business, books and teeter totters

So it's not cancer, just a hyperactive thyroid. I have to start taking medication of some kind and possibly get flown to South Africa at some point but it's not an urgent health emergency. I'm happy too because it sounds like I get to head back up north on Tuesday, officially making my stay in Maputo two and a half weeks. I missed the first ACS too, the exam that teachers make for their students. I feel like my students are going to be so far behind but I'll just start from scratch with them. I'm excited to jump back into my job. I have spent the last week or so with another volunteer from Nampula who showed me several project proposals for grant money for school projects and I've gotten some great ideas for the school library, possibly a mural, maybe playground revamping and she also has this wonderful project called FBLM (Future Business Leaders of Mozambique).

I can't even begin to sing the praises of the FBLM project she set up. The first year she did this was last year. She had classes and her students had written about what they wanted to be when they grew up and many of them wrote "I won't be anything but a poor farmer because that is what my father is." So she had a talk with them on how they thought they could change it and that was how FBLM was born. She set it up into a competition with 10 groups, each group having to come up with a feasible business plan for their community. They had to think up ideas of what could create income, for example a public swimming pool so people don't get injured/killed by crocodiles in the river, a copy shop, an ice cream shop, etc. Each week, Sarah would have local business leaders come in and give talks about different aspects of business - like community demographics or the origin of their business and what inspired them to do what they do. When the competition finally came around, the groups had to present their idea to a judging panel of local business leaders and the business leaders picked the winner and the prize money was used to manage the business. And now, that copy shop is a full-fledged business, doing really well, with the students from that group sending their brothers and sisters to school. I am so impressed by this project because of the long-lasting effects even after the volunteer has returned to the states. It's spreading around the province too, with possibly four or five regions becoming involved this year - each region with it's own competition - and a business conference for the students possibly in Nampula. I would love to jump into this project when I get back up north and I think Nia is interested too.

And then I want to look into buying more books and getting more bookshelves made for the library at the school. It's such a thrown-together library. All the books are textbooks that are either stolen by students (one students got expelled last year for stealing an English textbook and not fessing up right away) or are books students don't care about. I think it would be great to get books for the students so that they could learn the ways to find information on their own, like encyclopedias...or even dictionaries, which are scarce beyond belief. And if you have a local person build more bookshelves for the library, that is putting money back into the community as well. The library is nothing like that in American schools. There are no fiction and non-fiction books for casual reading or school reports and I think their check-out system needs to be redone so that the likelihood of getting books stolen or ruined is severely decreased.

The playground in Monapo is crazy. There is a slide that kids are always on but at the bottom is a pile of trash/I don't wanna know what. There is a jungle gym that is fully functioning but maybe we could get teeter totters and swings installed as well. There used to be swings but I can believe that they got worn out pretty easily by all the children who would like to play on them. The possibilities are endless with that. If they had a clean place to play, kids would stay out of trouble and have a nice place to hang out with their friends.

My mind is full of ideas of what we can do in our villa right now.