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