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.

Small Victories

            It is all too easy to get stuck in a rut here because the honest truth is, while two years seems like a long time, we are  not here long enough to make any sort of dent in the problems we become so acutely aware of during our service.  So why are we all still here? (A little bragging is in order, here.  Out of our unprecidentedly large training group of 67 volunteers, none have thrown in the towel and gone home.  Someone tell me, is that some kind of Peace Corps record?)

            I won’t speak for the others, but sometimes, it’s sheer stubborness that gets me out of bed and makes me walk around before I can get back into bed and wait for it to start all over again.  However, most of the time my engine runs on small victories.  Tiny events that produce a “high on life” feeling that hopefully doesn’t wear off until you encounter the next.

A small collection of small victories and moments that made my day:

            I never thought that my first house would be the left half of a concrete duplex without running water in Eastern Africa.  Technically it is not my house (it is owned by the school I work for) but I will live in this house longer than any other house outside of my family home.  Nothing makes a house feel more like home than buying your first piece of furniture.  Mine happened to be a 12-hook wooden wall rack purchased at a whopping 100 mets (about $3 dollars).  The moment I hung up my capulanas and my bata (the white lab coat worn by teachers) was the moment that room became MY ROOM.  Since then, I have suspended a bamboo rod from the ceiling for clothing on hangers and sewn my own curtains.  While I seem to have taken a break from furnishing my room, Will is dissatisfied with my continued use of my suitcases as furniture.  Apparently it’s not acceptable to live out of your suitcase for 6 months… A bamboo dresser is in my future.

            I have one of my 12^th grade turmas during the first period on Wednesdays.  The class starts at 6:30 but kids roll in as late as 7:30, if they roll in at all.  One particular student of mine can be a bit of a handful so the other day when he suantered into class about 45 min late, I was fed up with his disrespect for me and his classmates so I made him come straight up to the board to solve a chemical equilibrium problem I had just written.  I knew he couldn’t solve it by himself but I’d be damned if I was going to let him sit down before solving the problem even if I had to tell him every single step.  Ten minutes later, he had an answer on the board and I saw the lightbulb go on in his head.  He hadn’t just robotically written what I had told him, he had solved a problem (almost) by himself.  While he still doesn’t always show up to class on time, he is now actually paying attention in class, participating, and LEARNING the material instead of just copying it down.  Now if only I could afford the time to be that stubborn with every single student…

            Our neighbor, Rodasa, is just over a year old and just learning to talk.  My name is now Na-Na and Mireya, Eeyayah. 

            Rodasa’s cousin, Suel, is about 2 and a half and in the prime of her terrible twos.  She is very good and getting in your way in EVERY way possible, for example, helping you do laundry/dishes by taking things out of the rinse bucket and throwing them back in the soapy bucket.  One particularly charming habit is trying to steal whatever treat might be on the table.  She has a weakness for juice and cookies and if she can reach it, it’s gone before you know she’s in the house.  I was in the middle of trying to build a baking soda/vinegar volcano or bottle rocket and the last thing I wanted was Suel coming into the house and making more of a mess of things than I already was.  Of course, her timing is always impecable, and there she was when I turned around, downing the glass of vinegar and baking soda colored with a little red kool-aid.  DEFINITELY NOT JUICE.  She looks up at me with a red stained mouth and a horrified look and sqeaks out, “agua?”  Nope, no water for you, you can savor that bad taste of taking things without permission. 

            It can be very difficult as a female volunteer to make male friends in the community.  99.9% of the time, your relationship reaches an awkward impass of “no, I will not date you and take you home to the US.”  One of my first “friends” outside of my school community was a guy selling mangos in the market.  He was the only one who didn’t try to overcharge Will and me those first few times we shopped for groceries and he has never once harassed me (more than I can say about nearly everyone else in the market).  I wave hi if I don’t stop to buy something and he waves back and usually that’s the end of our interaction.  The other day as I was walking by, I waved and instead of waving back, he shouted “Anda ‘ca!” (Come here!) and signaled for me to come over.  No good conversation has ever come from me responding to a guy in Mozambique telling me to come over and talk.  I thought for sure this was the end of my nice, not-creepy mango guy.  He stands up as I walk over and pulls something out of his pocket – a 5 Euro note.  He just wanted to know if it was real.  I have no idea how he got 5 Euros (or what the current Euro looks like, so I couldn’t really answer his question) but more importantly, I don’t know how I managed to find who seems to be one of the only genuinely friendly guys in the market.

            Sometimes getting our REDES girls to take ownership of the group activities can be more painful than pulling teeth.  We had decided to raise money to have a little party for Mozambican Women’s Day by selling the purses they had made last year and banana bread on the side.  So the day before we were supposed to go sell bags and bread, I whipped up 30 pretty little banana bread cupcakes in our charcoal Dutch oven.  The next morning, NO ONE shows up to help us sell so we didn’t raise a single metical.  Not exactly a victory, but when Mireya and I recognized the ridiculousness of trying to hold a bake sale in Mozambique, we laughed uncontrollably until our stomachs hurt.  Or maybe our stomachs hurt because we had so much banana bread to get rid of, who knows.

            I’ve always hated missing class.  For me, it’s always more of a pain to make up work or catch up.  However, there is a difference between having a cold and listening to someone talk to you and having a cold and being the one to do all the talking.  I had a cold and lost my voice the other week and so decided not to go to class.  I dutifully had Mireya tell my classes that I would not be in that day.  When my students heard I was sick, they used that free period when they should have had chemistry to visit me at home.  So much for resting my voice.  Not actually getting to take a sick day was worth knowing that my students cared enough to come check up on me.  I also managed to win Mozambican brownie points with my students by answering the door in a capulana.

Final “small victory” for the post is one word:  Cheese.