when I will be delivered to my site.

Where to start? The last three weeks have been incredibly full and each day seems like two. The first week here I think was especially hard for everyone. American culture and Mozambican culture are very different from each other, and on top of that volunteers (and the Mozambicans speaking to us) have to deal with the huge language barrier.

Some moments are really embarrassing, or just quiet and awkward. This is my first time staying with a host family, so I didn’t really know what to expect. The first day in Namaacha I was kind of stunned and confused. My sister picked me up and we walked all the way to our house (muito longe). She showed me around the house (which is actually many separate, small buildings) and I met some of my other family members. Sitting in the conzinha around a fire with a bunch of people I didn’t know who spoke a language I couldn’t understand felt very strange. Was I just another person, like them, in a new environment? Or was I a diplomat sent from the United States to observe another culture? A couple times that day I felt like an alien from outer space on a mission to learn about the human species. As time goes by, however, I think I will find that we share more in common than I could have ever guessed.

Since I arrived in Namaacha there have been embarrassing moments. The first morning I was brushing my teeth and I didn’t know where to spit so I went into the latrina. I spit in the toilet and did some business and when I came out my family members were looking kind of surprised. There was a glass of water sitting on the porch and they told me it was for me. My sister took me to the side of the house and told me I could brush my teeth there. Apparently it’s disgusting to brush your teeth in the bathroom. Actually with the lack of hand-washing here I’m not surprised.

I’m lucky I haven’t been in any situations that were too embarrassing. I have a friend who backed up the toilet in his first week and he had to tell his parents with his very limited Portuguese. While we were still in Maputo we were told about a volunteer who had his host mom bathe him (she might have insisted on it).

My family is huge and I’m still trying to figure out exactly who is who. It is possible that when I leave Namaacha I still won’t know who everyone is. I have four sisters and four brothers (I found out I had a fourth one yesterday. He even lives in the same compound but I don’t see him much and I though his wife was my other brother’s wife). I also have many nieces and nephews. One of my sisters, Jilda, is practically my mom. She makes me meals and helps me with everything. She does a lot of work at the house and she’s a single mom, but she also finds time to go to night school three days a week and participate in multiple groups within the community. She is 25. I don’t know what I would do without her because often times I can’t understand my mom and dad. My mom and dad work on the machamba (field) and grow fruits and vegetables (cove, onion, bananas, etc). My mom also helps sell the produce from the machamba in the local market with the help of my youngest sister. Oh and everyone’s first language is Changana, but they speak Portuguese equally well.

The other night I killed a chicken for dinner. I was at my friends Brian and Jordan’s house and I, Brian, and our friend Ben killed three chickens, one for each of us. It was my first time killing anything larger than a fly so the moment leading up to it was kind of unsettling. I watched Brian kill his chicken first: grab the chicken by the wings, step on its feet with one foot, then step on its wings with the other foot. Grab its head and pull out to get to the neck, then start sawing away. It helps if you sharpen the knife beforehand, but it’s not going to get much sharper than a butter knife. I think it was Jonathan who said his family had one knife for chopping vegetables, plugging up holes in walls with cement, breaking apart insect homes, and cutting the heads off chicken. It’s pretty gruesome. You also have to hold the body down afterwards as the body tries to run away. Once I killed my first chicken I came to terms with death and I feel fine killing them now. I even killed one for my family the next day. Jilda called me a chicken murderer (assassino de galinhas).

That night I was invited to dinner at Brian and Jordan’s house. I had to tell my family that I was eating over so I went back to tell my sister. A couple hours later I got a call from my dad who told me it was time for dinner. I went back and explained that I was eating over at the neighbor’s house, and he looked like he reluctantly accepted. That night I came back home late and my dad was waiting for me on the porch. I said I was sorry and I think he said something about his heart as we walked inside. The next morning I was talking to Jilda and it turned out my dad was really sad because he thought I was over at the neighbor’s house to eat dinner because I didn’t like the food they were serving me. Jilda said she explained that I had been invited to dinner though, and I think it worked out alright in the end. It’s really hard communicating with my dad.

I guess I’ll briefly say something about the living conditions here. I live in a concrete house. I am lucky to have a big room with a desk. There is electricity (I think just one outlet) but no running water. Some people get their water from a river and I have heard that it looks really dirty. My family gets water from a tube that supplies our local community with water on certain days of the week. I boil and filter my water before drinking it. That’s about it. Oh and there are no trash cans. Everyone burns their trash. I have been hoarding mine in my room but there are flies in it so I think I’ll have to give it up soon.

The amount and level of technology here does not fit with everything else. It’s kind of strange that there are no land lines but almost everyone has a cell phone. It’s also strange that some people have huge stereo systems, a T.V. and DVD player but no running water. My neighbors are almost always playing music, sometimes as early as six in the morning. I am sorry that I don’t know more pop music because Mozambicans here are really into it. I was really confused when my sisters were telling me they liked Enrique Ingles. I think their cell phones couldn’t fit his full last name. Many Mozambicans also LOVE Michael Jackson (especially my brother Jackson). I think he was big here before his death but now you hear him everywhere.
Now that I have covered almost everything I will talk about the reason why I’m here – to teach chemistry to high school students. In my tech class we have been giving 10 and 20 minute practice lessons to each other in Portuguese and Monday we will begin the 45 minute lessons. We can make a lesson on whatever we want so I’ve been sticking to the basics – the atomic structure, elements, molecules, etc. I hope that I teach either 8th or 9th grade because I don’t want to teach organic chemistry to 10th graders. Making a lesson in Portuguese is pretty difficult but I can use my dictionary and write it all out. Yesterday I was talking with Brian about how crazy it is that we can use a chemistry book in Portuguese to make lesson plans about Avagadro’s number, molar mass, etc.

Well that’s all I have for now. Keep writing me emails because I can check them on my phone (writing emails with T9 is a little more difficult). I will try hard to keep this blog updated. Chow!

A Taste of Namaacha

Hi everyone - just a quick update with pictures and later maybe this week I'll do a long post about life here in Namaacha. Keep sending me emails!

A play demonstrating our awesome Portuguese language skills and how to kill a chicken.

Mae e Pae in the cozinha with some other family members.

The market

My language class.

My house (the building where my bedroom is at least)

My dining room