Guebuza came, and a lobolo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.