Passa em Cima

The Portuguese word for Easter is Pascoa, and the Portuguese word for Passover is Pascoa dos Judeos, or literally, Easter of the Jews (yes, our holiday is only in reference to the Christian holiday that happens at the same time of year). I personally prefer to refer to this particularly wonderful holiday as Passa em Cima, which is the literal translation that I semi-invented of to pass-over in Portuguese. But, nonetheless, my favorite holiday was indeed celebrated here in Mozambique. Last weekend, we combined Jewish Passover with Lebanese Easter, in what we coined as our Judeo-Christian Spring Holiday Party. The cultural exchange was exemplified by our alternatively dipping homemade matzah with charoset (essentially, Passover salsa) and homemade hummus, as the appetizers to other delicious dishes from both traditions. The food, the company, and the sharing of traditions were fantastic. Though we did not partake in any real seder (the Passover service), I told the extremely abridged version of the Passover story while we cooked and we altered the typical Passover toast of “next year in Jerusalem” to “next year in Beirut” to complete the cultural exchange. Aside from the 6 Peace Corps Volunteers in attendance, the two Mozambicans kept raving about the food, though they were initially a little skeptical of the “sauce” we told them to dip their crackers into. I would venture to call the extravaganza a success. Maybe next year, we will graduate to a more complete seder.

Prior to the celebration of Passa em Cima, I spent 5 glorious days in a fancy hotel with hot showers, full-length mirrors (!), Indian buffet at every meal, and air-conditioning. I didn’t realize I missed real showers until I had this opportunity, but the return to the bucket bath actually felt like home. I was at a hotel for a Peace Corps conference meant for the volunteers in my group to check in about how we have been doing teaching and integrating at site, to bounce teaching ideas off each other, and to exchange experiences, stories, and above all tips. I only missed one day of the festivities due to a high fever that resulted from bug bites that got infected from showering in the water here. But I survived, though I’m sure that will not be my last incident like this. We were all very excited about the prospect of the fast wireless Internet that is free at the hotel, but as luck/Mozambique would have it, the internet was down in the entire city of Nampula until our last day of the conference. Typical, but did I mention the showers, mirrors, and food?

The end of the conference also means that the second trimester of school is about to start, but I definitely feel more prepared to teach more effectively this term, as my students are adapting to my “weird” style and different accents in English and Portuguese, and I am getting into more of a groove lesson-planning. But we shall see.

Upon arriving home after the conference, we realized that someone had done limpeza around our house. Limpeza is in this scenario is gardening/cutting down all forms of plant life that have been growing, albeit occasionally a little out of control, all around our house. It is just a cultural difference in that I like the ambiance of having greenery around my house while most Mozambicans find it unseemly. But hey, I will take the free yard work, though whoever it was did throw away all the veggies and herbs my roommate had planted in pots on our back porch, which is more than unfortunate.

A word on Mozambican banks: the lines to talk to a teller or use the ATM are generally OUT OF CONTROL. Lines are hours and hours long because everyone gets paid at the same time of the month and it is extremely rare to actually be able to use a debit card to purchase anything, thus making cash a necessity. Furthermore, lines take forever because my town, which is pretty sizeable, has only 1 bank that most people actually go to, which does not suffice. But the most horrendous and egregious reason for the long lines is that I figure my average time spent at the concrete ATM machine is about 37 seconds, but the 40 people ahead of me in line will inevitably take on average 5 minutes each. I did, however, save the entire line some hassle today by not believing that the machine was broken and “forcing” my card through the slot and then proceeding to show the next 10 people behind me my technological “trick.” Leave it to the weird foreign girl many people in line had previously been staring at to save the day.

Happy Belated Easter and Passover! Boa Pascoa e Boa Pascoa dos Judeos!

Spring Break! (or I guess here, Fall Break!)

The first trimester is over, which means a break from school and the standard, “how did it all go down in your first four months?” Peace Corps conference. But conference means hotel, which in turn means, showers (and hot water!), delicious food, air-conditioning, and seeing all the Education volunteers in the north of Mozambique, all of which I am thrilled about.

The end of the trimester also means final exams. Since all the students take the same subject exam at the same time throughout the week, all the teachers proctor for each other, which means two things. One, I have very little control over what is going on during my tests, leading to a tremendous increase in cheating. And two, that I have to proctor other classes and students that I don’t know and that don’t know me, leading to a pretty universal lack of respect from students (because I am basically a substitute teacher in that moment, and foreign and weird and with mediocore Portuguese communication skills) and my failed attempts at curbing their cheating on tests basically designed for them to do so. I am glad they are over to say the least. The only comic relief of the week was when one of my students turned in two tests, with increasingly failing grades. Sorry buddy, nice try though.

My favorite method that I came up with to attempt to halt cheating during exams, was when I was making rounds to all my classes during my test to answer questions. The sides of our classrooms that face the hallways do not have glass in the windows/doors where they conceivably should. So, I would stick my head in the back door, scare the hell out of the students next to the window by asking them what they were doing as they were cheating, and then remarking that “Estou sempre assistir” (“I am always watching”), which though semi-creepy, may have had at least the temporary effect of limiting at least  those students’ wandering eyes.

The last two weeks, I have been involved in the making of two delicious feasts: one with homemade ravioli, gnocci, and spaghetti sauce, and the other with burritos with all the homemade fixings, including tortillas and tortilla chips. Such a treat.

Also, it poured rain all weekend, which means, I couldn’t really leave the house unless I wanted to get soaked. So, inevitably, boredom ensued. And in a boredom that I would wager that only Peace Corps volunteers can fully understand and appreciate, I did a great many “productive” things to pass the time, including reading two books in two days, making two huge, full jars of piri-piri (extremely hot chili sauce) that left my hands stinging for days from chopping so many hot peppers, making the best power-hour song line-up with all the songs painstakingly edited to contain the best minute of each, and inventing the world’s greatest game. For this game, all you need is a buddy and an I-pod. One person will say any word (preferably an adjective, but any word will suffice) and the other person will search the I-pod for the song that best encapsulates and defines that word. We played for about five hours one night. Best word/song pairings: “brittle” with N’sync’s “Tearin’ Up My Heart,” “success” with Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” and “confident” with Eminem’s “Without Me.” Try out the game and you will not be disappointed. Official name and games pieces will be for sale soon.

 View from the back porch. Beautiful Gurué

Sauce and (as of this photo) uncooked couvi ravioli

 Mexican feast!!!

Random

My school puts out a monthly school newspaper as part of a Peace Corps program called JOMA, (JOvens para MudançA- young people for change). For the past few years, the volunteer in Gurué has worked in conjunction with a Mozambican counterpart to teach the students about journalism and give them the opportunity to publish their work and show it off at specified distribution spots around town. Since the computers in the school’s computer lab have not been working, we have just started up for the year in the past few weeks with the few computers that are in fact functioning. This past week we had planned a day for the kids to type up their first articles, so I show up at the specified date and time to open the lab and help the students. We had a surprising number turn out, all super excited to get the JOMA year underway. But as luck would have it, the school didn’t have any energy. No, there wasn’t a power outage, it’s just that no one at the school had bought any recently (since electricity here is pay as you go), so we couldn’t use the computers. We came back later in the day, still no energy. And again on Monday morning and afternoon, it was still out. Typical.

 Similarly, I had my first REDES meeting last week and had 17 girls show up! But, I am unsure how it went, on account of my Portuguese, the cultural differences in how I am accustomed to running a meeting, and the general inclination for girls to be passive here. My second meeting had four girls, none of which repeating from the week before, and we had a great time playing random games and doing get to know you activities. I’m not sure how much my negligible return rate had to do with failing at my first meeting or just the girls being busy the next time, or simply just forgetting. But as long as I have at least a few people each week, I am happy, as I am still figuring out how I can best integrate and utilize this new program in my site.

The health volunteer at my site has been working towards starting these two afterschool program centers for orphans. Yesterday was the opening ceremony for the centers and I went to help out. Not only was I super excited that her counterpart had given me an official shirt for their organization to wear (it is super stylish here to wear badly screen-printed org shirts), but I was also going to be able to play with a bunch of cute kids. And it didn’t disappoint. The kids were awesome and I got to help them with their nametags and check them in. Then, I was sent on a mission to pick up the snacks and cake. The hired driver for the day took me on errands around town to pick up all the stuff, and just as I was thinking how great it was to actually run errands in a car, we got a flat tire. Again, typical. But the event went off mostly without a hitch and I got to take photographs of all the presentations (because no Mozambican event is complete without seeming hours of slowly reported speeches thanking every person even remotely involved. Twice.) and the songs and dances performed by the kids. Overall, a very exciting and adorable day.

The students have first trimester finals this coming week, which essentially means a lot of proctoring tests in classrooms with three students squished to a desk, failing to curb the rampant cheating. But I did my best to limit the cheating on my test by spending my own money to print three different versions and making it a little too hard to compensate for the inevitable wandering eyes and cheat-sheets.

Mozambicans will often buy clothes and sport them proudly without realizing that it is a woman’s pair of jeans and they are a man. Or that their shirt is a Seattle Mariner’s jersey and they have no idea who that is, or that their shirt is from some random American fundraiser or organization they have never heard of or can’t even read because it’s in English, or one of my personal favorites, as a teenage boy often sports around here, that they are wearing a shirt that says, “Cheerleader Mom.” But the best of the best random, out of place article of clothing that I have seen in Moz was a guy whipping past me on a motorcycle the other day in a graduation cap. Sweet.

In other news, food news that is, peanut season has officially commenced, meaning the streets are littered with boiled peanut vendors. Having never before tried a non-roasted peanut, I was at first a little thrown off, but am now absolutely addicted.

Also, I bought a coconut today to make some coconut milk and proceeded to drop it immediately after I paid the lady for it. As luck would have it, it split open and started leaking the coconut water stuff everywhere. Now, I probably could have traded it in for another one but I was unsure what was appropriate, Mozambican market etiquette in this scenario was, so, I pretended nothing happened (though the white girl covered in coconut milk was clearly a spectacle for everyone around to watch interestedly and shout things in Lomwe) and continued on my way home, leaving a trail of liquid the whole way. I had no less than 8 random Mozambicans between the market and my house ask me why I had purchased an already open coconut. Awesome. And then later, I was sitting on my porch, ralar-ing the coconut (using the Mozambican contraction that is specially designed for the one job of grating coconut) when one of my students walked by since apparently she lives in the neighborhood behind my house. And after she laughed at me for how slowly I was ralar-ing, she offered to help and finished the job in about one-tenth the time it would have taken me. Just another reason why Mozambican women are my heroes.

Speaking of which, Mozambican Women’s Day is Thursday, April 7, so I am looking forward to putting together some sort of REDES program that day and potentially playing in an all woman’s soccer game to celebrate.

Learning Portuguese, and Also Some English

We are approaching the end of the first trimester of school and I can’t believe it. I feel my effectiveness as a teacher has improved but still has a far way to go. I feel my Portuguese has significantly developed but again, still has some room for further improvement, as evidenced by the pedagogical director blatantly insulting my “inability” to speak Portuguese in front of about 2500 students as I was announcing my informational meeting for the girls youth group I am starting at our school. But aside from this mishap, and the concomitant issues I had with my students semi-rudely correcting me during class that day, I had over 50 girls show up to ask me more about my group. So I guess I did indeed get the message across. We have our first meeting on Wednesday and I’m hoping for the best. The program I am starting is volunteer-run nationally throughout Peace Corps Mozambique, but Gurué has just never had a group. It is called REDES (Raparigas para Educação, Desenvolvimento, e Saude- or Girls for Education, Development, and Health) and though we have yet to officially decide on our group’s focus, we will probably do a variety of things like sports, theatre, HIV/AIDS awareness, community volunteering, or perhaps even an income generation project like sewing or building a chicken coop. I am pretty excited about it. Should be fun.

Best ride of the many I have gotten in my recent travel to Ilha de Moçambique (Mozambique Island, what used to be the capital before Maputo and an awesome beach and historical landmark) and other places:

-A work truck that stopped every 5 minutes to run a generator they were towing behind them to measure some unidentifiable quantity on a computer inside the truck, turning a 2-hour ride into a 4-hour ride, but it was free, raining, and I was safe and dry inside. Success!

Also, pineapple and avocado season is ending, which breaks my heart. But we are now entering orange season, though I must note that the word in Portuguese for orange is laranja for both the color and the fruit, and yet surprisingly, the "laranjas" are green. I don't get it. 

Our second unit in class was relationships. Instead of giving them a test to evaluate their knowledge, I assigned a composition where they had to choose one person in their life with whom they have a relationship (family member, friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, teacher, etc) and use all the grammar points and vocab we had learned to write any number of things for a composition. As much fun as grading 240 English language learners’ essays are, I would like to share with all of you the best of the best statements proclaimed by my lovely students prior to any corrections.

“Her fat is beautiful”

“He is my land god”

“She tall, clear, black eyes, big foot”

“I came by this way just to speak about my best friend. I consider him as a brother and this young angel I’m talking about studies here in this school…”

“My husband advises that I cannot have other guys”

“My father her name is Paulino”

“Just now that we are students she must use the condom to prevenir of the different sicks and others situations by example HIV/AIDS”

“Our relationship is very simple and well because we love each other all days”

“I grow up in his hands”

“He likes to spend his rich time computering”

“She treats her sweetheart as he enjoys”

“He has 16 years old and walks very sad because smoking leave he very tired”

“He give advice. Not have more than 2 girlfriends”

“The tongues that she speaks are: Portuguese, Cisena and Inglesh”

“We listen to music’s and sometimes we drink bears”

From the two essays about me, since I told them they could interview me if they wanted:

“My Teacher Ana he is honest, friendly, and funny” (and clearly also a man…)

“Our Teacher Ana is fair because she treats everybody the same and does not have any favourites” Boo-yah.

Safe and Secure...Except for Shoes and Pão

The safety and security chefe (important boss man) for Peace Corps paid us a visit last weekend to check in on the increasing number of safety concerns in Gurué (beyond my shoe problems- but don’t worry, nothing major has happened to me). We also meant with the commandante (police chief) to attempt to discuss the situation. Who knows if anything will come of it but it’s a step I guess. And the Peace Corps chefe bought us meio-frango (half-chickens) at a restaurant in town. Such a treat. But it must be noted that a half chicken in Mozambique is not of the same proportions as that in an American restaurant, though this was still a momentous and actually protein-filled occasion.

Speaking of robberies, I was reading in my room the other day and my roommate was in the living room, which has a view of the front door if sitting in certain spots. All of a sudden I hear “VOCÊS!” (YOU!), which, in this tone is what a mãe (mom) might say to some misbehaving children to get their attention and scold. I popped my head out of my room to find out that a group of crianças (children) under the age of 5 had been inside the doorway of our house holding a pair of men’s shoes. My roommate had successfully scared them off before they could take anything of ours, though we were unable to get from any of the witnesses (mostly teenage boys) who they were or where they lived, even though I would bet anything that they did know and just decided to mess with us brancas (white girls). We think that the parents of these kids have been sending these kids on shoe stealing missions and then selling the loot. No, shoe-stealing is not life-threatening, just annoying, especially since we know it is solely targeted at us, seeing as Mozambicans leave tons of things on their porches and clothes hanging to dry outside and very rarely, or almost never, does someone dare to snatch it. And just this past weekend, I was reading on my wicker couch in such a position as to be unable to see the front door. I heard a rustling from my kitchen and jumped up just in time to see some kids running off with my (pão) bread. My friend who was staying with me ran after them, scared them, and they dropped the bread. Really though, Gurué- children are our lidrãos (robbers)??? And they have the guts to actually set foot inside our house with us in it to steal things. Gutsy, stupid, or brilliantly effective?

Another sketchy instance in Gurué happened a few weeks ago as well. We were sitting in town, hanging out at about 1pm on a Wednesday (I love my early school days) when we see a group of about 10 guys in raggedy clothes and no shoes (what would probably be proper attire to work in the machambas- fields) carrying catanas and enxadas (machetes and hoes- machamba tools). This was nothing out of the ordinary as it is machamba season, until we realized that three of the guys were also carrying AK-47s. Uniformed security guards and policemen have guns in Mozambique but to see a civilian with an unconcealed gun was far from comforting (as it would also have been in the US). We aren’t sure what was going on, and haven’t heard about any violence but still were not too thrilled to witness this scene.

You can see the school from our house and there is class consistently from 7am to 9pm everyday. Furthermore, there is absolutely no such thing as a substitute teacher here so students mill around if their teacher didn’t show up for a lesson, which is a fairly regular occurrence. Because of this, we constantly have kids that we know and that we have never met pedir-ing (asking for) things from us- water, to use the bathroom, bread, you name it, and we are forced to negar (reject) them. I get pedir-ed all the time walking to town, which can get irksome, but it is far more annoying when I am minding my own business in my own house and have to talk to some random student who is only there because we are weird and foreign and different. The other teachers definitely don’t get pedir-ed in this way. Granted, we do tell our students that they can always come over to ask questions, practice English, use our dictionaries or other grammar materials, etc, but I guess they don’t understand where to draw the line. The students also have to do limpeza (essentially, cleaning) on the school grounds where they take machetes to the grass and make everything look nice. I am certainly a fan of this because it gives them some semblance of responsibility over their education and their school, but it also means that kids stand atop the little hill directly in front of our house and stare into our house because apparently, we are such a spectacle we are worthy of this sort of attention. Awesome. And because of the constant licensas (the word Mozambicans use to announce they are at your house- people don’t knock or have doorbells), I have to remain formally dressed until dark, which goes against my usual proclivity for wearing pajamas whenever I am at home.

When a person wants to get rid of trash here in Mozambique, they have to burn it. We have a shared lixo (trash) pit a little ways in front of our house but nobody ever really burns the lixo in it- it mostly disappears from kids picking through it to make toys and dogs scavenging for food. The little kids make these awesome toy cars that they attach to sticks and drag around out of the plastic flask-sized gin bottles and four bottle caps. But I find it a little awkward when I see what I know could only have been my trash (like American gum wrappers, my earl gray tea packets, etc) floating around the school grounds/in front of my house.

  

I’m not really sure why, but we are never told anything that is happening at the school, which is kinda nice when I accidentally miss a teacher meeting. But it is less nice when I miss something important. Mozambique’s Minister of Education from Maputo was ostensibly coming to Gurué a few weeks ago and I found out about this about 1 hour before he was supposed to arrive. But I made it there on time and proceeded to wait around for a good 3 hours. Then, some of the teachers decided to follow the parade of all our students into town to greet the Minister. We then waited in town for 2 hours with literally every student in the city (the little ones were practicing their dance performances for the Minister so that was pretty cute) but then it began to get dark and he still hadn’t shown up. I decided to go home, which ended up being the right decision because the Minister never actually made it. His visit may or may not have just been a rumor. Typical.

Speaking of education, my classes are going along. I’m unsure as of yet how effective I am as a teacher, as I am still getting the hang of interacting with teens in this formal and foreign setting. Sometimes a lesson will go great and I will think that perhaps they have learned something, and then the next day, my next lesson will totally bomb, totally reversing the previous sentiment. But, just yesterday, I had the students work in pairs to solve problems on cards I made by using the sentence structure, “You should…” “You must not…” You had better…” etc, and after working for a while with a duo of girls, they finally constructed just one sentence, and all I did was say “Awesome, great work” and give a thumbs up as I moved to the next desk. Their smiles seemed to go on for days. I guess those are the moments to cherish.

I had some out of town guests last weekend and we made pizza from scratch. It was delicious, seeing as pretty much any culinary exploit is possible in Mozambique if you are willing to spend the time (no shortcuts available here) and the money (for those rare luxury items like cheese, though this particular cheese was a little odd in both taste and texture), and are willing to possibly make a sacrifice on certain items and use others as substitutions. Most importantly, however, I got over my fear of eating the wild mushrooms people sell here, because we put them on the pizza and I am still alive and well. Take that, potentially poisonous fungi.

MOZAMBIQUE: 9. ANNIE: 14.

Also, my roommate brought home literally 75 guavas the other day after traveling outside Gurué. Heaven.

But, I will say that I have exactly 8 infected mosquito bites on my legs that essentially look like small pox. I will spare you the rest of the gruesome details on that one.

MOZAMBIQUE: 10. ANNIE: 14. 

Tales from my Turmas

Well, I gave my first test this week. And not at all shockingly for
Mozambique, most of my students failed. Tests and grades are based on
a scale of 20 points, and a student needs to simply score a 10 to
pass. There is less of a culture here for studying at home (the
students, after all, go home and have hours of chores to complete,
like pumping water or making dinner for 12 from scratch), the students
are taking upwards of 8-9 classes a year and only attending school 6
hours a day (also, I am usually the only teacher still teaching during
the day’s last period thus students aren’t even in school that long
each day), there is a country-wide teacher shortage so some subjects
do not get taught all year, and the curriculum is too demanding and
covers too much material as it is trying to bridge a sort of
achievement gap. Therefore, many students are not able to score a 10
either without cheating or bribing the teacher, or may not even be
able to do so with corruption on their side.

Additionally, the emphasis here is on the community, so just as many people share
profits from the machamba (field) with extended family and friends, or
people turn up their stereos to allow (or force, depending on your
point of view) the whole neighborhood listen to their music, if I know
the answer on the test, I should also tell my friend. The idea of
academic integrity is a hard sell. This is not to generalize all
schools, all administrations, all teachers, or all students, but
simply to highlight a general trend. Most students do want to learn
and to pass, because they recognize the benefits to their futures that
actually graduating high school, and though it is not at all
widespread, that attending university, affords them. But, most will
not be able to take advantage of those opportunities. Furthermore,
many of my students have just been passed along every year (and even
the ones who passed may have only mastered half the material, if even
that) so even though they are in 11th grade and have supposedly been
taking English since 7th or 8th grade, they still do not know the word
“uncle” or how to properly conjugate “to be” in the present tense.
However, I still have to give tests and assign compositions despite
the inevitable battle against the almost institutionalized cheating
(in the form of cheat-sheets, and totally obvious copying from a
neighbor among many other things) and the lack of study and
test-taking skills. Yes, obviously, cheating occurs in the US as well,
but it is rarely condoned by teachers or as rampant as it is here.


On a positive note, I only had to outright fail one student out of 240
for cheating during the exam, that I saw at least (though with all the
rules, multiple versions of the test, and sternness I had and showed,
I think I controlled it pretty well). He had written a bunch of stuff
on his hand and was blatantly staring at it during the test. C’mon
dude, I’m not blind.


Best answers from the test: “I will have eaten my sister” and “A good
profession for João is October.” Surprisingly grammatically correct
statements in English, but not quite what I was going for.


Other interesting teaching moments from Mozambique:
We were making a list of irregular past participles a few weeks ago.
So I asked the class, “what is pagar?” hoping for the response to be
“to pay.” One kid yells out super loud “to take a shit.” Normally, I
would throw a kid out of class for saying something like that (like I
did when a kid answered “What will you have done by 2020?” with “I
will have killed my grandfather”), but in this case, I did not throw
him out because “cagar” is to take a shit and is similar to “pagar”
and he misheard me. I was the only one who laughed because none of the
other students knew what “to take a shit” meant. Their loss on a funny
moment.


The teaching ambiance in Mozambique sometimes leaves something to be
desired. The school never turns on the lights for any class, so if
it’s cloudy then the rooms are relatively dark. But one of my turmas
(classes) has this horrible room behind the gym/auditorium/large room
thing and it is extremely dark, and I have them first period
sometimes. So when it’s cloudy outside and 7am, they can’t see the
board. Awesome. Also, some of the chalkboards in some of the
classrooms are so old and cracked, there are random patches where
anything written there is illegible. But the thing that really gets me
is that there are not enough desks for students in the school. I have
over 60 kids in each turma. My classrooms have on average less than 20
desks in them. Granted, these are the desks that are more like benches
with ledges that are intended for two students, but doing the math, if
every student shows up (which I admit is a rarity on a non-test day),
that is 3 students to a desk, and there may still potentially be
overflow and thus students sitting on capulanas on the floor or
standing in the back. And since students always stand up to answer a
question from a teacher, they are at times unable to do so and it
becomes a whole process trying to work their way around the other
students next to them to stand up, wasting my precious little
class-time. Because of this shortage of desks and the fact that
students stay in one classroom and the teacher’s rotate, there becomes
a war between the turmas for desks. Before school every day, from my
house, you can see and hear students stealing desks from other
classrooms to make a more complete set for their own classroom that
day. Thus, one of my turmas will always inevitably have had their
desks stolen on any given day and therefore I will be teaching to a
class of half the students sitting on the floor. Sad. Especially when
I was giving a test and made them put everything at the front of the
room. Because I am apparently extremely harsh, they had nothing to
write on. But, given that Mozambican ingenuity, they figured it out.


Side-note:
It is now avocado and cucumber season. I have thus subsisted solely on
avocado, cucumber, and tomato sandwiches for a few weeks now. But I am
not in the least complaining.


Also, we had some other volunteers over last weekend, and so I went to
go fill up one of our caixas (crates) of beer. In Mozambique, you need
to give a bar a bottle if you want to take the full bottle home
because it is cheaper for them to get the bottles refilled than it is
to always buy new bottles (it has nothing whatsoever to do with
recycling though that is an added benefit). So we have two caixas of
beer bottles in our house that we can use to trocar (trade). And on my
way back from the bar where we got the beer, I carried the caixa of 12
full large beers on my head like a true Mozambican! That’s it. I’m
done. I can officially return to America now.

Boleia-ing Around Mozambique

Unfortunately, I have to report that the robberies have continued
after our sandals were stolen off our porch a little while ago. Yes,
we (my roommate and I that is) learned our lesson and no longer leave
anything on the porch unattended even for a moment. Instead, we
essentially just make a large pile of shoes just inside the door under
the table on which sits our mini-stove/oven thing. Last Thursday, I
was getting ready for school and opened the door at about 5:30am
(school starts at 7am). Then, at about 6:45am we went to put on our
shoes to head out of the house. Two of my nice American pairs of shoes
(gotta love Steve Madden) and one of my roommate’s Mozambican pairs
were no longer there. Apparently, some quite audacious person had
ENTERED our house in order to grab the shoes, WHILE we were inside
getting ready and eating breakfast. I am less upset by the fact that I
now have to go and buy uncomfortable, flimsy Mozambican shoes that are
appropriate for work, than I am bewildered that someone was able to
take something from inside my house while I was there. Then, after
being down exactly half the number of shoes I brought to this country
(having had three pairs stolen in two weeks), my cheap Mozambican
flip-flops broke the next day. Apparently it’s not my week. But we now
keep what is left of our shoe collections safely tucked in our rooms.


This past weekend, I traveled to Nampula city (essentially, the
capital of Northern Mozambique) to go to an actual grocery store and
do a couple other errands. I taught my classes Friday morning and then
we headed out to the next big town to spend the night with our friends
before continuing. Since it was not really chappah time (and chappahs
generally are not pleasant anyway), we headed out about a kilometer
from town to wait to catch a boleia (basically, hitch a ride). In
Mozambique, a boleia can take a myriad of different forms: it can be
chilling in the bed of a truck of any size with any number of other
travelers and random assortment of items; or it can be in the cab or
back of a semi; or it can be riding in the cab of a car/truck that’s
being towed on the bed of another truck; or it can be any other random
vehicle with four wheels and a few square feet of space. The best kind
of boleia, and the only one that will probably not cost you the
equivalent of chappah price, is a private car. Not many people own
cars in Mozambique, but if they do, they may wonder who this crazy
white person is (or who these multiple, crazy, white people are),
trying to flag them down, and stop. And if you are lucky, and they are
going to your destination (or to another crossroads in that
direction), they will take you free of charge. And this weekend, my
first experiences trying to boleia, I had the opportunity (or
misfortune, whichever your opinion is on the topic) to take most of
these options.

We waited about 2 hours that first day, only succeeding
in flagging down cars that were not going anywhere of any help to us.
But then, we finally found our ride: it was a half-empty chappah,
(which NEVER happens, as chappah drivers will drive around the city
trying to pick up people until they are full, and then cram on more
people they find in bush towns on the side of the road en route). It
was a mini-bus and not an open-back truck, going to the city we were
headed, very late in the day for a chappah. To say that this was rare
would be an understatement. The ride was glorious since the driver was
actually in a hurry to get to his destination and did not stop at
every small town to buy random stuff, and he hurried his passengers
boarding and de-boarding by honking loudly and for extended periods of
time. It was glorious even when some crazy, drunk man sat next to me
absolutely screaming about how Mozambique is the only
Portuguese-speaking country in the world that speaks proper
Portuguese, and that people who speak Spanish are only speaking bad
Portuguese. It was also still glorious even when we waited 10 minutes
for the cobrador (guy who collects the money and manages the passenger
flow on a chappah) and a passenger to wrangle up a chicken that got
away. We still made record time for the journey. After enjoying a
delicious dinner, peanut sauce pasta, with our friends, we headed to
Nampula the next morning.

Again, we waited about 2 hours but there
were barely even any cars passing us, which was extremely
disconcerting and unusual since we were on the main road that goes all
the way up Mozambique and were at the closest large town to Nampula,
which is effectively a truck-stop for people going into the big city.
Regrettably, we ultimately got on a chappah that barely made it to
Nampula it was going so slow and was in such bad shape. We then spent
about 2 hours in the city rushing around before heading back, wanting
to be able to get actually get a ride and get in a mode of
transportation before dark.

As was becoming the usual trend for the
weekend, we waited close to three hours, only flagging down people who
were going to nearby destinations. We were just about to give up and
attempt to pay a taxi an exorbitant rate to take us or pay for an
expensive room in the city (since there are no cheap, even
semi-sanitary places to stay the night in Nampula), a semi pulled up.
We had distanced ourselves from a big group of people who were also
trying to boleia, banking on our foreign-ness to be intriguing to
people with cars/trucks, but realizing what was at stake, we pushed
our way into the cab of the semi. We sat on the top of the rickety
bunk-bed playing all the car games we could think of, much to the
chagrin I’m sure of the many Mozambicans crammed around us. The ride
was alright though, considering we did indeed make it back, and the
driver only stopped in order to occasionally bribe cops (since it is
technically illegal to charge people for rides if you are not a
chappah). We ate another great meal, Lebanese chicken and rice, and
woke up to try it all once again on the last leg of the trip.

This time we decided, however, not to take the dirt road back to Gurue
(my site) since it had rained a lot in the past day or so and not many
people would be going that way due to the dangers of the mud. Instead,
we were hoping to catch two separate boleias taking the two roads that
are longer but paved on the way to Gurue. And we had extremely good
luck. After not too much waiting time, we flagged down a truck, and
only had to share the bed of it with between 4-6 other people and a
whole bunch of caixas (crates) of beer and soda, as well as a wooden
door. Then on the second leg, we quickly got a PRIVATE CAR to stop,
and he took us for free in his brand new car playing slow jam hits
from the early 90s. Sweet.


Switching gears, I survived my first week as an actual teacher with
actual students who are actually expected to gain knowledge from the
words I am saying. I had practically no discipline problems (except
when a student asked “Teacher, are you married?” and I thought he was
saying, “Teacher, are you a man?”- both being inappropriate
questions), though they may only have been well-behaved as they were
stunned by this foreign spectacle standing in front of them trying to
teach them something. This is also probably the reason for why
students scatter away from me when I walk down the hall- it is as if I
am Moses parting the Red Sea. I have learned a lot already, including
most notably, that I am not quite tall enough to reach the top of the
chalkboard without standing on my tippy toes (and I am learning which
classrooms have which sections of their chalkboard that are pretty
much unable to be written upon) and that I am going to need to
translate every word I say in English into Portuguese for them to
understand. If I don’t know how to say it in Portuguese then they will
have no concept in English anyway so it works out. I also realized how
very antsy and anxious I get when my students are painstakingly
copying from the board (Mozambicans are perfectionists and will take
out a ruler to draw the lines of a chart in their notebooks, but since
they don’t have books, what I put on the board and they copy is
essentially their only reference and study material). Fun fact: the
word for chalk in Portuguese is “giz” (pronounced jeez, or jizz; take
from that what you will), and therefore, I come home from school
everyday covered in “giz.” We had some fun, reviewing the simple verb
tenses and doing activities about the unit’s vocabulary, professions
and school subjects. I can already see the vast achievement and
knowledge gap among my students, but am slowly starting to figure out
what the hell I am actually doing attempting to teach without any
formal training. My biggest failure thus far: one of my turmas
(classes) was in a annex classroom the first week since their
classroom still needed to be cleaned, but this first classroom had no
desks. So the students brought in rocks to sit on, or they used their
notebooks from other classes as a buffer, since Mozambicans generally
hate getting dirty. The first day, they stood up to greet me, and
since there were no desks in the classroom, I forgot to tell them they
could sit down so they stood and stared at me for 10 minutes until I
realized my mistake. Sorry guys.


Thursday, February 3 is Dia de Herois (Hero’s Day) in Mozambique so we
don’t have school. Because all Mozambican holidays essentially follow
the same rubric (putting flowers on some monument in town, followed by
a procession to some other destination where a drawn-out and long
presentation of cultural performances and speakers who don’t know how
to properly use microphones will ensue), we are going to skip out and
hike to the waterfall outside town.


Also, I go running at 4:30am here so as to avoid as many people as
possible being out and thinking I am crazy for running (in shorts god
forbid) and that is when my empregada wakes me up and cleans my house
(though 4:30am in Mozambique is pretty darn happening and the sunrise
is absolutely stunning over the mountains). But, I have slowly learned
some valuable running lessons:

1. Dogs in Mozambique are scared of people because people throw rocks
at them because in their fear of people, the dogs growl and bite (it
is a vicious cycle), so when approaching a pack of dogs, I suggest you
make a wide arc around to avoid them or they WILL chase you and bare
their teeth and growl and you will become afraid of contracting
rabies.

2. Don’t stop to look at the newborn puppies on the side of the road
or you WILL be tempted to choose the cutest one and bring it home,
which will violate your roommate agreement of no dogs.

3. Running by a group of men should motivate you to increase your
running speed in order to avoid as much of their prolonged comments
and hoots and howls as possible. However, you can thank creepy men for
your improved fitness level.

4. When running more in the matu (bush), you will get a lot more
“mosheliwa”s (the standard greeting in Lomwe, the local language) than
“bom dia”s so if you respond appropriately and say “cosheliwa,” a
barrel of laughs will trail behind you since the muzunga (white girl)
knows Lomwe. But you will have gained some thread of respect from
them, even it is only fleeting and temporary.

5. Simply allowing the random strangers who join you on your run to
continue to run with you is probably a good idea, even though they are
probably making fun of you in the process.

6. If all else fails and you feel awkward running by a bunch of people
sweeping their quintals (front yards) with a pile of weeds and a bunch
of other people carrying produce in large baskets on their heads,
yelling out Lourdes Matola and doing a fist pump WILL get you some
brownie points. Lourdes Matola is Mozambique’s sole Olympian recently
and a track star.