Friday, February 24, 2012

Finally some more photos...

Discovered that the Peace Corps office here in Nampula has good enough internet for me to actually load some photos!  So here are a few, and I'll take some more soon!

 My House

My Kitchen

 Living Room

Loila and Lucreazea and the two neighbor girls
 My walk to school along the highway (remember this is one of the only paved roads up North)
View on the walk to school

--------Some photos from Christmas and New Year's--------
 Beautiful Angoche Sunset
Ilha de Mocambique for Christmas:

 Christmas Eve dinner at Bar Flor


Lena and Alden's Memorial in Ilha


Fort Sao Sebastiao (capital of Portuguese East Africa during the 1500-late 1800s)



Always a beautiful sunset here in Africa
Back to Angoche for New Year's
 Alissa and Tony gut the fish for fish tacos in Angoche

 On the roof watching the storm approach


Saturday, February 18, 2012

The typical day


I have been trying to think about what and how to write about my typical everyday life here.  It’s kind of strange how quickly things have become “normal” for me and it got me thinking about what do I actually do every day?  It’s almost like I should have more stories to share, I mean I am living in Africa!  How many people can say that?!  But, alas, my life has gotten pretty routine and uneventful for the most part, at least to me.  Maybe you will find things more exciting.  Often times, it does require removing one’s self from the situation to really realize the importance.

So, though my class schedule is somewhat different every day, for the most part, I have one class in the morning and another in the late afternoon.  So typically I wake up around 6am.  (If you knew me at home, this is a major change.  Never have I been a morning person.)  If I am feeling motivated, I will do an exercise video, either P90X or yoga.  For breakfast, if I have made a recent trip to the store in Nampula, I typically have oatmeal or even cereal with powdered milk mixed with water.  (The Nampula store has this cereal called Quadz which is very similar to Golden Grahams.)  Hopefully I will get my refrigerator delivered soon (as it is currently sitting in the PC office), and then can have cold milk with my cereal. 

Then I usually have my TICs class in the morning, after which I typically pass through the market, hoping for something new to inspire what I will make for lunch.  Typically, it is the standard items: tomatoes, onions, sometimes bananas, sometimes peppers, cucumber, okra, now guavas have replaced pineapples, and always rice, beans, and bread. 

Lunch typically is either a peanut butter and banana or jelly sandwich or one of my favorite lunches is a cucumber sandwhich: cucumber mixed with diced onion and garlic, salt, pepper, on bread with laughing cow cheese you can sometimes find in Nampula city.  I’ll either occupy the afternoon preparing for my next lesson or upcoming lessons, cleaning up the house a bit, reading, or watching something on my computer.  Sometimes, if it’s not ridiculously hot that day, I’ll walk around a bit, greeting people or exploring more of the city.

Then, I head off to the other school for my afternoon Biology class.  After class, some days, my neighbor Ogénio or two girls Loila and Lucrezia come visit and we’ll take a walk or chat under my gazebo.  Around 5 or 6, I’ll start making dinner, usually some rice or pasta variation.  Then, I usually take my bucket bath to try to wash off some of the sweat from the day.  My family sent me a solar shower bag which I have tried a couple times, but still need to work out the best way to hang it so that I don’t have to squat down in order to rinse out my hair.  So I usually just use a bucket and a cup.  Then, it’s continued lesson planning, reading or watching a show until about 9pm when I brush my teeth and get in to bed, reading before falling asleep around 10 or11pm. 

Now that I have gotten used to this routine and to living on my own, I am looking for more new things to do to occupy my time and get more involved in the community.  Though some days it’s nice to have a lot of chill out, alone time and escape from life in Africa for a bit, I do sometimes feel like I should be doing more. 

Talking with others, it seems everyone goes through this type of thought and I have gotten good advice to help through these moments.  For instance, some days it’s okay to just make it through another day, because life here is hard, and simply showing up to class is a lot and helps and does a lot more than some other professors do.  Also, it’s about keeping things in perspective.  I remember my reasons for coming here and know that change will more likely occur more in myself than physical tangible change I will see in my community.  If anything, the changes I already see in myself now will help me deal with challenges and experiences in my future.  I also remember that I have only really been here on my own in this community for a month or two, and relationships take time to develop and grow, and I have already come a pretty long way from those first days at site. 

Nonetheless, I like to keep busy and am looking forward to some new projects in the close future I hope.  Many students have expressed interest in wanting to practice their English, so I am working on the logistics to form a group of students to meet after school a few times a week to just chat in English for a bit.  Peace Corps also has several nation-wide secondary projects including a girl’s group called REDES, a science fair, and an English Theater group.  I am seeking out Mozambican counterparts who might be interested in helping me run such groups here, so I think soon I will be a little busier. J

Here are a few descriptions of the things that aren’t quite so normal:

How I get water: there are two different wells near my house.  I have never actually gone myself to get water, and have come to rely on my neighbor Ogenio to get it for me.  Sometimes he’ll get it and other times he’ll recruit this younger boy to get it.  The wells or pumps are about 100 yards away.  In order to fill the bucket, they have to pump the water out.  Like I said, I have never tried it, but it looks like it takes a lot of strength to pump the machine up and down.  Typically two people do it, but I’ll have to let you know when I try it one of these days.

How I cook: with power: electricity is a great thing and makes my life a lot easier sometimes.  I bought an electric stove with two burners which makes it pretty easy to cook.  The pans here kind of suck and make you really appreciate the invention of Teflon, and the cooking utensils aren’t the most durable and sometimes seem to be made of tin foil, spoons bending when stirring your pasta, or plastic that melts in boiling water, but you figure it out and get clever sometimes.  Since my frying pan is pretty much on its last days and soon seems like it will burn through, I have taken to sautéing the onions and garlic in my pots.  Pasta magically cooks in like 5 minutes, I have become a rice cooking master, and it’s kind of amazing how I can make the same five ingredients taste different sometimes.
Now without power is a little more difficult.  I think I may have already described cooking with carvão in a previous post, but to refresh your memory, its basically charcoal and you cook over it.  There is no heat regulation, just hot and super hot or dying out embers, so cooking becomes a little more simple and one-pot wonder type meals.  I have been fortunate enough to not have too many nights recently where I had to use carvão, and my electric stove is one of my favorite purchases.

How I wash dishes: I splurged and bought some actual dish soap and have some sponges that do an okay job.  I fill two basins, one with soapy water and the other for rinsing.  Then scrub scrub scrub, dishes in the tub, rinse, and dry.  Not too complicated.

How I wash clothes: No machines here!  I wash everything by hand. How clean anything actually gets, I’m not really sure, but at least things don’t smell too funny, I don’t think.  I fill a small basin with water then mix in some soap (universal soap you can also use to wash dishes).  I put in some dirty clothes, about four or five items at a time, scrub the fabric together, concentrating in the arm pit locations and collars of shirts, then wring them out and put them in another bucket of clean water.  I rinse out the soapy clothes in this bucket, giving them a good swish in the clean water, then wringing them out over the soapy water bucket so as to try to keep this second bucket not soapy.  Then, sometimes, I’ll have a third bucket to do a second rinse so the clothes don’t get quite as stiff after they dry.  I then hang them on the rope I have strung between my papaya trees and the bathroom house, clipping them to the line with clothespins to dry.  Many times, my clothes have gotten extra clean when suddenly it will decide to start raining.  If the clothes don’t dry by the night, I drape them around the chairs in my living room and rehang the still wet ones out in the morning.

Without power: Several volunteers live without power or electricity in their houses, and I have come to appreciate mine, but it can be frustrating when sometimes it decides to not work for whatever reason.  Typically when it is windy or rainy, the power might go out for a few minutes to a few hours.  The longest it’s gone out so far was for about 15 hours, but that was an unusual occurrence, I hope.  Not knowing when or if power is going to return can be pretty annoying and almost makes you wish either you have it always, or never, but the worst is definitely trying to sleep without power.  Sure I can deal with cooking using carvão or reading by headlamp and candlelight, but the houses here seem to have been constructed to function as saunas, retaining the afternoon heat like an oven!  I close all my doors and windows at night for safety and to sleep a little easier, but it provides for an uncomfortable evening when the power is out and you can’t use that fan.  It’s amazing how much nicer and cooler it is with some air circulation blowing on you, and it makes for a long night when you have to sleep in your own sweat.  I have developed a new tactic to combat the heat on those nights without power: soaking a t-shirt in some water and draping it over your skin can actually cool you down pretty well.  Better than nothing at times!

Test Day


The other day, I totally felt like I was in a Coca Cola commercial.  I was walking to school and decided to grab a cold Cola before heading over because it was super hot.  Just walking along drinking the soda from the can, people passing me carrying things on their head, greeting me “Boa tarde Senhora”, blue sky with white fluffy clouds, goats grazing along the side of the road.  I just smiled to myself thinking, wow I am totally in a commercial right now J

Class was another, yup I’m in Africa moment too.  This week, I gave my first ever test to my Bio students.  Only ten questions: multiple choice, true/false and short answer.  After training, I had been prepared for ridiculous levels of cheating: students writing notes on their arms and legs, looking at their neighbor’s paper, writing on the walls and desks, discretely leaving “trash” on the floor, whatever they could do to assist them during the test.  Either my students were super sneaky and I was super clueless, or I got the good students, because, to my surprise, I didn’t catch anyone cheating.  It was, in some way, kind of disappointing because I was ready to crack down and make the cheaters cry!  But at the same time, I was definitely impressed.  I also had made it pretty hard for them to cheat, four different versions of the test, made them put all their stuff up front, one student per desk after I split the class in half, so I’m thinking that probably had something to do with it. 

But, anyway, back to the Africa moment, it started pouring outside, and the rain pelting down on the tin roof was so loud!  The students could have been having full on conversations across the room during the test and I would not have been able to hear them.  Then it started raining inside the classroom, and not just a little water dripping through, but enough so that we had to move the desks away away from the center of the room where the water was raining down.  I just shook my head smiling to myself.

But props to the fellow teachers!  Tests are boring!  And grading is hard!  It’s sad when you can tell the student knows what they are talking about, but for some reason didn’t right that one part of the question you specifically asked for.  I so want to give them points, but there is only so much you can do…

Saturday, February 11, 2012

"Proud" new owner


Tuesday, tired of the 45 minutes it takes to walk to school in the afternoons, I decided to finally by a bike (I was also motivated to finally make this purchase because the last day Peace Corps will reimburse you for a bike is this Friday.)

I decided to take advantage of the culture’s always-ready-and-eager-to-help attitude, and approached my neighbors across the street whom I had lately seen working on bicycles, figuring what did I have to lose and maybe they know more about bikes than I do.  Thankfully, they agreed to help and accompanied me to the market to buy my very own bicycle.  I only had two types really to choose from here in the Murrupula market, but opted for the one, though more expensive, that appeared more sturdy.  (Marysia, because you are probably wondering, it is green, has a rear view mirror, place to strap things behind the seat, and even a little bell.)

Also because you are probably wondering, the bike cost 3500mts, which roughly equals a little over $125, which might not sound like a lot, but it definitely hurt me handing over the money.  (Yes PC does pay for some, but not all of it.)  I talked myself through the decision of such a large purchase, rationalizing that it would significantly cut the time it took to go to school or at least would be much cooler having the wind blowing and I wouldn’t get quite as sun burned.  And I was even able to convince the vendor to sell it to me for the reduced price of 3300mts.

The two gentlemen who helped me make the purchase then tried to explain how the bike was not yet ready to use, which took lots of explaining and repeating and I never really quite understood what they were saying.  But, I ran in to another colleague who helped explain and told me the bike needed some readjustments first in order to be safe to ride long distances.  Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow here and hope people know what they are doing.

So the guys got to work taking every piece of the bike apart and rescrewing this nut or readjusting that chain until it was apparently now ready to use.  My neighbor, who has been a huge help lately, observed their work too, so I trusted I was in good hands. 

Donning my super cute bike helmet (red) given and strictly required by Peace Corps rules, I set out for my first bike ride.  Many people here have bikes and never have I seen any using a helmet. (Many more people have motorcycles, and maybe half have a helmet, but typically they ride with another passenger without a helmet.)  So, I was prepared for the laughs I would receive as I passed by.  This type of attention has become something I expect and have grown accustomed too, so why not give them something to actually laugh about this time!

The first part of the ride was nice, flat then downhill, but I quickly arrived at the big hill I must ascend to reach the school.  It’s a pretty steady, not necessarily steep but not gradual either, incline for about the last third of the trek to school.  I don’t consider myself that out of shape, but I apparently I have no quad muscles and I was beat after that hill, barely making it to the top!  Give me at least a little credit though because the bike has no gears and the pedals are pretty hard to turn…

So though it did cut my 45 minute walk down to about a 15 minute ride, it was definitely a lot harder and had me rethinking my bike purchase.  But, a little exercise never hurt anyone, right? And someone once told me, pain is just weakness leaving the body! 

So I gave my biology lesson, somewhat out of breath and attractively sweat-covered.  This week, I introduced the students to the concept of group work.  My first bio turma Monday, though they first greeted me with blank stares at the concept, quickly embraced the group activities.  I had them first brainstorm ways in which bacteria are important in the lives of humans, and then later had them come up with ways to prevent the transmission of Cholera and Tb, trying to encourage a little independent critical thinking to mix up their usual simply copy notes manner of learning.  My Tuesday turma struggled a little more with the concept of working together and of course there is always one group with the goof-offs, but strict teacher Sara is not afraid to come out when necessary. 

It was just a short 45 minute lesson Tuesday and then time for the ride home, my legs still feeling kind of shaky.  Though uphill both ways, I did make it back and approached my new bike guys to find out a way to make it easier to turn the pedals. 

I joked with them about how I have no “forca” (strength) and they encouraged me that I would with time.  So, gonna keep tackling the stupid hill and weakness will be no more!

Wednesday, I tried a review game with my bio students to help prepare them for their test next week.  A simple game concept, I divided the class into four teams, that was an interesting feat that took way longer than necessary, then I just asked them questions and the first team to have someone stand up could respond and get a point.  They asked multiple times if winning would earn them an extra point on the test, something I had thought about doing but opted not to agree to this time, but they were still ridiculously competitive.  It was fun, though we will see how they do with my no cheating policy.  I made it very clear that I was not afraid to give out zeros, but I have a feeling I most likely will have to give a few…

Wednesday night was probably the most miserable night and the sickest I have been here.  It sucks because there are always so many things that could cause one to be sick, but, sparing you the disgusting details, I basically got no sleep, felt like I had been hit by a bus, and couldn’t really do anything to feel better but lie there and then rush to my bucket every hour or so.  It was miserable and something I wish on no one.  But it can always be worse!  Still recovering this weekend, but doing better J.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Week 3 - Another test of patience


After a weekend spent in Angoche with some other volunteers, Monday I headed back to site, leaving Angoche around 4am to catch a chapa.  A chapa picked us up on the way towards the station and was about half filled at that time.  We then reached the chapa stop where we proceeded to wait for more people to fill up the vehicle.  After about twenty minutes, two more people came, but we still lacked at least 7 more.  

Sitting and waiting is common here in Mozambique, but this was ridiculous and unbelievably frustrating.  The drivers were doing nothing to try to get people to fill the chapa and other trucks were leaving, their truck beds filled with people, some most likely heading to Nampula also.  We were hesitant to get off because we had good seats and didn’t want to risk this chapa leaving without us and not being able to find another.  But finally after about an hour, we decided to take the risk and look for other options because clearly we weren’t leaving anytime soon. 

A driver in a huge truck said he had room for the three of us in the cab and he was leaving “now”.  We clarified asking, now now or twenty minutes from now now?  He claimed and insisted now now.  Mmmhmm, guess what?!  We proceeded to wait some more, apparently for some guy who had to go home to get some sack of something, who knows….

Finally around 6:30 we left Angoche headed towards Nampula city.  Now let me describe this road for you.  Gelane, our North PC Director, said it best, “It is a mix of paradise and Hell.”  I could not think of a better way to describe a road with some heavenly paved sections intermixed with some hellish practically washed away dirt road sections filled with an incredible amount of pot holes providing for quite the bumpy ride! 

Slowly but surely we made it to the city, with only a couple stops on the way to apparently give someone down a side road gas and to chat with the drivers of a broken down car.  Drivers pretty much do what they want, when they want, regardless of the number of paying passengers they may have. 

But eventually I made it back home after about 9 hours (it should have been 5 or so), was running late for my afternoon class, but luck was on my side finally as my director drove by and gave me a ride to the school so I was able to make it to class on time.

Tuesday was another fun test of flexibility.  Still learning and experimenting with how to handle the management of the classroom during the TICs lesson, I busted out strict teacher Sara and taught the first half of the class without the computers again and then we went in and I assigned the students to groups of three or four per computer.  We practiced using the mouse today, letting the students rotate using Paint to draw and play around a bit.

A good tactic when it seems people are not following your instructions?  Make them raise both hands in the air!  When it was time to turn off the computers, I did just this.  It was greeted with some laughter, but everyone did it and I definitely had their attention!  Slowly but surely I am figuring this whole teacher thing out!

That afternoon I went to the market and tried out some new Macua words.  As per usual, when I walk around people shout Ehali to hear my Macua response and then smile and giggle to themselves, but today I surprised them asking “how much” in Macua.  I was greeted with such enthusiasm, laughter, and high fives all around!  I even understood their response!  Walking home rather pleased with myself, I then had a relaxing afternoon before my later Biology lesson.

One would think that it being the third week of school, there would be a permanent schedule.  But alas, this is not the case.  Monday I found out that I may be teaching five more turmas of computers, but I made it known that I cannot teach without computers and would not teach theory.  So we’ll see what happens with that.  But my biology lessons got moved around a bit too, so that one lesson was switched to a time when the students typically had a free period.

So I walked the two miles to class, entering the classroom filled with only seven students.  Yup, seven of fifty.  I chuckled to myself, really expecting nothing different and thinking well, at least I got some exercise!  Just another day in Mozambique…

Wednesday

It’s amazing how one class can totally change your mood.  My computer class this morning, I had to deal with a couple kids being little punks.  After giving them two warnings, I finally made them leave the computer room, receiving their pleas of “professora, we’re sorry, we want to stay and learn, professora” blah blah blah.  Nope, leave!  And to top off the stress and extreme test of patience the computer classes can be, I had an audience of students outside, first trying to get in and about 10 did before another student told me they weren’t in our class, and then about 20  were just standing outside the bar door, sticking their heads through, watching.  I told them to leave multiple multiple times, and they got scared enough that they would run away as I approached the door, but would soon return a couple minutes later.  I just shook my head and laughed, cuz what else can you do really?

Still feeling pretty sucky in the afternoon, I made my trek to school.  Rather than 7, I had 46 students today!  My lesson on bacteria went really well, classroom participation, behaved students interested in the topic.  Totally transformed my mood!  ! 

Had some visitors in the afternoon, my neighbor who’s dream is to become an English teacher will probably soon become a regular visitor to practice his English, another colleague came to ask me to help him fix his computer (suddenly I am a computer expert, who knew?!), and my two 14 year old girl friends came to chat on their way home from school.  Feelin much better now than I was this morning.  Continuing on the daily emotional rollercoaster, but it certainly is nice to finish the day on a high J

Finally, Thursday ended my third week of school.  Had my third turma of TICs students, again with an audience outside, but much better behaved students inside the classroom, only bad thing is that that room gets so unbelievably hot!  After, I met up with the commander of the police who I have been helping complete an application for applying to a Master’s Program in Australia.  The application is in English and includes some short answer sections, in which he merely wrote out the responses in Portuguese then copied and pasted them in to a computer translator.  Made for an interesting time trying to decipher things and make them into legible English without my simply re-writing everything in my own words.  I don’t want to crush any dreams and helped as best I could, but I hope he knows what he is getting himself in to here.

Looking forward to a relaxing weekend at home, cleaning up my house, reading, lesson planning, not going anywhere or doing any traveling for a while. J

The rest of week 2


The rest of the second week was somewhat less chaotic.  It was actually like a real work week!  Who knew?!  I got tired of still waiting for a definitive schedule and took matters in to my own hands and talked with another professor about moving his class and filled in some of the turmas’ free periods with either my bio lessons or TICs lessons.  Mom, guess you’re right!  Slowly I am taking over!  But I think professors changing their own schedules around is pretty common here, who I was to think that the administrative people would do it I guess…

So I had another TICs lesson, where I learned from previous aulas that it is much better to teach them something (today, how to turn on and off the computer) and then let them enter the computer room after.  An interesting method I may continue to employ in future lessons.

My biology classes today could not have gone any better!  Introducing the concepts of taxonomy, I presented a song to the tune of “Mary had a little lamb” about the order of taxonomic categories (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, but in Portuguese).  The students applauded afterward, so I guess that means they liked the song!  Hopefully they will actually remember something from the lesson!  (They even remembered the song the following week!)

On the two mile walk back, I took the opportunity to learn a little of the local language, Macua.  Some of my students walking with me a taught me a few words after I explained that I only knew two, how are you (“ehali”) and I am well (“salama”).  Now I can also count to ten and ask how much does it cost!  Slowly but surely!