School is done! I just have tests next week and then hand back the tests and I'm home-free for the year for the most part. I played a game with my students. It was just basic trivia of geography and English practice and I divided them into groups - stole the idea from my roommate. I made them each come up with names for their groups and they were quite creative. Superman. Batman. Underwear. Akon. G-Unit. Rice. Eggs. And my own personal creation for a team that couldn't think of one - I don't know. The game was going very well despite the kids not knowing basic facts - like what is the capital of South Africa or successfully managing to name the 10 provinces of Mozambique. It got out of hand a few times. They were supposed to write down the answers in their groups and then run up to me to hand them over to read. The winners would get candy. It became an all-out scrap. One boy got his shirt ripped. When they all ran up to hand me the sheets, they'd thrust them in my face and literally take my hand and place their papers in it. Imagine having 15 students surrounding you, pushing each other. I feared for my life. And laughed a lot. So when it got too out of hand with some classes, I did what any sane teacher would do. I erased all their names off the board, wrote myself as the winner and took a piece of candy, ripped it open and popped it in my mouth, declaring it to be delicious and savory. And then I left.
I was walking to visit friends today and a man was walking behind me. I said my usual 'bom dia' and kept walking at my speedy American pace. Well, he took that as a sign to continue the conversation. He asked what I knew in Macua and I told him I knew how to say 'I'm not your wife.' So what does the intelligent young man say? 'You don't want to marry a Mozambican?' I told him that I don't want to marry anyone right now. So he said 'I would really like to see the United States.' Haha! Smooth. So he was basically saying marrying an American was only for traveling and living in the United States. Be still, my heart.
I let a girl take a test this morning because she missed it. She showed me the evidence of hospital receipts and then I let her take a seat and do the test. Well, she couldn't think of some of the words and asked me for help. I told her she just needed to translate them. I went back in the house and was standing at the kitchen window to see a couple of seventh-grade girls smuggling in an english book for her to look up the words! Obviously, I went out and confiscated it. Seriously? I gave another girl a falta vermelha for sassing me in class. I told her she had a bad attitude. When I told her to leave, she just moved to another spot, thinking I wouldn't remember her. I told her 'I wasn't born yesterday and I'm not stupid. But you are if you think I don't know who you are.' So she got up and left...at a painstaking swagger, laughing and chatting with her friends on the way out. She even gave me the grand finale of a sarcastic sneer walking out. I got the last sarcastic sneer though when I borrowed a red pen to write down her number. That's the worst discipline you can give a student. She deserved it for being disrespectful but I doubt she really cares. I can guarantee you that she wouldn't behave that way for a Mozambican teacher.
But...I have now been in Mozambique for one year! Holla! It's been a lesson thus far and I'm sure I'll just keep learning new things - good and bad - for the next 14 months.
Hope all's well with everyone! Enjoy the apple orchards and fall weather! It's getting hotter here. I am starting to sit in one place now. In front of my fan.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Stressed Out
Oh, where to begin with this week?! We'll go in chronological order. Thursday morning I fired our empregada, Lucrecia. She had just gotten too comfortable and we suspected her of stealing a few things. She didn't even deny anything but accepted the pay I gave her for a third of the month, said thank you and walked out the door. It was actually a startlingly easy firing. The bad part about having fired her is that now I need to find someone to take care of the dog while I'm home over christmas. That is not an easy task to find someone you can trust enough to give the keys to your house or to ensure that they are going to do the job correctly.
That same day, I had to give my second exam of the trimester to students. I made three students cry when I gave them a zero for cheating. They are just absolutely ridiculous. I don't know why, but before, I used to have pity for them. That's why I let them use their notebooks. I've grown tired of that now and am giving them a lesson from the school of hard knocks. If you don't study, you don't pass. It's as simple as that. The students don't see why cheating is bad. They think talking during tests is okay and that sitting on your notebook to conceal it is standard as well. I wore the dark sunglasses but it didn't help that much. When you are one side of the room, the other side is cheating and vice versa. The hardest part is that any kind of study habits you try to teach the students is undone by Mozambican teachers because they permit cheating and will likely just raise the grades anyway to let the students pass. It frustrates me to no end. The system just seems to be going through the motions, without educating a single child properly. It's something I'll never get used to.
Just yesterday, I was about to leave our house when one of the winners of our FBLM (Future Business Leaders of Mozambique) competition came to speak with me. He and his partner had a plan to build a lunchonette close to the chapa stop in our town. There had originally been three people in the group. The girl rarely came to meetings and when she did, she just sat there and said nothing. After the group won, we found out she wasn't in the right grade to participate and she was only in the group because she was Felix's girlfriend, a member of the group. So, we kicked her out. Well, the other member left in the two person group came to me and told me that Felix had used some of the money we had distributed to them to start a business ($1,000) and gave 3,000 meticais ($120) to his girlfriend. He also used some of the money to start his own little reed bar where he just sells cabanga - homemade booze. He did all of this, careless of what his partner thought. His partner (the one who came to me) wanted to stick with the plan. So I went to the bar and told him that he needed to correct what he had done wrong and how it wasn't fair to his friend to be doing this to him. I also told him that money from FBLM is not for starting a bar so that men can get drunk and go home and beat their wives and children. I was so angry that I had to just walk away from him but I think I succeeded in making him feel bad. I never thought he'd turn out to be such a little punk. It's really disheartening that someone would do that with money that was supposed to help them lead a successful life - not destroy a friendship and become corrupt. They're both coming to our house tomorrow for some kind of mediation over this problem.
That same day, I had to give my second exam of the trimester to students. I made three students cry when I gave them a zero for cheating. They are just absolutely ridiculous. I don't know why, but before, I used to have pity for them. That's why I let them use their notebooks. I've grown tired of that now and am giving them a lesson from the school of hard knocks. If you don't study, you don't pass. It's as simple as that. The students don't see why cheating is bad. They think talking during tests is okay and that sitting on your notebook to conceal it is standard as well. I wore the dark sunglasses but it didn't help that much. When you are one side of the room, the other side is cheating and vice versa. The hardest part is that any kind of study habits you try to teach the students is undone by Mozambican teachers because they permit cheating and will likely just raise the grades anyway to let the students pass. It frustrates me to no end. The system just seems to be going through the motions, without educating a single child properly. It's something I'll never get used to.
Just yesterday, I was about to leave our house when one of the winners of our FBLM (Future Business Leaders of Mozambique) competition came to speak with me. He and his partner had a plan to build a lunchonette close to the chapa stop in our town. There had originally been three people in the group. The girl rarely came to meetings and when she did, she just sat there and said nothing. After the group won, we found out she wasn't in the right grade to participate and she was only in the group because she was Felix's girlfriend, a member of the group. So, we kicked her out. Well, the other member left in the two person group came to me and told me that Felix had used some of the money we had distributed to them to start a business ($1,000) and gave 3,000 meticais ($120) to his girlfriend. He also used some of the money to start his own little reed bar where he just sells cabanga - homemade booze. He did all of this, careless of what his partner thought. His partner (the one who came to me) wanted to stick with the plan. So I went to the bar and told him that he needed to correct what he had done wrong and how it wasn't fair to his friend to be doing this to him. I also told him that money from FBLM is not for starting a bar so that men can get drunk and go home and beat their wives and children. I was so angry that I had to just walk away from him but I think I succeeded in making him feel bad. I never thought he'd turn out to be such a little punk. It's really disheartening that someone would do that with money that was supposed to help them lead a successful life - not destroy a friendship and become corrupt. They're both coming to our house tomorrow for some kind of mediation over this problem.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Chalkboard Riots and a Dramatic Escape
Whenever I hand out my visual aids to students when I am done with them, it is a free-for-all. We’re talking about hands grabbing, elbows shoving and kids boxing out like its fifth grade basketball. One of these days, one of my students is going to get a concussion for a magazine cut-out of Roger Federer playing tennis. They are just as enthusiastic when I let them fill out exercises on the board with chalk. In one of my classes, I have a really small student. Picture the size of a second-grader. He’s particularly adorable because he dons high-water pants with a tucked-in shirt. He is intelligent though and always races to the front to get the chalk before anyone else can. I admire his audacity. Well, this last week, as usual, he got to the chalk before everyone else. However, once everyone else got up there, they mobbed him and he was practically impaled on the chalk ledge. I envision his face was smooshed up against the board much like that deer I hit with my learner’s permit’s face was smooshed up against my driver’s side window.
He is funny though because as a tall person, I am capable of using the entire board quite easily. As a result, I write exercises at the top of the board as well. One day he really wanted to complete the exercises but he was too short. One of my older students marched up to the front of the room, grabbed the little one around the waist and hoisted him up to write at the top of the board. When he was done, the little boy dusted the chalk off of his hands and announced “chega.” “Enough.” And the bigger boy put him down. Gotta love teaching some days.
I was sitting at school the other day and a little girl was getting water at the spigot in the schoolyard. Kids here, as soon as they can walk, are expected to do most chores at home. And they do. There’s no such thing as talking back to your parents here. At five am, walking on the road, you can easily find young children yawning and sweeping the front yard with branches. This girl was probably about that age. When people here carry things on their heads, especially water, they usually put a capulana coil between their heads and the thing they are carrying because it eases the pain of carrying a heavy load. This little girl would put the capulana coil on her head and reach down to pick up the jug of water. As soon as she would get the jug of water almost on her head, the coil would slip off. So she stood there with the jug on her head and the coil on the ground, looking as though she was trying to figure out how to make it work. I went over and picked up the coil, lifted the jug off her head and placed the coil under the jug on her head. She just smiled at me, grabbed a hold of the water jug with one arm and headed for her house. Moments like that make my days.
I had an interesting encounter with a colleague. I was at our house with my REDES girls when he came to the gate and stood there. When I noticed him, I said “yes?” and he was like “well, can’t I come in?” I agreed and let him come in. The first words out of his mouth were “do you have any whiskey?” I told him no. “Okay, beer.” I told him no. “All right then. A soda.” I said no and that we only had water. So he agreed, making me serve him in my own house when we have never been friends. I have no problem with hospitality. I DO have a problem with hospitality that’s forced upon me by disrespectful people. So I got him his water and while he waited out front, he proceeded to flirt with my 13 or 14 year-old REDES girls. He was completely inappropriate and I could smell the alcohol on him – at eight o’clock in the morning. He finally left and I saw him later at school and decided to say something. I told him that we didn’t want him coming to our house, asking for alcohol, especially when we had students there, and that we don’t drink and we don’t want students to think that we do. He nodded and said OK. But then two seconds later, he said “what would you like then?” It made me want to pull my hair out. It’s difficult to deal with someone who doesn’t see their behavior as a bad example or just plain doesn’t care about how inappropriate they appear.
Right now it’s Ramadan. That means that half of my students who are Muslin are fasting from five in the morning until 5:30 at night. They can’t eat or drink water. They can’t even chew on a pencil, according to my students. I couldn’t imagine fasting here. The sun is brutal. Some kids have to walk 45 minutes to get to school when the sun is at its hottest. Not to mention, the kids have to do manual labor at home, carting water and doing normal chores. I can’t even go half an hour without drinking water. As a result of bellies with even less food in them, my students are crankier than ever. I always bring water with me to school because I talk so much and I now feel required to take swigs on the sly. No one wants to be there during the last time of school because they want to be home with food in front of them when 5:30 rolls around. School ends at 5:35 – if students stay that long, which rarely happens.
I went and sat outside Nia’s class last week, waiting for her to get done with classes. She wouldn’t let her students leave until they’d shown her that they had written their work down in their notebooks. Some students hadn’t and with her blocking the door, they were trying to sweet-talk their way out. One of them, a fasting girl, started crying and to avoid having to do the work in order to leave, escaped out a window. She’s quite the drama queen. She told me that she aspires to be a flight attendant because, according to her, flight attendants are multi-lingual and very worldly. And she also told me, in her throaty voice that sounds like she smokes a couple packs a day, that I should adopt her. I just laughed and shook my head.
And now for some pictures of my bacterial throat abcess from back in February. Was not fun at all then but now whenever I look at these pics, I can't help but have a hearty laugh.
BEFORE
AFTER
Thursday, August 14, 2008
jump to conclusions mat
I walked into Oitava 2 on Monday, ready to do battle and was surprised to find 90 perfect angels staring back at me. At first I thought that it must have been my stellar teaching style but after a few seconds of thought, I realized there had to be something more to it. I went and talked to the teacher filling in as pedagogical director and my dreams had come true: he had yelled at them. Erin: 1. Unruly students: 0. It was honestly the most perfect class session in the world. I also found out the name and number of the student who had 'sassed' me and gave him a falta vermelha. I made a big show of it too by pulling him out in front of all the other students and marching him to the school office, borrowing someone's red pen and writing down his number and a big falta vermelha next to it in front of him. It wasn't hard at all to find out that it was him. I had already thought it was him and all the other students ratted him out. He had come late to school and his fellow classmates had even come specifically to find me to tell me that he was now at school and I could take action. I know that they only did it because they love to see drama. The student wasn't happy with me but I didn't care at that point.
I have found that I have a temper. I've never had any patience to begin with (for example, I was almost born in the car on the way to the hospital) and living here in Mozambique has been a good test of my patience or lack thereof. Nia and I submitted a pedido (a request) to the local government building to use the community stage for our Future Business Leaders competition on Saturday. I went and checked on it because it was taking forever to pass and surprise, surprise, they had lost it. Shocking. To make matters worse, when the man I was talking to called to check on it, he had a question for me and addressed me as 'menina.' Girl. At that point, I was so over talking with him. When we were done talking, I just mumbled 'obrigada!' in a very ungrateful way and traipsed out of the office. Passive aggression is my middle name. That's the second time they have lost a pedido. They lost Nia's when she was asking to paint a mural on a wall in the Vila for her JOMA group. I don't understand what's so difficult there.
I went to the Centro de Recursos (like a public library) to use their computer to print off certificates for the participants in our FBLM competition. I made the certificate and asked the lady for paper to print, giving her 5 mt to pay for it. I went to print it off and it didn't work because there is no ink. I then went and asked the exact same lady I gave the money to to print and she said 'yeah, there's no ink.' Why in the world would you give someone paper to print something off when there is no ink?! And when the other lady working saw that the printer wasn't working, she said 'oh, it's the cables. I don't want to mess with them. They confuse me.' I was like 'it's not the cables. You don't have any ink. Can I have my 5 mt back?' I asked that about 5 times and never got it back, so I just gave up. And then they said maybe it would print off if I used color. This one guy wanted to show his computer skills and took the keyboard and mouse away from me to make everything purple. I snatched it back from him and said I could do it myself. Even then it didn't work.
Planning anything here is frustrating about 90 percent of the time. We are figuring that out right now with this competition. People don't seem to realize that the money we are giving to the winning group to start a business is not our own money but the money from PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). One girl came to the house today and talked to Nia. She told Nia that someone had told her that the two American teachers have a lot of money and they are just giving it away. So apparently she thought that if she came to our house and asked, we would give her money. I was working with my REDES girls on making the capulana bags at our house Tuesday and a student told Nia 'wow, Professora Erin has a lot of money. She can buy all those capulanas!' Nia stressed to him that it wasn't my money but money from our organization. If the jump to conclusions mat from Office Space actually existed, people here would be professionals at that game. Example, if you are walking down the street with a male colleague, people automatically assume that you are dating and are doing more than just chatting. It makes me wanna pull my hair out sometimes.
I think we may have finally encountered the crazy man we had been warned about by our predecessors. I was alone at the house last week and this dirty man with no shoes entered the fence without asking first. That's a first clue that he's up to no good. And then when I noticed him and asked him what he wanted, he approached me quickly with a bag of leaves, asking if I wanted to buy them. No one approaches the doorway of a person's house. It just seems threatening to me now and against custom. He kept looking through the doorway into the house. I was pretty happy to have Timba there with me. I went into the house and shut the iron bars and told him I didn't want anything and that he could leave. The man didn't blink either, intensifying his creepy factor. Then, the other day, I was walking through the market with a bag of bread I just bought and he would not leave me alone, following me and begging for bread. He got to be a nuisance so then I turned to him and forcefully said 'DEIXA-ME!' and he left me alone. Yesterday, he was standing at the opening to our fence and I saw him first through my bedroom window. He just stood there, staring. Nia saw him and went out, telling him to go away. All he said was 'give me 10 meticais!' She shut the fence gate on him. If he comes again, I am going to tell him we are going to tell the police. I was talking to our embrigada and she said that he smokes something that makes him crazy. With the last volunteers, he asked for water and when the volunteer went to get it, he snuck in behind her and grabbed something from the house. So weird. I don't think he's harmful, just creepy and insane.
Our FBLM competition is Saturday and we are having the groups present their ideas to three local judges and then we also have performances of a couple music groups and a theater group on AIDS. It should be fun/stressful. We're both pretty excited to see it all through though. And then we are off to Ilha for the night to celebrate a fellow PCV's birthday. I'll post pictures next week of the competition for all to see!
I have found that I have a temper. I've never had any patience to begin with (for example, I was almost born in the car on the way to the hospital) and living here in Mozambique has been a good test of my patience or lack thereof. Nia and I submitted a pedido (a request) to the local government building to use the community stage for our Future Business Leaders competition on Saturday. I went and checked on it because it was taking forever to pass and surprise, surprise, they had lost it. Shocking. To make matters worse, when the man I was talking to called to check on it, he had a question for me and addressed me as 'menina.' Girl. At that point, I was so over talking with him. When we were done talking, I just mumbled 'obrigada!' in a very ungrateful way and traipsed out of the office. Passive aggression is my middle name. That's the second time they have lost a pedido. They lost Nia's when she was asking to paint a mural on a wall in the Vila for her JOMA group. I don't understand what's so difficult there.
I went to the Centro de Recursos (like a public library) to use their computer to print off certificates for the participants in our FBLM competition. I made the certificate and asked the lady for paper to print, giving her 5 mt to pay for it. I went to print it off and it didn't work because there is no ink. I then went and asked the exact same lady I gave the money to to print and she said 'yeah, there's no ink.' Why in the world would you give someone paper to print something off when there is no ink?! And when the other lady working saw that the printer wasn't working, she said 'oh, it's the cables. I don't want to mess with them. They confuse me.' I was like 'it's not the cables. You don't have any ink. Can I have my 5 mt back?' I asked that about 5 times and never got it back, so I just gave up. And then they said maybe it would print off if I used color. This one guy wanted to show his computer skills and took the keyboard and mouse away from me to make everything purple. I snatched it back from him and said I could do it myself. Even then it didn't work.
Planning anything here is frustrating about 90 percent of the time. We are figuring that out right now with this competition. People don't seem to realize that the money we are giving to the winning group to start a business is not our own money but the money from PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). One girl came to the house today and talked to Nia. She told Nia that someone had told her that the two American teachers have a lot of money and they are just giving it away. So apparently she thought that if she came to our house and asked, we would give her money. I was working with my REDES girls on making the capulana bags at our house Tuesday and a student told Nia 'wow, Professora Erin has a lot of money. She can buy all those capulanas!' Nia stressed to him that it wasn't my money but money from our organization. If the jump to conclusions mat from Office Space actually existed, people here would be professionals at that game. Example, if you are walking down the street with a male colleague, people automatically assume that you are dating and are doing more than just chatting. It makes me wanna pull my hair out sometimes.
I think we may have finally encountered the crazy man we had been warned about by our predecessors. I was alone at the house last week and this dirty man with no shoes entered the fence without asking first. That's a first clue that he's up to no good. And then when I noticed him and asked him what he wanted, he approached me quickly with a bag of leaves, asking if I wanted to buy them. No one approaches the doorway of a person's house. It just seems threatening to me now and against custom. He kept looking through the doorway into the house. I was pretty happy to have Timba there with me. I went into the house and shut the iron bars and told him I didn't want anything and that he could leave. The man didn't blink either, intensifying his creepy factor. Then, the other day, I was walking through the market with a bag of bread I just bought and he would not leave me alone, following me and begging for bread. He got to be a nuisance so then I turned to him and forcefully said 'DEIXA-ME!' and he left me alone. Yesterday, he was standing at the opening to our fence and I saw him first through my bedroom window. He just stood there, staring. Nia saw him and went out, telling him to go away. All he said was 'give me 10 meticais!' She shut the fence gate on him. If he comes again, I am going to tell him we are going to tell the police. I was talking to our embrigada and she said that he smokes something that makes him crazy. With the last volunteers, he asked for water and when the volunteer went to get it, he snuck in behind her and grabbed something from the house. So weird. I don't think he's harmful, just creepy and insane.
Our FBLM competition is Saturday and we are having the groups present their ideas to three local judges and then we also have performances of a couple music groups and a theater group on AIDS. It should be fun/stressful. We're both pretty excited to see it all through though. And then we are off to Ilha for the night to celebrate a fellow PCV's birthday. I'll post pictures next week of the competition for all to see!
Friday, August 8, 2008
yes, but a person who hunts hippos?
I have had a bad week of teaching. One of my classes is turning into demons. They are ridiculous! I do this thing where I try to get everyone to talk, in an orderly fashion, in english. Apparently, Oitava 2 is incapable of such lofty expectations. I had people standing up just to say 'When I grow up, I am going to be a such-n-such.' Well, of course everyone was chatting when students were trying to say what they wanted to be. I tried to remedy the problem by throwing kids out left and right. It got so bad that I threatened the falta collectiva...again. So I gave it...again. They are only allowed 7 absences from school in the year in order to remain in school. And then one kid said 'obrigado!' which means 'thank you!' Once I find out what his number is, he's getting a falta vermelha, which is pretty bad. I was ready to cry at that point but I didn't because you can't lose your cool in front of them. And plus that means they've won. So after class, I marched myself over to the pedagogical director's office and did what any self-respecting, frustrated teacher would do. I tattled on them. I talked to a head teacher and am currently arranging for a mozambican teacher to yell at them. They don't behave like this with mozambican teachers and that's what really frustrates me. Then again, they are usually afraid and timid in front of Mozambican teachers. Mozambican teachers, as a result of being overworked and never taught to make innovative lesson plans, usually just come to school with basic lessons that the students just copy and repeat like robots. If I were a student, I feel like I would appreciate a teacher who actually put effort and thought into lessons. Maybe that's just me. But all I know is that I've never wanted to turn around and flick them all off as much as I did yesterday.
I have been teaching them professions lately and that's been a trip. I gave them a list of possible jobs they might be interested in (electrician, teacher, doctor, nurse, driver, store owner, etc.) and then asked if they had any more titles they wanted to know the english name of.
This is how that conversation went.
Them: 'Pescador!'
Me: Fisherman
Them: 'Camponese!'
Me: Farmer
Them: 'Hippo!'
Me: Huh?
Them: Hippo!
Me: (in Portuguese) That's an animal.
Them: (in Portuguese) Yes, but a person who hunts hippos?
Me: (in Portuguese) You don't even have hippos here.
Them: (Shrug)
And then when I was going around the room and asking each student what they wanted to be, one of my students was just like 'CARRRRRRRRRR!' When I asked him to repeat it, once again, he just went 'CARRRRRRRRRR!' Oh, a driver? Yes. And then when I tried to get him to say 'I want to be a driver' I had to go over it syllable by syllable with him to get him to say it. And even then, he whispered. I dunno about that kid. Every time I look at him, he's picking his nose.
This is the board game that I made for students to practice their english. It has a bunch of Monapo landmarks and is appropriately titled English in Monapo. There's the Monapo Rio, the Mosque and Catholic Church, a herd of goats, women carrying a lot of stuff, a kid rolling a wheel and my personal favorite, a stuffed beyond capacity chapa at the chapa stop. The kids really seem to enjoy it, especially since the game pieces are pieces of candy. The winner takes all.
I have been teaching them professions lately and that's been a trip. I gave them a list of possible jobs they might be interested in (electrician, teacher, doctor, nurse, driver, store owner, etc.) and then asked if they had any more titles they wanted to know the english name of.
This is how that conversation went.
Them: 'Pescador!'
Me: Fisherman
Them: 'Camponese!'
Me: Farmer
Them: 'Hippo!'
Me: Huh?
Them: Hippo!
Me: (in Portuguese) That's an animal.
Them: (in Portuguese) Yes, but a person who hunts hippos?
Me: (in Portuguese) You don't even have hippos here.
Them: (Shrug)
And then when I was going around the room and asking each student what they wanted to be, one of my students was just like 'CARRRRRRRRRR!' When I asked him to repeat it, once again, he just went 'CARRRRRRRRRR!' Oh, a driver? Yes. And then when I tried to get him to say 'I want to be a driver' I had to go over it syllable by syllable with him to get him to say it. And even then, he whispered. I dunno about that kid. Every time I look at him, he's picking his nose.
This is the board game that I made for students to practice their english. It has a bunch of Monapo landmarks and is appropriately titled English in Monapo. There's the Monapo Rio, the Mosque and Catholic Church, a herd of goats, women carrying a lot of stuff, a kid rolling a wheel and my personal favorite, a stuffed beyond capacity chapa at the chapa stop. The kids really seem to enjoy it, especially since the game pieces are pieces of candy. The winner takes all.
Here's an example of the bag that my REDES girls are going to start making. We will sell them for 50 MT, which is 2 dollars and then the girls can use 25 MT to buy another meter of material and the other 25 as profit. It sounds like women here will buy these so I'm interested to see where this leads. I am trying to get more and more ideas of things they could make that people here would use and buy.
And I also threw in this random picture of the market in Monapo. It's dead at the time in the photo but come dusk and the fisherman returning from the ocean, you've got yourself one bustling market.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
I've got a fever...and the only cure is more duct tape
I have this problem of Timba always jumping on me and then snagging my clothes with his nails. One would think that I would be an expert at patching holes by now, but no. Instead, I've taken a liking to duct-taping my clothes. I feel that there are two plus-sides to duct-taping clothing. First, it mends the problem (no longer exposing any thigh in a culture where that's unacceptable unless you're a lady of the night) and second, it gives you that ragged, rugged look that screams 'Don't ask me for money! Look, tape is holding my clothes together!' I also don't wash my tennis shoes for the reason that I'll get asked for them and they're brown. Effective, yet brown.
I have been going jogging with Timba every morning lately. Know what's crazier than seeing a white person around here? Seeing a white person running with a dog on a leash. When people see me approaching, they stop what they're doing, face me completely and stare, mouths open. When I see children doing it, I stare back at them with my mouth open and that usually gets them to laugh. I can hear them saying things in Makua but I have my iPod on so it drowns out their comments and laugher; not to mention, my out-of-shape gasping for breath. Mozambicans love it when I punish my dog too. He does his jump and leap against me and I'm trying to break this clothes-destroying habit of his, so I knee him. Hard. He usually falls down in a pile on the ground and learns his lesson for about a minute. I did this yesterday morning and a man was laughing so hard!
This morning, I was walking back toward our house when all of a sudden a gang of dogs from a house came up on Timba and me. They were all growling at him and seemed ready to rumble, drawing a crowd of Mozambicans who stood there, just watching. I picked Timba up so they wouldn't try to fight him and kept walking. At that moment, I found out what was funnier than a white girl running with a dog on a leash. A white girl carrying a dog. They started laughing SO hard. I felt like the Paris Hilton of Monapo. I really want to take the dog to the market one day, wrapped across my back like a small child in a capulana, to see how everyone reacts to it. I already tell students that he's my son.
Students here believe anything you tell them. Nia told a bunch of students Arnold Schwarzenegger is her uncle and is coming to visit next year. Apparently, they got pretty excited. I told some students that Jean Claude Van Damme is my embrigado and it took 'em a minute to process what I'd said. Nia and I got a few students to believe that white people only bathe once a month. They're extremely gullible, which makes it fun to play with their minds sometimes. One student always draws pictures for Nia. He's pretty good at drawing and he came to the house the other day with a picture of me with Timba. He drew me with cut-off jean shorts, a catana (a sharp sword-like knife) and what appeared to be a powdered wig on. All that was missing what a coonskin cap and a burned out trailer behind me. Needless to say, he captured me perfectly.
I have had SO many people ask me lately why I'm not married. They are like 'how old are you?' When I tell them I'm 24, they don't believe me and think I'm older. 'But you are tall!' Tall equals old here. I have no idea where they got that from. I tell them I don't plan on getting married or having kids for a long time and that completely rocks their world. Why would someone DO that? When they ask me why I'm not married, I tell them a husband equals more problems. It's actually partially true if you think about it. I was reading a Reader's Digest my dad sent me and there was a fact in there from the University of Michigan that said that a husband creates seven more hours of housework for a wife each week. No, thank you.
I bought capulanas (the traditional cloth for women in Mozambique) for my REDES girls for a solidarity thing. They were pretty fond of the idea and when we walked out in the community with them on, everyone got really curious about what we were doing. We went to the market to buy more capulanas to start making more things to sell. They're pretty stoked about that idea. There's such a lack of innovation here and I would love to get them thinking of things they could make here that people would be interested in buying - something that doesn't already exist in seven other stores. My dream or big goal is to get them creating items that produce income and something that can provide money for them to continue their education or at least lead good lives. It's so hard to get them to think of new things! That's one of my biggest challenges with teaching and being a leader of this girls' group.
That's it for this week. I'll end on this quote I read in that Reader's Digest my dad sent and it gave me a chuckle.
'At what age do you think they tell a highway it's adopted?' - Zach Galifianakis
I have been going jogging with Timba every morning lately. Know what's crazier than seeing a white person around here? Seeing a white person running with a dog on a leash. When people see me approaching, they stop what they're doing, face me completely and stare, mouths open. When I see children doing it, I stare back at them with my mouth open and that usually gets them to laugh. I can hear them saying things in Makua but I have my iPod on so it drowns out their comments and laugher; not to mention, my out-of-shape gasping for breath. Mozambicans love it when I punish my dog too. He does his jump and leap against me and I'm trying to break this clothes-destroying habit of his, so I knee him. Hard. He usually falls down in a pile on the ground and learns his lesson for about a minute. I did this yesterday morning and a man was laughing so hard!
This morning, I was walking back toward our house when all of a sudden a gang of dogs from a house came up on Timba and me. They were all growling at him and seemed ready to rumble, drawing a crowd of Mozambicans who stood there, just watching. I picked Timba up so they wouldn't try to fight him and kept walking. At that moment, I found out what was funnier than a white girl running with a dog on a leash. A white girl carrying a dog. They started laughing SO hard. I felt like the Paris Hilton of Monapo. I really want to take the dog to the market one day, wrapped across my back like a small child in a capulana, to see how everyone reacts to it. I already tell students that he's my son.
Students here believe anything you tell them. Nia told a bunch of students Arnold Schwarzenegger is her uncle and is coming to visit next year. Apparently, they got pretty excited. I told some students that Jean Claude Van Damme is my embrigado and it took 'em a minute to process what I'd said. Nia and I got a few students to believe that white people only bathe once a month. They're extremely gullible, which makes it fun to play with their minds sometimes. One student always draws pictures for Nia. He's pretty good at drawing and he came to the house the other day with a picture of me with Timba. He drew me with cut-off jean shorts, a catana (a sharp sword-like knife) and what appeared to be a powdered wig on. All that was missing what a coonskin cap and a burned out trailer behind me. Needless to say, he captured me perfectly.
I have had SO many people ask me lately why I'm not married. They are like 'how old are you?' When I tell them I'm 24, they don't believe me and think I'm older. 'But you are tall!' Tall equals old here. I have no idea where they got that from. I tell them I don't plan on getting married or having kids for a long time and that completely rocks their world. Why would someone DO that? When they ask me why I'm not married, I tell them a husband equals more problems. It's actually partially true if you think about it. I was reading a Reader's Digest my dad sent me and there was a fact in there from the University of Michigan that said that a husband creates seven more hours of housework for a wife each week. No, thank you.
I bought capulanas (the traditional cloth for women in Mozambique) for my REDES girls for a solidarity thing. They were pretty fond of the idea and when we walked out in the community with them on, everyone got really curious about what we were doing. We went to the market to buy more capulanas to start making more things to sell. They're pretty stoked about that idea. There's such a lack of innovation here and I would love to get them thinking of things they could make here that people would be interested in buying - something that doesn't already exist in seven other stores. My dream or big goal is to get them creating items that produce income and something that can provide money for them to continue their education or at least lead good lives. It's so hard to get them to think of new things! That's one of my biggest challenges with teaching and being a leader of this girls' group.
That's it for this week. I'll end on this quote I read in that Reader's Digest my dad sent and it gave me a chuckle.
'At what age do you think they tell a highway it's adopted?' - Zach Galifianakis
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
sticky fingers
And so it has begun - the final trimester of the year. I started off on a bit of a sour note with one of my turmas yesterday. I had made these verb strips for them to find the other people in their verb groups and at the end of the activity, four verb strips were missing. We have a problem here of people just taking things because they can. It's not even something that's worth anything - I mean, who wants a piece of paper that just says 'sat' on it? Not I. So after asking and asking and asking for the 4 missing strips of paper, no one was turning it in. It's not that I was upset about losing the paper, but that these kids don't have respect for the material and have no problem with dishonesty. The chefe of the turma started walking around and searching people's bags for the strips but nothing turned up. I even threatened a falta vermelha (the worst kind of indisciplinado there is - even written in, gasp, red pen) and then a falta collectiva (the whole class is considered absent) but no one fessed up. So I gave them a falta collectiva. One girl finally gave up a verb strip. I was just going to let it slide without a fuss but then I saw her laughing about it. That's when I told her to get out, throwing her notebooks out the door in front of her. It's so frustrating. I was talking to students about it and I told them that if one person takes things that aren't theirs, they are slowing the development and achievements of other people as well. That turma has a lesson on corruption coming their way that involves beans.
Otherwise, my time in Maputo was just what I needed. Maputo was brilliant. I got to eat a lot of junk food and watch a movie in a theater. My portuguese is suffering as a result now. I basically only spoke in english for an entire week, being around only americans. So now I stumble when I talk and get weird looks from my students. Oh well. It'll come back around.
I got a bunch of ideas for my REDES group during the meeting. We are going to learn how to open a bank account this next week. I'm also trying to organize for a local female doctor to come to talk to them and possibly do some HIV testing. I'm also excited to start planning the northern regional conference for next April. I think I may already have one facilitator lined up and a possible counterpart for here in Monapo. She's a primary school teacher with an embroidering group and it'd be a good way to get my older girls working with younger girls. For the conference, it'd be wonderful to find a woman who works at the university to come and talk to the girls about their options. This will require some more investigation on my part too. So many possibilities!
Otherwise, my time in Maputo was just what I needed. Maputo was brilliant. I got to eat a lot of junk food and watch a movie in a theater. My portuguese is suffering as a result now. I basically only spoke in english for an entire week, being around only americans. So now I stumble when I talk and get weird looks from my students. Oh well. It'll come back around.
I got a bunch of ideas for my REDES group during the meeting. We are going to learn how to open a bank account this next week. I'm also trying to organize for a local female doctor to come to talk to them and possibly do some HIV testing. I'm also excited to start planning the northern regional conference for next April. I think I may already have one facilitator lined up and a possible counterpart for here in Monapo. She's a primary school teacher with an embroidering group and it'd be a good way to get my older girls working with younger girls. For the conference, it'd be wonderful to find a woman who works at the university to come and talk to the girls about their options. This will require some more investigation on my part too. So many possibilities!
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