Fantastic Voyage

Provincial Science Fair

2011-07-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

We had the provincial science fair last Saturday. There were 7 schools and 18 participants... not as many as I wanted but overall it was successful. Most important, I think the kids really liked it.

More pics from site

2011-05-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

1) Children dancing on Mozambican Woman's Day
2) My friend Caetano, on a visit to his mom's house
3) Cae's mom making xima (corn meal)
4) Cae's mom and view of her compound
5) Cae's step-dad who goes by "soup-soup"
6) The pot was made by Cae's aunt
7) I don't know what we are doing
8) I'm eating a banana
9) Some friends in front of my house
10 and 11) JOMA (youths for change and action) meeting with a trainer from Chimoio
12) My JOMA counterpart and friend, Nelson

Mount Binga

2011-04-16T08:58:00.001-07:00

Journal Entry April 6

2011-04-08T04:49:00.000-07:00

While we were hiking Mount Binga (pictures soon) I had and interesting discussion with J about development and aid. I forgot how we got on the topic – at one point she mentioned Jeffrey Sachs and when I said I liked reading his articles she was alarmed. His perspective, if I understood right (I know close to nothing on foreign aid), was that all underdeveloped countries and communities need is for us to pump money and effort into them. If you put in enough money eventually the people will bring themselves up. At least that is the idea. However, J argued, this does nothing to build the capacity of the people. If you give people new homes and schools and wells so people can get clean water that may be good in the short term. It may save lives. But if you come back 10 years later the community will look the same. There won’t be any new wells because no one can pay for it or knows how to dig one.

J’s view was that change must come from within the community. I played devil’s advocate and asked her to propose a project to develop a community if she were in charge. First she described the importance of assessment – not just a survey of HIV prevalence or literacy rates but an in-depth, multi-dimensional assessment of the level of development of a community which you could use to measure the community’s progress, understand inter-relations of different problems, and use to encourage inter-community rivalry and progress. This might take a couple years but it’s still an important step. The problem is that no sponsor wants to fund a 2 year foreign aid project that can’t claim to save a single life.

The next step is for the people of the community to elect a council. I missed the details of it (damn ADD I was probably distracted by some ant behavior I had never seen before) but basically the people need a place and organized meetings to report a problem. Example: is it difficult for the people on one side of town to get water? The council can add this problem to the list, decide to build a well on that side of town, and devise a plan to acquire money to do it. If this requires everyone in the community giving a little bit of money per week or giving up one chicken, apparently people are willing to do it. I imagine the council could deal with more abstract problems as well, such as giving a presentation or having a meeting to discuss domestic violence. That’s the just of the idea. However again, no one wants to fund this kind of project because when you compare the numbers it looks like an ineffective strategy.

In Peace Corps, sustainability is the magic word. It’s all about applicability, thinking small and building people power. However sometimes it can be hard to put a number on that type of progress. This seems to contrast other foreign aid which revolves around numbers (the type of aid Jeffrey Sachs supports): how many mouths did you feed and how many lives did you save? That’s where the money comes from. People like to give money and think that they saved a life. They probably did, and I’m not completely against that kind of aid. But a crucial part of the solution to poverty and underdevelopment is building the capacity of the people.

I got excited today when I heard my JOMA counterpart, Nelson, talk to the kids in our journalism group. He was obviously inspired by the training-of-trainers conference last weekend (completely organized, and temporarily funded – until grant money came in - by PCVs). He reminded the students that the province of Manica doesn’t yet have a newspaper, and that one day they might become journalists. He planted the idea of giving talks in all the churches in town about issues such as gender equality and domestic violence. We also talked about how to fund the group – after the aid money stops flowing. Nelson’s new attitude is the type of progress I like to see because the change is coming from within. It would be impossible to measure. It also may seem like a small difference in a country crippled by poverty. However it’s all part of the bigger picture. Maybe the kids in my journalism group will help pave the way to more jobs or increase the transparency of the government.

I’ve thought a lot about the amount of difference Peace Corps makes. Overall it would be really hard to say because the effects may not be felt until many years down the road (perhaps when my favorite students become teachers?). It can’t be accurately measured or estimated, not even to the right magnitude, so I have to go off of what I believe to be true to justify me living and working here for 27 months. And in terms of building the capacity of the people… well there aren’t many programs like it. Some days are difficult, and often times I can be pessimistic, but in the end I truly believe it makes a big difference and will change the lives of people for the better. I’m glad to part of it. It’s just too bad the entire Peace Corps budget is smaller than that of the Army’s marching band.

Journal Entry March 22, 2011

2011-03-25T00:35:00.000-07:00

I solved a mystery this morning, unfortunately. I’ve been leaving site about every weekend and when I come back I notice something is changed with my house. The first couple times it was small – someone had moved the nail in my window, perhaps to look inside, for example. But two weekends ago I came back and the shelf in my room had been moved and the headlamp was disassembled and the batteries were on the floor. Since the grates had been closed, it meant that someone had reached through the window in my bedroom. I didn’t notice anything missing, but it still was strange and I don’t want anyone messing around my house or looking inside. So this last weekend, before I went to Mangunde, I moved everything away from the windows, locked the grate with two locks, and took a picture of my shelf to make a record of its position and the few remaining things on it.

Yesterday when I came back home I put my backpack and other things down and then walked up to the banca next to the school to get a quick breakfast. On the way I ran into Jemusse (my new empregado – employee - after Chris and Caetano – I need someone to cook lunch for me before noon and Caetano has classes in the morning) and asked how his weekend was. I complimented him on the job he did outside my house with the lawn and then as we parted I noticed he was wearing my sandals with the scorpions on them. I asked him about it later and he said he was sorry he didn’t ask. I asked him how he got the sandals and he said he had taken them before I left and he was going to clean them along with the clothes. I was a little confused, but didn’t think much of it for the rest of the day. Then as I was going to sleep I remembered I had taken the picture.

I woke up, still curious about whether the picture would reveal anything. Sure enough, in the bottom right corner of the picture was one of the sandals… which meant Jemusse had opened my window while I was gone and used a stick to fish them out. I decided to confront him about it first thing. I grabbed a chair from inside and told him to get the other in the kitchen.

I proceeded to tell him about how someone was messing around my house every weekend and that I decided to take a picture as a record. Then I showed him the picture.

“So do you want to change your story about how you got my shoes?” I wanted to give him one last chance, but I had made my mind up in the bathroom that if he lied again he was out.

“Maybe the picture was taken before?”

“No, Jemusse, I took the picture and locked the door.”

He pretty much repeated the same excuse. I was pissed. “I don’t like it when people lie, Jemusse. I know what you did, you know what you did. You need to speak the truth.” At this point I think he still didn’t get it. “How can I invite you now?” (I meant to say “trust” but said convidar instead of confiar. God damnit why do I still suck at Portuguese?).

“I’m sorry I won’t do it again. I was afraid.”

“Well now you’ve lied to me twice, and I’m not sure whether I still want you as an employee.” I told him to go home, he was done for the day. I was going to decide if he could still work for me and he could come back the next day to discuss. I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to scare the shit out of him so he could get it in his head that lying isn’t OK. I’ll have a talk with him tomorrow about trust (now that I know to use the actual word in Portuguese) and having the courage to tell the truth. And if he does anything like that again he’s fired for good.

This is certainly not my first experience with kids lying to me. My students lied to me recklessly before, trying to redeem some points on their test, before I chewed them out for doing so. The ones I caught didn’t seem remorseful at all, in fact some of them laughed it off, which bothered me more than them actually trying to cheat in the first place. So I’m making it my goal to change Jemusse.

As Jordan said to me earlier, I certainly didn’t foresee parenting my empregado in my Peace Corps job description.

-------------

I’ll mention science fair real quick. I offered to be the regional coordinator in central and the provincial coordinator for Manica… which is crazy because it feels like the most responsibility I’ve ever had. It’s not out of my league, just more than I’ve had. Erica (national coordinator) just sent some info about it and it’s a little overwhelming. I’ve looked over a lot of it but I’m still kind of processing –

I need to get organized and take notes on everything, including a calendar of when I need to get started working on some of the stuff. Some of the jobs include: inviting schools to the provincial fair in Chimoio, finding judges, inviting an organization to come do HIV tests and counseling, and setting up accommodations / meals for students and teachers.

cOOKing tErMitES

2010-12-29T01:50:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-29T01:46:00.000-08:00

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)

2010-12-28T02:30:00.001-08:00

Epic Vacation -- with details

2010-12-28T02:20:00.001-08:00

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)

2010-12-28T02:14:00.000-08:00

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)

2010-12-12T05:12:00.000-08:00

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

2010-09-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-20T02:54:00.000-07:00

...
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

2010-09-13T03:11:00.001-07:00

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

2010-09-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

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)

2010-08-16T01:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Science Fair photos

2010-08-16T01:19:00.000-07:00

1) Science Fair starts. More people showed up, but not that many more...
2) The first place winner explaining to the public how to run a calculator with several lemons (and no, the calculator isn't solar powered!)
3) The students went to town with my colored chalk. In front is also one of my favorite students who should have been a winner in the fair...
4) Explaining how to recharge batteries by boiling them? I'm still skeptic...
5) Which soil holds water the best?
6) Chris, vividly explaining distillation
7) The winners + me and my counterpart
8) All the participants. I swear, they are happier than they look.

Local Science Fair of Sussundenga

2010-08-15T09:38:00.000-07:00

Science Fair (July 24)

The Secondary school of Sussundenga had its Science Fair today at the Joao Paulo Center (I rented a room owned by the Catholic Church). I have been planning and meeting with kids now for over a month so it was relieving that the day had finally came.

I started out meeting with the students every week and then as the big day approached we met twice every week. After the first meeting of constructing a giant timeline I taught the students about the scientific method over several meetings. I really tried hammering it into their brains that the scientific method has an order to it and it starts with a question. Almost all the students started off wanting to do a demonstration of some scientific concept they had learned about in class or read about – making glue for example. But this is not an experiment; it is just a procedure without real science. I encouraged them to think of a question (or use a question from the idea bank) that could be tested. It was difficult for students to think of a question that could be possibly resolved without many resources and using creativity all at the same time. However by the end I was satisfied by what most students had chosen to work on and impressed by others.

As the weeks went by I started to help each student with his/her own project. It was difficult enough to understand the Portuguese, let alone give advice on the science of the project and tips for kids who had no idea what the scientific method is. By the end though I figured out it was a lot easier if they came to me with something written down, that way I could read it at my own pace. My counterpart, Narciso (a Mozambican physics teacher) also helped a lot at meetings, although I have doubts about him running science fair without me after my service ends.

The last week the kids wrote up their reports and mounted them on cardboard for the public to see. I also had put up public notices around town and talked to the director at my school about coming.

The day of the science fair I woke up and was very happy to see that it was sunny outside, since it was raining the day before. I rode to town early to open the center where we were doing science fair so the students could set up their projects (we didn’t have it at the school since it’s kind of far from town and there’s not really a big enough room). I had no idea how many people would show up to watch, or even how many kids would participate since I had also invited another school but hadn’t heard back from them.

Students slowly trickled into the center as well as people who wanted to watch. Two teachers from the other secondary school showed up and told me no one was going to participate from their school. That made things simpler. My counterpart showed up, as well as Bao and Meghann (PCVs from Buzi and Catandica, respectively. I had been a judge at the Catandica science fair the week before and now Meghann was returning the favor. Bao was our photographer.) My counterpart told me that one of the judges, his friend who worked at the hospital, couldn’t make it. This is a textbook example of what can go wrong during an event like this. No problem, Professor Tomas was there, who was more qualified to judge anyway, and more than happy to judge projects. One of the chefes from the Direcção Distrital came, possibly the most important VIP at the fair (the Director of my school never came, gave some excuse later). I thought it was telling when we shook hands and he immediately commented on a movie a teacher was holding, some action flick with a shirtless dude on it. Yes, it is a good film.

I think there were about 10 people in the audience when we decided to start. I was disappointed that more people didn’t show up – many people had told me they would and I thought the color advertisement in the market would really get some attention. As the fair went on though we picked up more people, maybe until about 25 total.

For some reason I still do not understand, it is required that the most important person does the opening for the science fair, even if he or she had nothing to do with the organization of the fair and probably knows nothing about science. So the chefe of the Direcção Distrital started us off. I don’t really know all that he said but there seemed to be a lot of rambling. Next I asked if I could say something, and nervously gave a speech (I suck at public speaking) I had prepared first by writing in English and then translating to Portuguese with the help of Chris, my empregado / helper. I quixotically spoke of the future of Mozambique and the joy that science can give, even to someone who doesn’t have a job in science.

Science fairs in Moz run a little differently than in the states. Students have already completed their projects but they like to re-create the experiment, if possible, for the public. I think it makes things more interesting for the public, too, and having each student present individually allows them to practice their public speaking skills. After the student presents the judges and the public can ask questions, but I am going to change this to only judges next year. I got really tired of wasting time having students answer ridiculously pedantic questions like what is the chemical formula of X, etc. The kids don’t really have that many resources anyway, and I was more interested in the design of the experiment – why they did what they did.

First place was given to a 10th grader who did a project on generating energy from different metals in lemons. He showed that by using many lemons he could power a calculator. I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t more creative (essentially read the project description from wiki) but his presentation was good and research was thorough. He had come to me a lot for help, which I don’t feel guilty about because I helped everyone who came to me.

Chris, my friend / helper was also a winner. He had distilled dirty water which was cool, but what I found most impressive was that he proved it was pure by showing that the water was clearer, didn’t have a salty taste, and didn’t conduct electricity (the last one is admittedly my idea). His presentation was thorough and crowd-pleasing but I was disappointed when he didn’t answer my question correctly about why he used a light to show that the water was pure. I think he knew but students here are very unused to getting open-ended questions.

I don’t really know what else to say. I hope the kids got something useful out of it. The provincial-level science fair will take place in Chimoio on August 28.

falling behind

2010-08-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

So I'm falling behind in blog posts. I'm on vacation right now (school has ferrias) in Northern provinces so it's been hard to do email / blog. I'm writing this post from Russel's Place in Pemba city. Tomorrow will be diving or snorkeling, then possibly going on a legendary journey for the biggest crabs in the world.

Before I left Suss I also had a science fair for the secondary school. I'll just say now that it went about as well as it could.

More soon...

Journal entry 7/11/10

2010-07-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

I will write about going to church today, since it isn’t something I have done in Suss yet and that’s about the only noteworthy thing that happened this Sunday.

I don’t really know why I decided to go, it was a kind of perfect storm of events. I guess the main reason is this pastor has been bothering me to go since the time I met him way back when I was still running by my old house. He sent me a funny text message yesterday: “I want to say halo dave I am longing for you can I invite you tomorrow for a Sunday church plz dave”. The guy was longing for me. How can I not go to his sermon?

So I got there at 10:00 this morning – the church is actually attached to the police station – and before I entered the building I could hear the chanting. There were four people inside pacing back and forth with eyes closed, saying some prayers or something rapidly in Shona and Portuguese. More people showed up and started chanting. It was kind of creepy being in an echo-y building with people chanting, not really sure what was being said.

Next there were a lot of Hallelujahs. They don’t get tired of them. Pastor Magara introduced me to everyone (there were maybe 30 people) and thanked me. Then he started preaching. It was interesting that there were three languages being used – Shona mostly, but it was being translated into Portuguese by a helper, and also Magara kept throwing in some English here and there. Trilingual sermons - something you don’t see in the US.

As the minutes trudged on my mind began to wander, although I was trying to pay attention to the Portuguese translation to improve my listening. However I couldn’t help thinking about other things. One thing that leapt out at me was that the Shona word for church is, well, church (or chuch). So this would imply that there were no churches here before the Europeans arrived. I wonder if Magara or anyone else has thought about this before. It seems a little ironic that they are having the sermon in Shona but no one stops to think that, although they are using their mother tongue, this is not their mother religion (traditional, that is). Reminds me of the time in Namaacha when I was looking through my host father’s illustrated bible which was written in Shona but all of the people in it were white.

I was also thinking about how the belief of an individual is really a product of a person’s upbringing. Here I am, an atheist in a church, everyone else is a devout believer. I can’t see why people would do otherwise though, because we are humans and we do what our family and our community does. If a kid sees his mom and community members in church every Sunday, why wouldn’t he do the same? We all need to belong.

But for some reason, be it an accident or a new culture of un-believers, I do not believe in God. Maybe I found a way to belong to something outside of believing in God. (I can think of one friend in kindergarten who didn’t believe in God, thanks Evan.)

Sometimes I do envy people who believe in God. In my life I want to have a wide range of experiences, but I’m thinking believing is not one I will have the pleasure to enjoy. I looked around the church and some people were just so happy, so emotional. One woman was brought to tears while chanting. However believing can probably bring about problems as well, namely confusion and horrible inconsistency. Anyway it doesn’t matter either way for me at least. I am set in my ways and am incapable, as far as I know, of changing. Even if I truly wanted to believe, the problem is I am so sure I’m right.

So by the end of the sermon my head hurt from trying to understand the Portuguese translation and I had Magara’s voice ringing in my ears. When I commented to Chris that maybe Pastors speak so loud because it is the power of God, Chris disagreed and said it’s because “they think that God is so far away”. Hah! After Magara blessed a bunch of people it was just about time to leave, but first he had to ask me something. Magara spoke to everyone and thanked me multiple times for coming, then he said he had discussed with his helper how great it would be if I could give sermons because white people are so respected here. He asked if I would work with him, giving sermons. I was thunderstruck… I’m also positive I’ve told Magara I don’t believe in Jesus. I declined and said I wasn’t the right man for the job but thank you for the offer.

So that’s the story of how I failed at religious revival but was offered to become a pastor in the process.

Go go Science Fair!

2010-06-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

This morning was the first big science fair meeting. Yesterday my counterpart Narcisio and I went into all of the morning turmas (10,11,12 grade) and announced that science fair was starting. For the first meeting I decided we should do something fun so I figured we could make a timeline of the universe. That night Chris and I spent a while in the school office typing up a list of events that I wanted to put on the timeline (birth of the universe, first humans, independence of Mozambique, etc). I woke up and went to the office to see if the printer had really ran out of ink. Indeed it had, and I was writing up the table by hand before a secretary came and put in new ink cartridges. Phew. I sat down and pretended to be thinking about planificação for about 3 minutes and then prepared for the meeting. Oh, I also saw my pedagogical director and counterpart Jamal, who I think has returned from a month-long vacation.

When we started I was disappointed when it was just me, Caetano, Albino, Hilario, and one other student. But when we went over to the (unfinished) basketball court Narcisio joined us and a bunch of other students. Now it was beginning to look like a real club, which was a little rewarding I guess. We started and in my broken Portuguese I tried to explain what a timeline was and how most of the dates of the events on the timeline had to be figured out by scientists since no one was alive to write it down. I talked about the sun, the closest star to the Earth, and said it was part of a group of stars called the Milky Way. Any scientific question can be tried to be solved with the scientific method. Even the biggest question – how the universe was born – is at least partially solved by scientists. I explained that scientists saw these groups of stars, or galaxies, moving away from each other. If they are moving away from each other now, in the past they must have been closer together. This leads scientists to believe that the universe started from a very hot, dense point. About this time my counterpart Narcisio was away talking on the phone but I did notice some students nodding their heads. I had passed out three copies of the list of events that had the date, name, and description of each event, and now it was time to make the timeline.

Making the timeline was more difficult for the students, and less interesting, than I had anticipated. In retrospect, I guess I could have gone with 1mm = 1 million years, but I thought 2 mm = 1 million years was easy enough. I ended up doing the measuring but after some motivation and coercion I had a couple kids helping me make the timeline as others sat around doing nothing. My counterpart had left for I don’t know what, I think he said something about a call from Maputo. When we finished I wanted to read every event from start to finish, but by then people weren’t really interested I think (it was 11:00 and we started at about 9:30). I was so concerned with everything else I think I actually forgot to stand back for a moment and look at the 28 m string and think about the history of the universe.

By the end I was exhausted (without eating breakfast – my fault more than anything else) and I realized people probably wanted to go home. I failed to explain enough about the science fair – I just told them to come next week with three questions about any scientific topic, but I didn’t give enough information about what is science fair and the scientific method, or sample questions which could have helped them since the kids aren’t really that curious or creative. I thought that the kids would be more interested in the project, and I guess I mistook my own interest and awe in the age of the universe as the inevitable interest of the students. It may have been with some, such as Albino who is one of my favorite students and an incredibly motivated and smart person, but with most it was not so. Most students had never heard of dinosaurs. Some of them did not know that man had walked on the moon (I showed them a picture on my laptop). The events I had chosen for the timeline weren’t very interesting because the students did not understand most of them. I came away from the meeting feeling disappointed and with a feeling of failure. It had not met my expectations but then again I was expecting too much. I need to remind myself the amount of knowledge that students have here. A better project would have been a science experiment (maybe a flashy chemical reaction) to demonstrate the scientific method. These kids do not have the mental tools to fully appreciate something like a timeline of the universe or a tree of life. And I can not foolishly assume that students will be impressed with the same thing that I am.

Perhaps the trick is finding what interests them, what grabs their attention, and then bending their interest to my will…

Guebuza came, and a lobolo

2010-06-07T01:34:00.001-07:00

1) Guebuza, the President of Mozambique came to Sussundenga. Yes, the president. It was pretty exciting. The banner reads Children of Sussundenga salute Papa Guebuza.
2) There were TONS of people at the house where Guebuza was staying for the night. The school children were dancing and there was music playing until the guards told everyone to go away because we were making noise.
3) I went to the lobolo of my friends mom and step-father last weekend. A lobolo happens after a marriage and the mans family gives money (or many times and this case alcohol) to the family of the woman. Some words are spoken and then the fun commences.
4) My friend Caetanos step-dad on the left and me.
5) The bride and groom. Caetano is in the middle. Yes, his step-dad is offering whiskey to his mom in the picture. I now know why Caetano is such a goofy guy.

My day today

2010-06-04T01:54:00.000-07:00

To give people a sense of what my daily life is like. It's not always this busy.

• Woke up at 9:00. It’s the latest I’ve slept in for a while.
• Quickly checked email, fb, and nytimes on my nokia 2630
• Was walking to the market when I realized I didn’t have any credit to call Brian so I went to the shop by the school (centro social de esperança) to buy credit.
• Turned out the shop had egg sandwiches so I ate breakfast there as well as chatted with Brian
• Decided to walk to the mato-market anyway to buy leaves for dinner, onion, and tomatoes. Also bought two wire-y things to try and ground my electric stove that always shocks me.
• Planned for chemistry class
• Taught chemistry class. I have first period of the afternoon on Thursday and about half the class comes in late.
• Went home and spent 15 minutes playing around with eurotalk learn Shona before realizing it was pretty useless.
• Did some exercises and took a bucket-bath. It smelled like pee in my shower because a primary school kid snuck in and used it. He could have at least used the other side, but then again I did realize the latrina-side is a mosquito breeding pit this morning when there were about 30 on the wall next to the hole. I really need to do something about that.
• Cooked pasta and red sauce for lunch.
• Got a text from Nelson, my JOMA counterpart asking if I was at the school so I left lunch to meet him there. We went to his house and picked up the Moz-soft CD with the JOMA manual on it and I installed Adobe acrobat and Lingoes dictionary on his new computer.
• Nelson and I chatted while I ate lunch at my house. It was good to have company while I ate. He was telling me about how the higher-up direction of the school is against the teachers. I didn’t really catch all of it because that part of the conversation was in Portuguese. Something about teachers having different diplomas.
• We went to the school together to print the JOMA manual. I was glad the secretaries were kind enough to let us use all that paper. (Nelson also asked to take some paper for home haha).
• I biked down to the Oficina Pedegogica for my English class. With no time to plan (and some admitted procrastination) I only had a general sense of what I would teach before I went.
• Taught English class. Turns out my students like writing dialogues. I also discovered the wrong way to teach comparisons in English.
• Stopped by the market on my way home. I love it when there are potatoes.
• Got home and discovered Chris had already cooked dinner but was gone for the moment. I played some violin until he got back.
• Ate dinner (leaf curry – something called repe) and watched part of “The Goonies” with Chris. God I haven’t seen that movie in a long time.
• Chris left to prepare for a test tomorrow
• I read some Alistair Reynolds for a bit and now I’m writing this entry.

Teaching with tangerines

2010-06-04T01:42:00.000-07:00

I am standing in the classroom holding a tangerine in each hand. They aren’t just any tangerines; each one has two crumpled-up balls of paper taped to it. In an attempt to make my students conceptualize atoms I am using a home-made model of two water molecules. I am not sure if the kids are focused on me holding two tangerines or if they are really pretending that the tangerines are the oxygen atoms in water. Some of them are laughing, which means at least they’re having fun.

It’s a shame that I don’t have a real model set, but tangerines and crumpled paper might do the trick. I am trying to help them understand the link between the structure (and number) of a molecule and its chemical formula. Many of the 10th, 11th, and 12th graders still don’t know how to read a chemical formula, which is, I think, a necessary step to reading and understanding chemical equations (descriptions of chemical reactions: the making and breaking of chemical bonds).

Sometimes, in order to justify me being here, I like to tell myself I am a better teacher than most Mozambican teachers. It would be kind of silly to be living here if I wasn’t. Despite my justification, I make a lot of mistakes (ones that impair my students’ ability to learn) and my Portuguese is still limited when it comes to describing chemistry. In comparison, the Mozambican chemistry teachers are speakers of Portuguese and they have practice under their belt, making many of their explanations clear, at least when it comes to the student getting the right answer. The most I can hope for is that my teaching here demonstrates another style of teaching (one more focused on understanding, visualizing, and reasoning) for the students that will one day become teachers themselves. Sometimes I doubt even my ability to do this, but then I remind myself that I haven’t yet seen a Mozambican teacher do anything like use home-made models of water molecules in class.

Vacation pics

2010-05-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

1) I can take good pictures of myself.
2) This is a chapa, Mozambiques public transportation.
3) Me in the chapa.
4) The crew as we arrive in Gorongosa. We are tired and hungry.
5) Some women washing clothes at the Gorongosa river.
6) The Gorongosa river was really cool that day. We have our shoes off because our feet were really stinky so we decided to air them out.
7) Gary, me, and AJ in Mapinhane (AJ and Alices site)
8) Gary and I at Jons site Inhamussua
9) Gary, Jon, Amanda and I on our way to Vilankulos for some fun.

JOMA conference pics

2010-05-13T01:49:00.000-07:00

1) I think this was supposed to be a human knot excersise
2) The big conference room
3) Tim F. and his student Carvalo (from Barada) in a deep discussion
4) My counterpart and the three students I brought to the JOMA conference. The student in back just wishes I was his teacher.
5) Go macacos!
6) Brian is Rafiki the first night of the conference. And yes, the Lion King opening theme was playing.
7) Two goof balls
8) Lucas' discussion group which I sat in a couple times. The discussion groups were a great time for the students to ask any question they had in mind and for discussion without the counterparts interfering. Lucas did a great job of answering questions and letting the kids lead the conversation.

The JOMA conference

2010-05-09T23:44:00.000-07:00

So as most of you already know my primary job in Mozambique is to teach but I also can chose to have secondary projects. I am slowly getting a JOMA group together with kids from my school (Jovens para Mudanca e Accao or Youths for Change and Action). JOMA used to be all boys but the organization decided to include girls I’m guessing to improve the message of gender equality and to include girls in the discussion. The organization has overarching themes such as gender equality and leadership but the group at each school can differ depending on what the students want to do. At my school the JOMA group will be doing journalism but there are other JOMA groups in Mozambique doing theatre, photojournalism, art, and other areas of communication. I chose to do journalism because it does not require many resources and there was a journalism group in Sussundenga last year. Many kids are anxious for the group to start again.

Starting the group was (and still is) a little complicated because we (the PCVs) weren’t given that much direction and I don’t consider myself an expert on how to run a youth group nor a master at journalism. Also it is made more difficult because the last volunteer in Suss terminated early and the group came to a screeching halt. One of the teachers has both the computer and the printer (which was bought with money from a VAST grant) that the students were using to write/print the newspaper in his house and supposedly is not facilitating students with their use (in other words he kind of stole them but I am going to get them back).
I have a Mozambican counterpart helping me with JOMA. He is a really nice English teacher named Nelson who is patient with me and enthusiastic about projects like JOMA and English Theatre. We tried having the first meeting before the trimester ended, which meant getting a notice printed and approved by the director of the school and putting it on the bulletin board outside. However the students aren’t really used to looking at the board and our meeting turned into a recruiting session at the school. Despite the failed meeting we now have a list with about 25 names and I know more will join once we get going.

The JOMA conference was three days and took place in Chimoio with many other groups from central and southern Mozambique. We were able to take three students and a counterpart. The point of the conference was for the students and counterparts to learn about issues such as gender equality, sexual health and HIV, self-esteem, and leadership, as well as to meet other students and teachers from other schools. Despite the difficulties with the facilitator the conference went well and the students really appreciated it. They do not have many chances to express their own opinion, much less about topics such as equality for women. There were big lecture-style talks when the students got to talk but also small discussion groups which I thought was more interesting and productive. One problem, though, was that the counterparts tended to dominate the discussions because they thought they knew more and teaching in Mozambique is traditionally top-down. There were also fun activities like agree or disagree with a statement and then the students would have to defend themselves. We also played a lot of games which was great to break the ice. I got to know only a couple of the students at the conference, and I still don’t know my own students that well. Some of the students are really awesome though. It is really cool to see a male student who acknowledges and sees the injustice that women are given more work in Mozambique or a female students who is able to say in front of everyone that a man should not be allowed to marry more than one woman. (To give you an idea of how far Mozambique has to come but also how big the gap is between generations, the Mozambican facilitator of the conference has two wives. After the young woman’s comment he quickly and irritably changed the subject.)

After dinner each night there was a continuing competition between four groups, each represented by a different animal. I was in the snakes. There were also elephants, lions, and monkeys. Each group had at least one chant and ways to intimidate the other teams (there was a lot of booing too...). The first night there was so much energy in the conference room we had to tell both the students and the counterparts to calm down multiple times. There was almost a fight in the musical chairs game but we eventually got everyone to calm down. The last night there was a dance competition and each group performed. There were two teams doing MJ's Thriller but it was OK cause they both rocked. We anounced the winners of the three day long competition but after all the competativeness everyone was pretty nonchalant about it.

So now I'm ready to get back to site and discuss how to apply what we learned in the conference to journalism. Yeah, I don't really know what I'm doing.

new cell phone number

2010-05-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

Ok my cell phone was stolen and I would post my new number on facebook but this internet place is annoying and wont let me go to facebook. Anyway here is my new number:
824778832
I will have to make a monster post about the JOMA (a youth group acronym for youths for change and action) conference in Chimoio, my vacation in Inhambane province (awesome), and my medical evacuation to Pretoria, SA (dont worry nothing was really wrong with me and it was essentially my second vacation).
Will post soon.

2010-04-08T14:12:00.000-07:00

It is now one week until the first trimester is over. It feels like it has gone by fast when I think I only have 5 more until I am no longer living in Mozambique. Recently I have also had some exciting events to change things up. In May we had “In-Service Training” in Nampula city which was awesome. IST marked the first three months after arriving in site and it was great to see so many friends and share all of the crazy stories. The hotel was also… the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in… anywhere… not considering the fact that I’ve been staying in a house with no running water or AC, using a really gross outhouse, and eating boiled leaves and rice almost every night. The all-you-can-eat buffet was also… incredible. When I left the hotel and returned to my site though, I didn’t miss the luxuries of a 5 star hotel, but rather my friends and the familiarity of being with other Americans. The reunion was short but sweet. It’s a shame I won’t see some people again until mid-service in December or whenever it is.
I won’t talk about the actual conference to avoid being administratively separated.
School has been going well. In the beginning it was hard to tell if the day was going to be good or bad. Sometimes I went in feeling terrible but came out with a new optimism. Other times I went in thinking class was going to be great but ending up wanting to leave during class. Now however, things are more leveled off. My language is a lot better than when I started so that definitely helps. I think what helps most however is my increased comfort in front of the class and being relaxed about my teaching and not getting upset when things aren’t going as well as I want them to be. I have been moving pretty slow which worried me at first but now I’m more OK with it since I really want my kids to learn the material and I am determined to show them a different teaching style than what they are used to. It may turn out that I should have worried more but hey – it’s going alright for now.
One week I kind of got off on a tangent and taught my students about light and how it relates to Bohr’s model of the atom (different energy levels in the electrosphere). Instead of getting upset about not being able to teach the next topic before the test I decided to have some fun and I brought in my violin to show the class and give an analogy between vibrations on a string, sound, and light. At one point I told them I could change the wavelength of the string, changing the wavelength of the sound, and in this way I could play a song. I slowly started playing the Mozambican national anthem and when they figured out what it was they all cheered. I’m not really sure if they learned anything but at least they had fun.
When I came back from IST I had to give my second test and now I need to give the bigger test for the trimester (there are 2 “ACS’s” and 1 “ACP” per trimester. Ask me about it sometime). I will plan things a little better next trimester and I won’t have a week long meeting in Nampula to work around. When I was controlling my test Tuesday I found my first “cabula”, or cheat sheet. I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen more since cheating is so common and other volunteers have told me they find many cabulas per test. I’ve been keeping my eyes open though. I have warned them a lot about cheating (copying, cabular-ing, and talking) so I didn’t feel too bad about giving the student a zero. It didn’t feel great and I hesitated at first but once I realized what I was looking at and what needed to be done I leaned over and wrote “cabular” and a 0 on her test. She was pretty humiliated and she didn’t say a word to me when I asked her about her open notebook (pretty smooth, right?). I have to remind myself though that the students don’t really understand cheating is wrong since there is so much tolerance from their teachers (who themselves grew up in the same system).
OK it is pretty late so I’ll say good night for now.

New pics

2010-03-13T01:22:00.000-08:00

1) Sussundenga countryside
2) Me
3) Primary school kids
4) Kid doing a backflip off some bricks.
5) My bug bite (I figured might as well post it). Don't worry it's fine now.

Check out pics of my weekend at Gorongosa with the Mills:
www.themillsinmoz.wordpress.com

Time Flies...

2010-02-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

I have no idea how a month passed since my last post. Not much has changed, I think, besides getting more settled (although I’m about to move houses), continuing to struggle in Portuguese, and seeing some PCV friends outside of Sussundenga. I am also about to more than double my teaching load, which is great because I have been working only 6 hours a week which is wayyyy too little time to be working here. Too much free time in Sussundenga can make your brain a little mushy, especially when you don’t know that many people.
One of the classes I’m supposedly starting next week is a computer class to teach students about Microsoft Word and all that good stuff. The secondary school here actually has 20 new laptops which is fantastic and if you ask me is a sign of how things are changing (for the better) everywhere in Mozambique, even in the small towns (others say that the change was just due to election season). Teaching computers will be a great use of my time here, and I’m anxious to start (as soon as the school gets that classroom cleaned…).
The other class I’ll be starting is teaching English to adults in the community. I’m doing this with a guy who works at the Oficina Pedagogica next to the primary school and my house. I’ve never taught English (or tutored it) so it should be interesting.
Yesterday I went in to Chimoio to get 240 copies made of the test I’m giving today. I also got to see my friend Alexandra who was moved to Chimoio from Zambezia province because of robbery and school issues. If you would like to read about how my friend was robbed in the middle of the night at her house with a car jack and a machete, go to www.alexandramozambique.blogspot.com.
To get back to Sussundenga from Chimoio I took a chapa. Chapas are a part of everyday life here in Mozambique, so I thought I’d take some time to try to explain the chapa experience. Chapas are the public transportation, like the bus system in the states, but the cars are converted minibuses packed with as many people as possible (four to a row plus kids, sometimes more if people stand up). The condition of the chapas range from O.K. shape with retrofitted high tops to chapas that barely look fit to drive, with doors and trunks that don’t close and “No Fear” painted on the windshield (do you really want the driver of your chapa to have no fear?). Yesterday I was waiting at the stop and when a chapa would come about 25 people shoved their way to the door. People scramble to climb inside before people have a chance to get out. I tried and failed as two chapas came and filled up with people before I could get in. I made it in the third, but not before the door broke off from people pushing to get in. After that I just had to endure the hour drive to Sussundenga… they really need to pave the road. Halfway between Chimoio and Sussundenga the chapa stops for a couple minutes at a small village named Zembe. People outside scramble to sell their produce before the chapa motorista decides to drive away. We made it back to Sussundenga just as the sun was going down.
What else has happened? I thought about posting some pictures of my infected bug bite on my blog but decided to save people’s appetite. My right side swelled up to the mass of one, maybe two oranges. I started taking antibiotics and thankfully I’m back to my normal size and shape. I was kind of scared for a while though, at one point the liquid from the infection fell down into my abdomen and sat there, aching and making it difficult to walk.
I have been doing a lot of reading, of course, with only 6 hours of work a week. Recently I thought of a friend’s father and his reaction to me coming to Peace Corps Mozambique. He said a couple things that made me a little uncomfortable, mainly about helping people who “won’t stop killing each other” and some stuff that borders on racism. Only now have I figured out a somewhat appropriate response to his statements and it comes from a history lesson. The book “The Betrayal of Africa” is a great introduction to how European attempts at colonization created chaos in the African nations and how the west is still draining Africa of money and skill. It’s a small book that really opened my eyes. As far as how the Europeans came to colonize Africa and not the other way around, the book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” does a fantastic job of answering the question. This book is a heavier, more scientific-minded read but provides an explanation for history’s broadest pattern (essentially the book explains how bio-geographic differences between regions give rise to differences in technology and ability to conquer, not the differences between peoples of those regions).
Together these books provided me with a better understanding of why some countries (like the U.S.) are so much wealthier than other countries (like Mozambique) and why living is so much easier (and healthier)
Please, everyone, don’t stop giving me updates. I don’t get bored of reading about life back in the U.S.. Also, it would be great if someone could send me some podcasts on a CD from Science Friday or whatever else you like. I would also kill for some Meet the Press podcasts. Thanks!

These damn captions are going to be in order

2010-02-06T00:26:00.003-08:00

I love this picture, and this woman really wanted her picture taken.

me and my friend caetano in my house.

me and some other teachers.

An 8th grade class at my high school.

A pretty typical house in Sussundenga

One of the many ways kids have fun in Sussundenga without game cubes, x-boxes, etc.

Part of my secondary school.

A clothes market near my house.

First week of school.

A primary school school class being taught outside.

Some maes and criancas

Me and Caetano

Me and Christopher

Sticking to it

2010-02-06T00:22:00.000-08:00

27 January 2010
Today was difficult for a couple of reasons and I thought I’d dedicate this post in part to some of the hardships of being a volunteer (hardships more abstract than bucket baths and questionable goat meat). I’m sure I will discover more as my time spent here matures.
I have been in a funk since a couple days ago when I came back from Chimoio. I was visiting a couple friends there who came from Catandica and Sofala province. Every time I go back to site from visiting friends I am a little sad – I think it just has to do with feeling isolated and not being able to talk with anyone about problems I have or just life in general. This is part of the reason why I don’t like leaving site in the first place – even if I leave for one night I feel like I have to readjust when I come back.
My funk has put me in a generally unenthusiastic, unmotivated mood, which of course doesn’t mix well with having to teach classes. However I had to teach today, and I was glad to get out of the house after spending almost all of yesterday inside.
I have been holding out from teaching subject material for the first week. Part of the reason is that I wanted to try to build a relationship with the students – all part of my hopeless plan to instill developmental discipline in my classroom – however I kind of half-assed it. I did take pictures of all of my students in one class, which they actually loved and when the whole class was done one of the students took a picture of me and some students.
I felt like I had some important things to talk about before actually starting material, like how to do well in class, class activities, and motivation for studying chemistry. However these topics have made for kind of boring classes, which I think contributes to the chit-chat and some of the students’ apparent lack of interest (although I guess this is to be expected). By five minutes until the end of my first class, students were telling me that it was time to leave. I was angry that they were telling me class was over with five minutes left and I was trying to explain to them why studying chemistry was important and how many jobs require knowledge about chemistry. I could have easily left it out and moved on to subject material, but I thought they would find it interesting... by the way when I asked the class why we study chemistry no one had any idea.
My second class went pretty smooth. For my third class I didn’t realize I had a break so I walked into a classroom 50 minutes before I had to give class… I was saying hello to everyone and they asked me what discipline I teach… turns out I was not only one period early but I was in the wrong classroom entirely and the students were not mine. Oops. When I left I heard some people saying “mezungu” which is the word for rich/white person in the local language. It is not necessarily a bad name but it’s also not great, and I guess above all else it makes me feel like an outsider (which I am…).
During break a couple kids came up to me to talk. One kid said he wanted to come to my house and speak English with me, which I said he could. He also said he wanted to learn about the internet, which made me happy. A girl from my previous class came up to me with candy in her mouth and asked something. I had to ask her to repeat herself about five times before I understood. She was asking if I had CDs, I guess blank ones for music. I didn’t know what to make of it so I just said no before I walked away. It wasn’t until after that I realized she was probably just saying something to talk to me.
My third class was kind of a mess. I was about two minutes in when I saw about 5 kids from the primary school standing outside the doorway looking at me and talking. I took one step forward to talk to them and they scattered. I closed the door and kept going with the lesson but then the kids showed up on the other side of the room. They were peering in through the windows and yelling at me. I didn’t really know what to do so I told them to go away and then I pretended to throw a piece of chalk at them… probably not the best idea and it didn’t even work. I eventually asked someone nearby outside to police them. When my attention came back to the class it felt pretty disordered. There was a lot of noise – both from inside and outside the class since many of the kids I think got out of class and were going home, so it is probably something I will have to tolerate each time I have that class (the windows don’t have glass either, so it’s kind of like trying to teach on a playground). I just kept going – generally the more information I present per unit time the kids get quieter because (I hope) they are at least somewhat interested in what I have to say. It’s mostly when I have to stop, either to write on the board or to fix behavior, when the noise and chit-chat starts back up. There’s not much I can do about it: I have to choose my battles wisely.
The most frustrating moment came when I was writing on the board and I was using an incorrect word. In a previous class I told the students they could correct my Portuguese if they didn’t understand or I was using the wrong word. I was using the word “notas” to mean notes you would write in your notebook. “Notas”, however, is generally understood here as a grade you make in a class (like A+ grade), and the word I should have used was “apontamentos”. When I asked a student to spell it for me I had some trouble understanding him and then there were other students interrupting him. Of course I couldn’t understand so more kids started yelling out letters… I think I probably had half the class yelling out how to spell this word. I got pretty angry after repeatedly telling the class that only the one student could talk. Eventually I had to just give him the chalk to write the word while I attempted to diatribe the rest of the class in my shitty Portuguese. It was incredibly annoying, but I don’t think they knew what they were doing. I think many of the kids just don’t have the self control to sit there and watch me and their classmate struggle, and if someone else could yell out, why not them?
I’m definitely going to have to do something about correcting my Portuguese in the middle of class. I was told it was going to be a problem but I guess I didn’t really believe it. The easiest thing would be to designate one person to do it.
After my classes I talked to some teachers about the primary school kids distracting my class. What they suggested was so simple – that I tell them to come back after my class. They just wanted to play with me, they said. It made complete sense, and I wondered why I didn’t start off doing that but I realized that when I tried to talk to them they ran away from me.
As I was walking home I thought about how seemingly difficult the day was and how I would be living here for two years. Isolation, a sense of being drained of energy, difficulty controlling the class (and kids outside the class…), and the pain of watching myself stumble: all these things weigh against my reasons for remaining in Peace Corps. Worst of all is the feeling that I am here for no reason: I am just an outsider who was uprooted from his country and is now, strangely, living in this country. Many of the students aren’t interested in learning chemistry, and sometimes I wonder how much chemistry teaching really contributes to the development of Mozambique.
So right now I am waiting it out. I am not saying I am thinking about terminating early, but I certainly can sympathize with people who do. As for my reasons to stay: I trust that Peace Corps really does make a difference (a quixotic statement to some volunteers living here), especially when taking into consideration the hundreds of volunteers who have served here over the years. I also have hope - that I will eventually feel more comfortable living here, and my still rapidly changing schedule and the few friends I do have help to enforce this. While I was writing this entry some student friends came by and did a great job cheering me up. I learned a little about Shona and we also made some plans for making a garden behind my house. It was strange how quickly my mood improved. Before I came here I read some accounts of volunteers who said that being a PCV was like being on an emotional rollercoaster ride, but I didn’t understand. It makes more sense now: so much has changed since my life in the states, and I have so few connections here, that every little thing can have a huge impact on my disposition.
I wondered about whether I should post this in my blog because I make Peace Corps sound… unpleasant. However I have only been through 6% of my time at site so far and I’m confident that things will change and I have yet to see the real rewards of working here. I’m just trying to keep it real.

Estamos prontos para escola

2010-01-20T05:52:00.001-08:00

I have been working at the secondary school for a little over a week now. The opening ceremony for school was today and the students also learned what classes they are in for the year (the student’s class does not change when she moves to another discipline, and actually she doesn’t move because the teachers change rooms, not the students.). I have also learned that I will teach 2-3 classes in 9th grade, which is the grade I asked for.
I asked for 9th grade for a couple of reasons. First, the kids are relatively young and impressionable, which means I can mold them into whatever I want = ). I asked for 8th grade but my director said it wasn’t hard enough for me. Second, 9th grade chemistry continues with inorganic chemistry while going a little deeper into things (atomic structure and electron orbitals, bonding, chemical reactions, molar mass, and all that good stuff). 10th grade chemistry, however, introduces organic chemistry. I’m not sure why the Mozambican government chose to put organic chemistry in the curriculum. I learned organic chemistry in my second year of college and I didn’t mind it, but then again I was in a molecular and cellular biology major and all around me people were complaining about how hard it was. Even though I have only actually witnessed one 10th grade chemistry class while in Namaacha, it seems like the Mozambican school system reduces the good science of organic chemistry to basically memorizing lines and symbols. I’m not saying some college students in the states don’t get away with doing exactly this, but at least the extra information is presented if they want it. So in other words, I’m glad I’m not teaching 10th grade chemistry this year. I would consider it next year in order to teach the same students.
Last week we were busy putting the classes together. We don’t have software so we’ve been doing it with student folders… and it takes a long time. We started with separating the folders into grades… 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th. The 10th grade pile was about twice as large as the others because there are national exams in 10th and 12th grade and a lot of students fail them, which means they have to take the whole grade over again (even if they failed just one discipline). At one point we had to separate the 10th grade students into “new”, “repeat”, and “twice-repeat”. My pedagogical director said if a student fails a grade twice they have to sit out for two years, but one of the students said it wasn’t true. I think the oldest person I saw in 10th grade was born in 1968.
Besides doing the work I think it’s been helpful to meet the teachers (and have them get used to me standing around) before school starts. I still can’t understand much and people have to make an effort to speak in words I can get when they talk to me. However when people are mindful of their vocabulary and speak slowly I can usually hold down a conversation alright… the problem is then I don’t know what to talk about sometimes. Before I came to Mozambique I certainly didn’t appreciate how much effort foreigners exert when they come to the states.
I was wondering today how other people cope with the challenges of learning a new language. There is one teacher at my school (I still don’t know his name – I just think of him as the bald guy with cool shoes) who is very talkative and jolly and always says hello to me, but he is also learning Portuguese. When he was young his family moved to Zimbabwe to avoid the civil war. He came back to Mozambique a couple years ago and speaks pretty damn good Portuguese considering he had no formal training. I can’t imagine him sitting silently and patiently, watching people like I do. But of course as I’m writing this I realized he had Chona to converse with people before he learned Portuguese… but what about other people?
Sometimes I forget how recently the civil war ended. There are two teachers whose mothers were pregnant with them during the war and they stayed in Mozambique through the whole thing. One day Bald Guy told me they were like stones… “nao tem medo de morrer” (they aren’t scared of dying).
Last Friday I was told it was going to be the first day of school and the students would come with parents to meet the teachers. Instead the teachers worked to finish up the classes and some students showed up for a bit, sat around outside, but then left after a couple minutes because there was nothing to do. People are just getting out of the holidays so school has been kind of slow to start up. I also think this year school starts two weeks earlier than previous years. Another thing about last Friday: we had to run out of the classroom because smoke was blowing directly inside from a huge trash fire next to us. School sure is different here!
I can’t think of much else that is worth writing… probably when classes start I’ll have interesting stuff to report. So I’ll just end with this:
Today I was walking to school and I saw two dogs cowering in fear. A woman was standing in front of her house holding a rock and threatening the dogs. I noticed the dogs were standing unusually close together and they were awkwardly standing back to back… oh, I thought: they are doing it. I remember Leah’s stories from Guatemala of how dogs would get stuck together… The woman threw the rock and it barely missed one of the dogs. They ran across the street and another dog came running up to them. It tried to join in by jumping up on the female’s back. Obviously he didn’t fit and probably got mad so he started fighting with the male. As I was walking away and trying to ignore the yelps another dog ran past me. A dog can’t catch a break in this town.

I might as well put this in my blog too.

2009-12-27T00:26:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-22T00:45:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-24T08:17:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

www.themillsinmoz.wordpress.com

More Pics

2009-11-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-25T08:48:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-22T07:34:00.000-07:00

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