cOOKing tErMitES

Here are few pictures from the brief time I was at site. The rains bring waves of winged termites out at night - they coordinate their leaving from the nest and dispersal to minimize getting eaten by predators (like hatching sea turtles). A couple posts ago I said I was too lazy to catch them and eat them, but I think really it was more nervousness about eating them in large quantities. I can eat one bug - but can I eat a handful of them? Turns out I really like them... like potato chips. Just another lesson taught to me in the Peace Corps experience: how your perception about something can be skewed simply because of your culture. My culture tells me we don't eat bugs (except snails, which I think is 1000x more disgusting). But why not eat bugs (I think there is a recent TED talk with the same title)?

The pictures of the kids are my friend Caetano's family. It's going to be so awesome when they grow up and see themselves in the lineup picture - they are like the little rascals.

There's also my dog, Shumba (or Chumba, as some people have started spelling it, depending on if you want his name to mean "Lion" in Shona or "he fails" in Portuguese) who is much too small for his puppy bed but decided to curl up in it the other day nonetheless.

Journal Entry 15 December

I woke up and the room was totally dark and silent. It was like being in a sensory deprivation chamber. Half awake, I laid there for a while, trying to figure out where I was. I was definitely in Mozambique: many times I have had the same disorienting feeling and my gut reaction is that I'm still a PCV in Africa. A couple weeks ago I had woken up with this feeling and I had figured out I was in Maputo, Mozambique, in the house of a friend who works in the U.S. Embassy. About a week later I had woken up and figured out that I was in Nicoadala, Mozambique, about 800 km to the north, underneath a mosquito net which was a crucial barrier between me and the multitude of bugs which had plagued the small town in the recent rainy days.

But now I was confused again, in the dark, and the answer wasn't coming to me. Somehow, suddenly, the light turned on, and I was instantly reminded that I was back “home” in Sussundenga, Mozambique, in my bed after a long vacation. I didn't understand how the light came back on by itself and, remembering Chris's story of how the electricity surged and made the light bulbs pop, I closed my eyes expecting a shower of shattered glass. The bulb didn't go out, however, and then I remembered I had fallen asleep with the light on and the electricity must have gone off and on.

My fan had fallen over and was on the floor in the off-position, which was strange because it had been on the dresser in the on-position when I had went to sleep. Maybe someone had placed it there? I looked around my room and beside me on the bed, but I was obviously alone. (The scene from “Ernest does Halloween” where the little girl checks under the bed for monsters and then rolls back onto bed only to find the monster lying next to her still haunts me.) The only explanation I can think of is that the fan lost balance when the power went out and fell without me waking up. I'm a pretty light sleeper though, so I'll file this mystery under “unsolved”.

I opened my door to go outside to take a whiz and found a thousand termite wings on my porch. The termites had been attracted to the porch light and, after flying around for a couple hours, dropped their wings and went to copulate and create a new colony, that is unless they were eaten by my dog first. (I'm too lazy to collect them in huge quantities but I eat them too – they are great slightly cooked with a bit of salt...) There was a thunderstorm in the distance and the familiar landscape in front of my house was periodically illuminated by a flash of lightning. I did my business and went back inside. I turned off the light but then got startled when I bumped the door and it creaked a bit. I calmed myself down and reminded myself that a side-effect of the malaria medicine is anxiety, which I notice most in the middle of the night.

After one year of being in site, I now consider this my home. I'm use to my house and being alone and dealing with the bugs and the dirt. But having been away from site for a while makes it feel alien again, almost like I just came to Mozambique. The “model” peace corps volunteer is happy to return to site, and although I am, in the big picture, personally, it doesn't feel quite right to wake up anywhere in Mozambique.

Epic Vacation (pics)

Epic Vacation -- with details

Here is a summary of what I did:

1) Mom arrives in Sussundenga, day-trip to Mount Zembe.
After talking to the Chefe of the Administrative Post, driving to the Queen of Zembe's house and picking up her and her sister, then participating in a ceremony to appease the spirits of Mount Zembe, we were able to climb the mountain.

2) Rio Sevani, Vonnie and my b-day.
After buying several flats of beer and a bunch of food we headed to the closest beach in our region, Rio Sevani. We were all done with classes at this point, so many of us were glad to sit on a beach, drink a beer or many, and unwind. One night after drinking a bit my friends came into my parent's bungalow and met them for the first time. I walked outside with my mom who turns to me and says "this would be a good sobriety test!"

3) Go to Gorongosa park with the parents.
My Mom, George, and I spent two nights in Gorongosa National park, one of the few places that still has wildlife in Mozambique after the civil war. Many of the animals were killed by hungry soldiers. Some of the elephants were alive during the war and are now terrified by humans. The biodiversity is low, however the population of some species (waterbuck, impala, warthog, and baboon) is bouncing back quickly.

4) Pick up Andrew, stay at Barra for two nights, Ocean Safari swim with whale-shark.
Barra is a great place to stay if you're not tight on money. We went on an "ocean safari" which means you drive around in a boat with snorkel and fins on waiting to see some animal in the water. The guides are pretty good at spotting them, and this time we were able to see a whale shark (largest fish in the world, this one was about 15 ft long) and swam next to it for a good while as it lazily fed on plankton. I can check the achievement off the list of "things to do before I die", however I'm still eager to swim with an even larger one...

5) Drop off Andrew at Jon's site, spend two nights in Kruger Park with my parents.
Spent two nights in Kruger with the rents. Kruger National Park in South Africa is the best park around and I highly recommend it. It has pretty much everything - from crocodile to wild dog, as well as the Big 5. We managed to see 4 of them: elephant, lion, rhino, and cape buffalo, but not leopard.

6) I part with my parents, spend one strange night in Maputo with some expats I meet.
Anyone alone in Maputo should get a room at Fatima's backpackers place. You can instantly find some interesting people to talk to.

7) I meet Jon and we go to Tofo for one night and cut a rug at a discoteca.
We also went to a super nice hotel in Barra called Flamingo Bay and had lunch there / swam in the pool. It makes me want to get married just so I can have my honeymoon there. Before hittin the dance floor Jon and I also talked about a plethora of topics, from the complex race issues in South Africa to female anatomy.

8) Jon and I return to his site. We drink lots of soura (coconut wine) and watch Star Wars.
OoO-tee-Nee!

9) Jon and I meet Mike in Maxixe, head south to Scooter and Ann's site.

10) We all head to Bilene, close to Xai-Xai, for the trainees' “site visit”. It was more partying than anything else.
The moz 15ers actually wanted to have more of a mellow weekend, I found out later. It was a strange way to meet the new volunteers (us trying to get everyone buck-wild), but I'm sure I made a good impression.

11) I go to the last week of training for the new volunteers. Work hard and play hard.
I was glad to help out in training as an Education volunteer with Vonnie, Sam, and Gabe. We managed not to screw up the diversity session (or the "Identity Formation" session, as we called it).

12) Spend a couple nights in Maputo and appreciate great food, music videos, and the hilarious family of a man who works for USAID.

13) Sam, Vonnie, Mike, and I go to Ponta do Ouro for some nar shredding, rockin out, and braying.
In English that would be surfing (I stood up!), dancing, and grilling. Ponto do Ouro is like South Africa's Nogales (it's in Mexico) and there were a lot of South African college students who were there on holiday. I also learned how to say "ice" if you are from South Africa (it really sounds like "ass" and I had to ask about 10 times).

14) I fly to Nampula, in the north. I spend a nervous night at a hotel waiting for seven of my friends who were on a bus from Beira. They end up spending the night on the road which made their bus-trip a total of 26 hours.
I got in a huge argument with the guy at the front desk when I found out my friends weren't coming and he wanted me to pay for all three rooms I had reserved. In my broken Portuguese, I say some things that I probably shouldn't have.

15) We all go to Mozambique Island for Brian's birthday party. We “roast” him on the night of his birthday which means we make him sit in a stool in front of everyone else and make fun of him until he cries like a baby.
That pretty much explains it.

16) Vonnie, Brennan and I return to central region. We barely make it when we get chased out of a small town by the residents holding pitchforks and torches (kidding!).
But we did get kicked out of a restaurant for refusing to pay 150 MTs for a plate of eggs, potatoes, and lettuce. I mean, come on, that's just ridiculous!

Journal Entry October 21 (before school ended)

I have got just about everything graded for the year. The feeling is bittersweet, maybe more bitter than sweet (at least I can leave in a couple days and start my awesomely huge adventure in Mozambique). When I calculated the passing rate for my chemistry turmas this trimester I was... ashamed and angry. Turma C had a 6% passing rate. Turma A, my best class, had 48% and Turma B had 17%. At least when my pedagogical directors say something to me about the low passing rate in Turma C I can point to Turma A and say that at least when students study they can pass my class. There are a lot of reasons they didn't do well – it was kind of a perfect storm for failure. One reason is that I am totally new to teaching and I have no training. I make mistakes, I forget to cover material, I don't repeat some things enough. I probably don't realize most of what I do wrong.

Another reason is that my style of teaching is totally different from what they are used to. It is difficult to explain, but I am less concerned with what the right answer is and more concerned with why it is the right answer. In order to remember something you can use logic to figure it out. For example, here is a question on my ACP: “Which of these does not have an effect on the speed of a reaction? A) concentration B) conductibility C) surface area D) catalysts E) temperature.” The student can get the answer right if he memorized the list that should be in his notes, or he can remember why it is that each factor effects the speed of the reaction. In this way, if a student is good at memorizing they can do well in my class, but if he actually listens and internalizes what I say it should be easier. At least that's the idea. I have a feeling getting these students to respond correctly also depends heavily on the way you word the question. If you ask the same thing over and over they will eventually get it. However if you change it a bit they will get lost. But I refuse to ask them questions so well practiced they can regurgitate the answer. If they can't recognize a concept from a slightly different perspective that means they haven't learned it.

Another frustrating cause of the perfect storm of failure is that most of my students don't respect me in the way they do their Mozambican teachers. In a way, I can't blame them. After all, what would I have done my freshman year of high school if a young, foreign teacher came into my classroom the first day of class, hardly spoke English, and taught in a way different from my other teachers? I probably would've torn them apart. The last point is probably the most important. I teach so differently than their other teachers I have no doubt some students believe I don't know how to teach at all. In Turma C I was essentially a year-long substitute teacher. I'm just a weird mezungu (white person) who doesn't know the first thing about teaching.

It's interesting to think about why I wanted to teach in Mozambique from the start. I wanted to show that class could be interesting, and I wanted to show my students that questions could be based on logic rather than memorization. I wanted my students to think for themselves. Today I have the same hopes but I know they are so difficult they are largely unattainable. It is more complex than I had imagined. I can't just do things “my way” simply because I am the teacher. I am teaching Mozambican students, which means to some extent I have to do things “their way”. After years and years of the students being taught to regurgitate answers and copy, you can't expect to go into a class and ask a question which requires critical thinking. Well, you can, but they won't know it. I wanted to teach students to think by themselves, but, to be brutally honest, I think the school system is doing the exact opposite. I still think it's possible to work on critical thinking skills with students, but I don't know how. Worse, I want to do it without teaching for the top 10% of the class because the others simply do not have the mental tools.

back at site! (almost)

Wow... I've been falling way behind on this. For the past month and a half I've been on holiday. School doesn't start again until mid January so I traveled a lot: six out of the nine provinces, six different beaches, three late nights in discotecas, one bad surf rash, and a really nice tan :) I can also check something off my list of "things to do before I die" which is swimming with a whale shark!

I will post a summary of my vacation soon, along with pictures. Right now I'm ready to go back home to good ol' Sussundenga and see my friends and my dog. I still have about a month before I have to work again so I'm planning on just chillin at site - talking with people, reading, and passear-ing (walking around). I'm sure I'll have some sort of adventure or fun story to tell soon.

Journal Entry September 21

I just need to write about something that happened tonight. One of the chemistry teachers, Aman (sp?) came to my house about some university English homework. I invited him inside to work on it together but then I realized he wanted me to do the homework for him (there were several pages) and later he would pick it up and I would explain it to him (which means I would do it for him, and then when he comes to pick it up later he tells me he is busy and I’ll explain it to him “later”). So I asked him “isn’t it you’re work?” and then I offered to help him through it right then. I looked at the first page and it was tough - there were sentences using the conditional and subjunctive tenses which I still struggle through after nine months of being immersed in Portuguese. But I tried to help him as much as I could and we worked through several problems. It was difficult because the questions were way above his skill level and he was not confident enough in his English to try to construct the sentence by himself.

Before we even made it through the first page he asked me if my hired worker - Chris - knew English. “Yeah“, I said. “He’s from Zimbabwe“. So Aman calls Chris over to help him. Chris had been cooking dinner for me in the kitchen. I had an idea of where this was going so I left and continued cooking in the other room. About 5 minutes passed and Aman was already outside my house, on his way back home. “Yeah, I gave it to Chris and he’ll complete it. I’ll pick it up later and he can explain it to me. In the meantime I can work on spelling and how to write”.
“OK” I said. “Boa noite”. I walked back into the kitchen to talk with Chris, who thanked me for continuing to cook dinner.

“Thank you” I said. “It looks like you have some new homework.” I explained to him that I won’t do other people’s work - I’m willing to help people as much as it takes to get the work done but I rarely have to because people usually give up before then. All they want is the answers, they don’t care about learning. “He’s just lazy”.

“Yeah, people here are lazy. He grew up copying and not doing his work and he‘ll continue to do the same thing. He won‘t change.” It was sad but true. Chris later told me he didn’t mind doing other people’s work because he would end up learning from it. “It’s their own loss. I get to learn from the work.” It seemed like an incredibly insightful thing to say from someone still in high school who had grown up in Zimbabwe and been living in Mozambique for two years. Granted the education system in Zimbabwe was a lot better (not sure about it now that Mugabe is really messing things up) but I still wouldn’t expect someone else in Chris’s place to view things so… lucidly. But Chris has a way of surprising me like that. He has his dull moments, but his sharp ones, too. After all, he did win the regional science fair ;)

Journal Entry September 14

...
School today… ugh. Before I even started class in Turma C it was a mess. They were all riled up because of some drawing homework that was passed back, and I told them to put it away, it was time for chemistry. Then they were complaining because I asked them to turn in homework but I hadn’t told them specifically the class before to do homework on a sheet of paper, even though I have said multiple times to do every homework on a sheet of paper (do it in your notebook, the default, essentially means don’t do it). Everyone was talking, so I told them to be quiet, and one dude said something right after I finished speaking so I kicked him out. Other students were yelling “leave, get out” and so I told them to be quiet and they were students and I am the teacher and they need to sit and listen and learn not tell other students to leave. I think I’m getting better at controlling class, though. I don’t know how, just experience I guess. And the realization that if I want something from them (or I don’t want something) I will have to explain exactly what it is. This could be as simple as not talking during practice problems. It’s bad enough that my classes are so different, but they also have the disadvantage of not being able to think for themselves.

Oh, then there was the thing about the date. I HATE it when students correct me on trivial Portuguese errors. I rue the day I told them it was okay to correct my Portuguese. I had written the date on the board – as is expected every class along with a summary – but had written September in English. The Portuguese word is 2 letters off, but still someone had to correct me… I told them they knew what month it was and we didn’t need to talk about it anymore. God damn, it’s boiling my blood just thinking about it. I don’t think they understand that class time is precious – we have 90 minutes a week. In normal life in Sussundenga though, time is anything but precious, so maybe I will have to explain it to them.

goats, puppies, and more pics

1) My students and I at the regional science fair. Chris, in the top right, got first place for the older bracket.
2) A snake in my bathroom, before Chris bashed it with a big stick.
3,4) My puppy
5,6) Around the center of town. I don't remember if I already posted these pictures before. The center is a chapa stop where you go to catch a bus to Chimoio, the fifth biggest city in Mozambique and a (bumpy) hour away). The chapa stop is lined by bars, small stores called bancas, and a restaurant that almost never serves food.
7) Also at the center of town, the line of about 10 bancas. Most of them sell the same stuff: oil, matches, spaghetti, etc.
8) Inside one of the bancas
9) The largest "shop" in Suss. They got real dish soap!
10,11) At A Tribunal in Suss on a holiday I believe called A Concordanca de Victoria. It was the day the fighting with the Portuguese stopped and a treaty was signed in 1974.

August 2, 2010

I still don’t have any classes on Thursday, or anything to do for that matter, so today was a slow day. However a couple things happened which made it interesting, which is why I’m writing about it at all.

The first fun thing that happened was this morning. I was in bed reading a National Geographic – from April and also the newest magazine I have – but was kind of falling asleep. However some voices in back of my house woke me up and I realized they were people I knew, on of them my good friends, right outside my window. I went to my backyard and saw four adults, three kids and a couple dogs standing around a goat which was tied up and looking frightened. It was goat killing time, and for some reason they chose to do it in my backyard. Was it bad that the first thing I thought to do was get my camera?

It was actually the first time I’ve seen a goat being killed and I was startled by the gruesomeness of it. They slit the throat and cracked the neck. There was a LOT of blood gushing out, which they saved in a pan of course to eat in some dish I’m not particularly keen to try. I was also surprised by the kids who were totally nonchalant about the event. The littlest, about four or five, was playing with a condom by blowing it up like a balloon. So that’s why I see so many condom wrappers on the ground…

The second thing that happened is, well, I bought a dog. I don’t know if it will end up being MY dog or just be a stray showing up at my house to be fed every once in a while. I’m hoping to train it, though; tricks like sit, come, maybe how to attack people, and if it gets big enough I could ride on its back to the market.
It was never really my plan to buy a dog. I was talking to my whacky friend Tim Froh this afternoon on the phone. He was telling me about some crazy dude in the U.S. who kidnapped some people from Discovery Channel because he thought the company was promoting procreation and overpopulating the world. (Sometimes I’m glad I’ve been away from the states for so long – all that craziness and you’ll start to think it’s normal. But then again Moz has its fair share of craziness as well.) Anyway while I was talking on the phone I saw these really, really cute puppies that my neighbors have. There were 7 of them and they were all running around and fighting with each other. I could barely say goodbye to Tim because I was so infatuated with these little guys. I’m not even a “cute puppy” person, if that gives you any idea how cute this scene actually was.

So I kept telling Chris I wanted to buy a puppy until I decided to do it right then and there. I went to my neighbor’s house and asked if they were for sale – 50 meticais each which is $1.43 if the exchange rate is still 35 mets to the dollar. They had been born last week from a dog I’m pretty sure gave birth like four months ago. Those puppies might all be dead from starvation – I had seen them scrounging around my house for anything, even a little bit of tuna juice soaked into the dirt. That was one of the reasons I decided I wanted one of the puppies. Even if I fail to take care of it, it was probably going to die anyway. I said I’d take one and sat next to the furry convention before making my decision. My criteria were smartness, playfulness, and feistiness. Cuteness was not a factor under consideration because they were all adorable.

I took the rascal home (if you have a good name make a suggestion in the next couple days) and he cried in my kitchen for the next couple hours. After petting him a lot, trying to play with him, and offering him some rice and couve, which he didn’t eat, he was almost asleep. I put him back with his brothers and sisters and I’ll get him tomorrow morning. I’ll know which one it is because he’s got green permanent marker on his head.

Well this blog post is beginning to look like so many others on the internet which discuss the owner’s pets. I’ll end here.

PS more pics on the way. I would have gone to Chimoio today to upload pics but we are on standfast, which means we can not leave our site because of the rioting in Maputo over increased prices. Don't worry, I'm in no trouble. The black mambas in my bathroom are infinitely more dangerous.

Vacation pics (Nampula + Cabo Delgado)

1)My travel buddies, Rebecca, Bao, and Diana
2)Bao and I on the way to Ilha de Mocambique
3)Diana and I on Ilha de Mocambique
4)An old colonial-era church that is now a museum
5)Old town in Ilha has a lot of ruins from when the Portuguese were there
6) These kids were very happy to have a picture taken with whitey
7) Parts of Ilha are kind of creepy...
8) Creepy, continued
9) Entrance to the Forteleza Sao Sebastiao. The fort took 50-60 years to complete and is the oldest European building in sub-Saharan Africa
10) Church (?) in the fort
11) Fort from the sailboat, going to Chocas beach. Chocas was awesome but I don't have many good pics of it, still waiting for one of my travel buddies to post.
12) Our capitao manning the sail
13) On a boat to go snorkeling in Pemba
14) Sunset on Wimbi Beach, Pemba
15) After people went back home / to silly meetings I continued north, to the Arquipelago das Quirimbas. This is at Tandanhangue, waiting for a boat to take me to Ilha de Ibo
16) Ilha de Ibo is a strange place. It has even more of a deserted feeling than Ilha de Mocambique. Of course this is in stone town, and the other half of the island is more populated.
17) More of Ibo
18) From Ibo I chartered a boat with two other guys I met on my travels. We went to stopped at Ilha de Matemo for dinner and then on to Ilha de Rolas to spend the night
19) Passing by a sailboat
20) Me and one of our captains.
21) I had one reason to go to Ilha de Rolas: one purpose that drove me north of Pemba. And that purpose was to find the legendary coconut crab. We found a miniature version with the help of a guard on the island.
22) In the morning I had to check out the coral reef that the guard had told me about. I swam about 200m in the direction in back of me in the pic and found an awesome reef covered with coral and filled with different kinds of fish. The reef was right on a ridge that dropped off into the dark blue, so of course I decided to dive down into the deep to see what I could see. I almost regretted the idea when I saw a dark figure in the distance. I'm pretty sure it was a big, big shark.
23) Back on Ibo, this power house definitely doesn't supply energy to the island any more.
24) more deserted-looking pics on Ibo
25) etc.
26) Back at Russel's Place (awesome hostel) in Pemba where I ran into Vonney and Mike. This picture is right before I beat them 1 v 2 at smash ball... twice. Proudest moment in my life.