Saturday, April 21, 2012

A Trip to the Market


It’s been over three months at site and I haven’t written about the market yet.  I go there every day!  So, today, let’s take a trip through the market of Murrupula.

Every day I walk through the market to get fresh bread and produce.  Though the selection may be very limited at times, and some days have more options than others, we are approaching the beginnings of the more fertile crop season and the end of the “Tempo do Fome” (Time of Hunger), so veggies are getting bigger, and new seasonal fruits are appearing.

The market is about a five minute walk from my house, in the center of the Vila.  Because I have too much free time, I made a sketch of my town to try to help explain it.



So here is a quick way to orient the market in relation to my house (the black dot).  I can either go to the market taking the path to the left or cutting through the soccer field.  The stores lining the market road sell household products (soap, dishes, pots/pans, etc.), some food/snacks (like soda, milk, yogurt, fish, crackers/cookies, pasta), clothes and shoes (everything is secondhand, even the shoes.  I was trying to explain to someone that a pair of Steve Madden heels were about $60 in America, yet only about $2 here), and other random things you might need like school supplies, tools, nails/screws, locks, capulanas, buckets, mattresses, fans, I even bought a shelf here.  I’m lucky as I can buy most things I would need for day to day life here at site, or if I can’t find it here, Nampula is only an hour or two away.  And if it’s not there, you can get a creative with what you have or learn to live without it.

Walking in to the Market area, you pass usually about 3-4 people selling bolo (which means cake, but it’s basically like fried dough like a doughnut with no frosting or sprinkles and not very sweet).  Then there are about 5-6 people selling fresh bread from big round baskets about 5 feet in diameter.  Bread is 2mts for a roll about the size of your hand.  Then there are people selling tomatoes, okra, lemons, “lettuce”, coconuts, onions, rice, potatoes, peppers, the occasional guy selling some goat meat from a basin (Mom, think of all the fun bacteria in there!), bananas, oranges, beans, the standard items in the market day to day.  Sometimes you might go there and be surprised to see only one or two green peppers and no bananas, and other times every person is selling peppers it seems!  Oranges just recently appeared and I was surprised to discover that their oranges in fact have green peels, but they are definitely oranges and not limes. 

So, I bet you’re trying to form an image of what this whole Murrupula market experience is really like…The best way I can explain it is like a farmer’s market where each person has their own little area where they sell their crops, some people only selling tomatoes or bananas in a three foot space on the concrete counter or ground, others have bigger areas occupying a whole tarp where they display their piles of onions and tomatoes, peppers, sacks of rice and beans.  Chris, you would go crazy here!  Everyone sells everything for the same price, there is no concept of lowering to attract customers, no business strategy, everyone sells the exactly same things exactly the same way (change is not widely accepted here.) 

Typically, the produce is grouped into piles of 4-5 items of equal size and the prices vary accordingly, of course bigger is more expensive.  Onions I typically buy by the kilo as they don’t really go bad for a while, same with beans and rice.  My every day purchases typically include 1 green pepper, 3-4 bananas, 4-5 tomatoes (think a little bigger than cherry tomato size rather than huge “normal” tomato size), and 2 loaves of bread (I have to limit myself or else I would eat way too much bread.  Love getting it when it’s still warm and soft!). 

You pick your vendor, choose your pile of food, and hand over the money.  Some days I can pass through unharrassed, a quick in and out saying a few “Bom dias” and “Ehalis”.  Other days, I swear, it’s as if they forgot a white girl lives here and comes every single day and people get very excited and rowdy. 

A brief breakdown of the prices of things.  Prices are written in metacais which equal about 27mts to $1.  While the conversions make things seem extremely cheap in the American mindset, keep in mind, my earnings fall in the range of a standard Mozambican teacher and permit me to live in conditions similar to that of others in my community.  No American salary here!

1 kilo Beans: 40mts
1 kilo Onions: 50mts
1 kilo Rice: 35mts
Bread: 2mts
Green Pepper: ~5mts
Tomatoes: 1-5mts (for 4, depending on their size)
Bananas: 5mts (for 4)
Cucumber: 5-7mts
Garlic: 10mts
Egg: 6-7mts
Limes/lemons (both called limao): 1 or 2mts
Pineapple: 7-15 depending on the size (pineapple season came and went L, now I have only seen pineapple in Nampula for 75mts)
Mango: 1mt (season also over)
1.5 L Bottle of Water – 35mts
19 oz. Beer – 40mts
Soda – bottle: 15, can: 25
1L Oil – 80 (definitely not EVOO, that stuff is way more expensive, like upwards of 300 or 400mts)
Roll of Toilet Paper – 12.5-15 mts
Chicken (alive to kill then eat) – 130mts (frozen chicken) – 150mts

Those are pretty much the day to day things, but let me know if you have any more questions of prices of other items or questions about life in general.  

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

And the surprises keep coming…


During week 11 of the 13 week trimester.  I (and almost every other volunteer I’ve talked to) assumed final exams would be the last week of the trimester, meaning we still had that week and next week to give lessons.  But, once again, a test of flexibility was presented….

Last Tuesday, a fellow volunteer informed me that he had just found out that this was not the case and that exams were in fact just next week!  I went to verify this with my school director who confirmed, yes of course exams are next week, you didn’t know?  Um, no because no one told me…So I returned home to adjust my lesson plans and start writing up my tests.

Then Wednesday brought another surprise.  You will probably all be happy to know that Wednesday Peace Corps came and built bars on my doors, so now my home is a little more secure :).  Anyways, I was talking with my PC director Gelane about the surprise I received about final exams next week, and I soon realized that these exams were not even going to be exams the professors wrote, but were rather exams written by the Mozambican Ministry of Education and were provincial wide exams!  So, these exams will have quite a bit of information that I have not yet covered in my classes because the curriculum asks for a ridiculous amount of material to be covered in just thirteen (well now just eleven) weeks. 

So on Monday, I proctored my first national exam.  Imagine this: 50+ students, a classroom with about 20 desks, one American teacher giving a test for Portuguese and Philosophy in a language she learned only 6 months ago.  The government gives just one copy of each test, 25 multiple choice questions each with choices A-D.  I guess they expect the schools to make copies of the tests, but my school (and I believe almost every other school) does not have enough money to make 3000 copies of every test for every subject, in addition, my school doesn’t even have electricity!  So what does one do?  Why write each question on the chalkboard, of course!  That’s right, 25 multiple choice questions on a chalkboard big enough to write maybe 3-5, sometimes 1-2 questions at a time.  Needless to say, I had a very sore hand and arm after the two tests Monday and was frustrated because it is impossible to control the students who are essentially sitting on top of each other doing a multiple choice exam with a lot of material they haven’t learned….fun times.

Now the rest of the week will consist of a couple more tests to proctor then figuring out how I will grade my students, who to turn grades in to and how to turn them in.  Flexibility and patience are certainly virtues….Eventually things get done!