Surprise Visitor

Technically classes were scheduled this week.  If you remember how the last trimester started, it should come as no surprise that there weren’t actually any students or teachers at school.  In fact, my student and neighbor, Marisa, stopped by the school to find just 13 students.  This is the reason why I didn’t feel guilty not going into school yesterday and why my “one week” break turned into a nearly three week break (the last week of the first trimester was, quite frankly, a joke). 

            As a result, I have been enjoying some extra, lazy days off.  Mireya and I didn’t even leave the house the other day.  Early that evening, I was sitting at the kitchen table working on my 24^th consecutive page of a puzzle book and listening to my Ipod, my glasses discarded somewhere nearby.  It was dark outside but I hadn’t yet closed the door because it’s just starting to get cold in Montepuez and we have been enjoying the fresh air. 

            In middle of figuring out an anagram “virgo,” I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye.  I look up to see the shape of a man in our doorway and instantly I’m doing and thinking a million things at once.  Where are my glasses?  Take off headphones. How long has he been standing there?  Why is he standing in the doorway – why didn’t he ‘censa’ from a respectable distance from the porch?  Do I know him?  Check my capulana is secure around my waist (I’ve already been caught today in my workout spandex by the school janitor who visits a little too frequently). Nope, I don’t know him.  Smile and try to act like I didn’t just jump out of my skin. 

           

            The guy seemed to be about my age and despite standing in my house uninvited, had a friendly smile on his face that said he wasn’t there to cause trouble. I said ‘Boa noite’ but he didn’t reply.  He excitedly shook my hand with the ultimate secret Mozambican handshake that I still haven’t quite mastered (normal handshake, switch to arm wrestle hand hold, swtich back to normal, then snap with the thumbs and dramatically pull away). He looks around the room before making an hourglass shape around his body and then a questioning gesture with his hands, still smiling ear to ear.  Deaf.  This should be fun.  I took the hourglass shape to mean that he was looking for Mireya, not me.  I go to grab Mireya and a little notebook.

            Mireya remembered him from a similar visit last year and so we began a half-signed, half-written exchange.  Brighton Mirige was born in Zimbabwe.  He came to live with his brother who works in the ruby mines just outside of Montepuez.  Anyways, just about as fast as he appeared in our doorway, he disappeared.  Huh.  This place is weird.

Sun, Sand, and Hot Showers

I had been looking forward to the break between first and second trimester pretty much since the moment I was dropped off at site.  All through training we had been warned that the first three or four months at site were among the hardest of our two year service.  Making it to the Reconnect Conference after the first trimester of teaching is a kind of rite of passage for Peace Corps volunteers.  At the Reconnect Conference, everyone from your region (my region includes the four northernmost provinces of Mozambique) comes together to share stories about their integration into their communities, their living conditions, schools, and secondary projects. 

            Before Reconnect, however, is the unofficial “Pre-Connect.”  The conference didn’t actually start until midweek so many volunteers take the opportunity to visit other volunteers beforehand.  Will, Rafael, Mireya, and I decided to visit Anneke and Mafe in Angoche.  Wow.  Angoche is Beautiful with a capital B.  It used to be a hot vacation spot in the colonial times (which were still only in the 70’s but whatever) but the road from the main city, Nampula, was never paved so getting to this quiet coastal city can be painful, figureatively and literally.  Your tailbone might never be the same again after that chapa ride but it was so worth it!  The beaches were completely empty and there were some pretty awesome waves.  Not to mention awesome seafood!  Crabs, shrimp, squid, you name it.  One thing I learned from handling so much seafood at once is that it is all GROSS to prepare.  Picking crabs, deveining shrimp, gutting squid (including the ink sac…) gets really really really messy.  Again, totally worth the pain.

Praia Nova, Angoche.  Left to right: Jay, Mafe, Casey, Grisha, Rafael, Kevin, Will, Me, Anneke

From Angoche, we travelled together to Nampula for the Reconnect Conference.  Reverse culture shock:  Bacon for breakfast, hot showers, a swimming pool, and air conditioning?????  I have a pretty cushy site, but I was still a bit overwhelmed by the little first world oasis.  More important than that though, was the company.  I hadn’t seen the majority of the other volunteers since early December and it was great to “Reconnect” with everyone.  Some of our volunteers are doing some amazing things like starting a preschool, teaching to kids sitting on the floor, teaching 100 kids, pushing chapas out of the mud during rainy season, and so many other adventures that really put my service in perspective.  We got to trade advice on what we found worked and didn’t work in the classroom and many of us got the much needed emotional support to pick us up out of that first-three-month rut.  Speaking of which, congratulations, Will, for being voted in as one of our new Peer Support Network volunteers!

            Reconnect was a very busy three days, filled with great ideas, delicious food, and good company but it was only three days and was over before I knew it.  That was fine by me, we had planned one last adventure for this first school break:  Ibo Island.  So back north to Cabo Delgado we went.  We made record time with a 6 hour chapa ride up a dirt road from Pemba and an hour long boat trip out to the island.  If Angoche was Beautiful with a capital B, then Ibo was BEAUTIFUL.  We stayed in lodge owned by a local Mozambican woman who had built two bungalos and a few extra rooms on her property.  Between five of us, we split the two bungalos and spent about… drum roll…. $10 a night.  The “Dona” (Boss/Owner) was an amazing cook!  I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten better these past two weeks than I have my entire life.  The last night’s dinner was the best but we couldn’t for the life of us get her to tell us what it was.  All we know was that it was a “big fish.”  Please, if you ever want to go to Ibo, get her contact information from me.

           

            Ibo used to be another hotspot for the very rich wich gives it a very unique look.  Imagine Mozambican houses next to ruins of big fancy Portuguese buildings and barefoot children chasing you up the stairs of an old Portuguese fort.  Here’s the unfortunate deal with the beaches, though:  Many people on Ibos don’t have bathrooms or even outdoor latrines.  So where do they go?  On the beach during low tide…  Tide rolls in, washes everything away and the cycle starts all over again.  So, if you’re looking for easy access to great beaches, Ibo may not be the place for you.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t amazing beaches!  Ibo is a part of a large archipelago connected by mangroves.  We hired a sailboat to take us around the last day we were in Ibo and just a ways off shore, the water is crystal clear and the sand is white, just like you’d see in a post card.  I have to say, Ibo goes straight to the top of my list of favorite places

Sandbar off Ibo Island

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We spent the day in this dow checking out awesome islands around Ibo.

The location of my future 5 star resort

The old fort on Ibo

Make way!

President Guebuza is coming to town!  The big cheese of Mozambique is headed north and everyone is hard at work.  Potholes are being filled, buildings painted, and sidewalks paved.  We even recently found out that during his visit to the northern coastal town of Angoche, the President will be staying in the governor’s house.  Why is that cool?  Our very own Mafe and Anneke live in the apartment across the street and might catch a glimpse of the Mozambican President!  While fixing up towns just for the President obviously has its benefits, the impending visit is causing it's share of problems.

            Preparing the way are big boss military police, meaning more control points along the main highway.  Rafael, Will, Mireya, and I were on a bus headed to Nampula when we were stopped at one such control point.  I may have mentioned before that these stops have a certain routine.  The cops ask for the driver’s license and registration, then maybe asks for a few IDs (usually ours), and makes a stink about something stupid.  The unlucky perpetrator of that arbitrary offense may or may not try to reason with the cop, make puppy dog eyes, etc before reaching for their wallets to make the cop forget about their transgression. 

            Anyways, the cobrador (the ticket/fee collector) for our bus drew the short straw.  In charge of the ledger, he was held responsible for the fact that the bus was overcrowded and he and the driver were pulled aside to negotiate with the police.  About 45 minutes later, we watched the police put the cobrador in their truck and drive off.  None of us knew why, we just assumed that he was being taken back to the last town to talk to some chief about some paperwork or something.  Turns out, he had tried to bribe the cop, as per usual.  Unfortunately for him, a higher-up also happened to be there so the cobrador was arrested and taken away.  It might seem great that that behavior is recognized as wrong, BUT, as Will smartly pointed out, the wrong person is being punished.  People in Mozambique have come to accept that their police are corrupt and that it is going to take a few hundred extra meticais to appease the person in the uniform possibly holding an automatic weapon.  That cop, who probably would have accepted that bribe any other day, will continue making stops and demanding bribes as soon as the boss moves on to the next town but boy, did he put on a good show.

First one down

            On Tuesday, I turned in my grades for my first trimester of teaching 11^th and 12^th grade chemistry.  What a roller coaster.  I think I learned much more than my students did this trimester and for this, all I want to do is apologize.  Does anyone know an equivalent term in Portuguese for “guinea pigs?”

            So what didn’t work out quite so well?  For one, I don’t know my students nearly as well as I thought I would by now, though this isn’t totally my fault.  I didn’t even have an official roster (still don’t, really) for my 11^th grade classes until about half way through the trimester.  Getting to know my students also relies on them coming to class, which Mozambican students have a bad habit of not doing with any sort of regularity.  The girls’ names are particularly difficult to memorize because every week they have a new type of braid or have added or taken out a weave… 

            I also didn’t account for the trimester to be 4 weeks shorter than advertised.  Every single current volunteer who came our training had warned us that this would happen but you simply refuse to believe it until it you actually experience it.  I lost two weeks at the beginning of the year thanks to inefficient matriculation processing and two weeks at the end of the trimester to provincial exams (which were a joke that I have not the patience to describe).  Not only did this leave my classes waaaayyy behind in the national curriculum, but also destroyed my point distribution for the class.  I had intended to assign enough weekly homework to be equivalent to an exam but found myself short several weeks of my goal and was forced to give away free points… not that they didn’t need those free points.

           

            I did have some success, though.  The best metaphors I came up with to describe most of my concepts didn’t come to me until I was standing in front of the class, and the best part?  I usually had the Portuguese to explain it right then and there!  Maybe it’s just me, but my personal favorite, and the one I think my students understood the best, was my metaphor for describing collision theory.  For those who don’t remember general chemistry, collision theory basically states that particles must collide with each other with sufficient energy and in the correct orientation for a reaction to occur.  For this I picked up a pen and paper and held one in each hand and asked why ink was not appearing on the page.  Silly teacher, the pen has to touch the paper.  OK, I say, and I hold the end of the pen against the paper and scribble as hard as I can.  Where is the ink?  That’s the wrong end of the pen, professora.  I flip the pen around and touch it lightly to the page.  OK, now what am I doing wrong?   Mais força, professora!  I’d like to think that metaphor was original, but I should probably give credit to somebody somewhere for planting that in my subconscious to be retrieved at such a convenient time.

            After climbing the steep learning curve these past few months, I’m really looking forward to a more organized and productive second trimester.