Back in the Habit

My desk - where all the magic happens.

Today was the first day of school in the high school. The kids in first year all showed up in their new uniforms, looking slightly nervous. They set up the gym, which takes a looong time. They put down a floor covering so that the chairs don't mark the floors, set up chairs and actually physically measure the distance between chairs and their angles, put up red and white striped cloth around the gym (so it looks like an old-fashioned election day), and bring out the bonsai tree. It looks great but it's also a lot of work for a short ceremony. Everyone works really well together though. It was fun to see a bunch of mothers decked out in their kimonos. I also had fun chatting with the kids about their spring vacation hair cuts. Turns out whenever you mention the word "bald" (hage) in Japanese, students find it hysterical.

My Favorite Things

I am going to go all Oprah about my favorite things to do in Japan - but I'm sorry, no one is getting new cars, espresso machines or comfortable slippers. What do I do in my free time in Ojika? I do a lot of reading and writing (no arithmetic, I hate math), and I like to go for walks around the island.


I am lost without my Kindle. I take it everywhere I go and when I have downtime, I just pull it out and read. I am like a 90-year old senior citizen, amazed by technology. It's just shockingly wonderful that I can carry 100 books in something the size of one.


I know that some people say that journaling is for 12-year old girls, but I have kept a journal religiously since I left university. These are all the journals that I have filled up since coming to Japan. It's a great stress-reliever and it's great looking back at the stories and my embarassing immaturity in the past.





I have never been a fan of manga or comics or anything of that sort. It probably has to do with the fact that I worked at a bookstore for about two and a half years and people would always come and sprawl across the floor in the middle of that section to read the books rather than buying them, blocking my path. But I bought this compendium of the Walking Dead comic book series and it's actually quite good, although morbid and depressing enough that I have only made it about halfway through so far. For those of you who don't know Walking Dead, it's about a zombie apocalypse and people trying to survive. Sometimes I just need to put it down and go watch a panda sneeze on Youtube to add some levity to my day. I doubt I will ever actually get into reading comics but my students in Japan LOVE comics and manga.



I also go for walks around the island. I have enjoyed exploring all the roads and walking past all the rice paddies and farms. There was a frightening encounter with an enormous roaming cow on one part of the island. We just stood there and stared at each other for a few seconds while I tried to remember if cows ever charge. I am not a farm girl. But almost anywhere you go in Ojika, you can find a great view of the sea.



And here is just a random picture of a gift a friend gave me for my birthday back in February. It's a model Japanese restaurant. She got it as a kit and she put it together piece by little piece. Super kawaii!

Like a Rabbit on a Leash

'Tis the season for cherry blossoms. It's called Hanami in Japan, which basically translates to "sit under a bunch of trees and eat a picnic." If you go to the big parks, you will see large groups of friends and families bbq-ing together and just enjoy being outside, camped out under the pretty trees.



In honor of Easter, it seems fitting to post that while we were walking around, we saw a couple with a rabbit on a harness leash.



We thought a paddleboat would be a fun activity.



The fun ended when the paddleboat jammed and we could no longer peddle. We had to naturally crash-land into the "coast" on the lake and crawl ashore (while a really confused couple secured the swan paddleboat for us). I am pretty sure that the people relaxing by the water thought we didn't understand how to operate a paddleboat. It was a dramatic rescue that resulted in us sitting with the boat, like a rabbit on a leash, until the paddleboat operators came and hauled it away.

Anthony Bourdain goes to Mozambique!

So I am really excited to watch the No Reservations episode on the Travel Channel! On Monday, April 9th, they are showing Mozambique and Mozambican food! It looks like he goes to Maputo and the fish market there, Beira and Nampula. In this video, he is on Ilha de Mocambique, which was close to where I lived in Nampula. Nampula, represent!

A Bad Back

So a couple of weeks ago, I had a great Saturday. I got so much accomplished with cleaning and laundry. I went to bed feeling smug and satisfied with my homemaker self. However, it was when I woke up on Sunday, that all of my satisfaction came crashing down. I couldn't move. Any time I tried to move to get up off my bed, I was met with tear-inducing pain. In the past, I have had some back pains as a result of sleeping on the floor, where most Japanese beds are. However, this time, as a result of sleeping on my thin futon mattress on the ground and sleeping in contorted positions that would impress the cast of Cirque du Soleil, I had really done it this time. My back is no longer as springy and agile as it used to be.

My mind immediately rushed back to when I visited the doctor before coming to Japan and had to get a chest x-ray that was necessary for medical clearance for entrance into my job. The doctor looked at my spine and said that I had the spine of a 40-year old woman, not a 26-year old. I blasted myself for not having consumed that bottle of vitamins the size of horse pills. I eventually rolled over and rocked myself until I staggered into a semi-straight standing position. Panicked, I did what any normal 28-year old woman would do. I called my mommy and daddy. They gave advice to put some heat on it. Since I didn't have any heating pads, my mom asked if I had any rice and to seal the uncooked rice in a cloth and microwave it for a minute or two and place it against my back. It totally does the trick, by the way. I tried explaining this makeshift heating pad to the school nurse and her facial expression was a mixture of horror and polite confusion.

I eventually went to the hospital and had them check it out. I got medication but it was only for 30 hours and I knew it was something that would just need to work itself out. I ended up being floor-ridden for about a week and that was no fun. You would think that endless hours of watching every old TV show and movie would be exciting (hello Mighty Ducks, the Cosby Show and Polly (the 1989 film) - I was on a Keisha Knight-Pulliam bender). But I can tell you that it is not. I have always really liked my coworkers but they were especially kind during that week. I am a pretty lucky gal and I appreciated their help. They dropped by with food, did a pharmacy run for me and checked in on me. I am extremely fortunate to work with such wonderful, kind people.

Fun, Germs and Studying Zeal

Everyone on the island seems to have the flu so the face masks are out in full force. I don't wear one because I like to think that since everyone else is wearing one, that frees up all the clean air for me. Flawed, I know. This line of thinking has worked out so far (find me a piece of wood to knock on, stat!). But I can't help but recoil every time I am within a ten foot radius of a child who sneezes or coughs without covering their mouths and then I have to sing the "Hello Song" with them. The "Hello Song" consists of marching around the room with about 12 first-graders and singing/yelling "Hello, hello, hello, what's your name? Hello, hello, hello!" At this point, you have to find the nearest person and say "My name is Ayami. My name is Erin." And then you shake hands as the music goes "hello, hello, hello" and you find your next partner/flu victim. In the last class, I told them that we were going to play a fun game where we pretend to shake hands but do not touch each other. Also, at the end of class, they all want to give me high fives. Afterward, I race to the antibacterial hand spray and practically hold it up in the air to shower under it to decontaminate, like some horrible lab experiment gone wrong.

With the high school students, it is just more difficult to understand them with a mask covering their mouths. A lot of the students wear masks as a form of prevention. It seems like the third year students, who are in the midst of heavy studying for university exams, are in isolation in a room in a separate wing of the school. I am sure that it's a very crazy time for them with exams. In Japan, the system for graduating students is much different than the system for American kids. American kids apply to three or four universities and then when they go to university, they have a vague idea of what they want to do and then actually decide their sophomore year. In Japan, they begin asking what you want to do with your life when you are in seventh grade and by the time you enter high school, you must know whether you want to go to university or not. If you decide to go, you enter the "alpha" class, which has a more rigorous study schedule than the "beta" class. And you cannot change your mind once you enter the "beta" class. You cannot take the exams for universities. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Their choices at 16 years of age are all a bit too permanent for my taste.

Parado

Visiting my old students in Mozambique during this last holiday season really opened my eyes more than ever to the wonderful opportunities I have had because I was born in the United States. My students are entering 12th grade this year and they are already thinking of what they will be able to do once they graduate from school. They all have dreams of becoming doctors, nurses, engineers or activists, but the question that constantly lingers in their minds is whether they and their families will be able to afford to go to university or a technical school. Some people say that this is the problem everywhere. But it is much worse and a much more complicated problem in Mozambique, where there are few jobs for high school graduates, few scholarships properly distributed and no such thing as a student loan.

Although many students have difficult stories and circumstances, one student really has my attention. Fabião is currently 20 years old and just graduated from high school in Monapo, the town in Nampula where I was a Peace Corps volunteer from 2008-2009. My roommate was his teacher but I grew close to him as he would come over to practice using my computer. The oldest of six siblings, Fabião is soft-spoken and always has a quick smile. I don’t think he has a mean bone in his body. He and his family are humble and kind.

In the two years after I left Monapo, his older brother passed away and as the next oldest son, he began working to help support his large family. During the 12th grade, he switched courses so that he could study at night. Studying at night in Mozambique isn’t always easy, because often, the level of instruction falls because teachers and students often don’t show up for classes. While going to school at night, he began working at a banana farm some 20 km away from Monapo during the day. Every morning, he woke up at 3:30 and got on a company truck to go collect bananas in the hot sun for 11-12 hours. He returned home at around 4 or 5 pm to bathe and have a short rest before going to school from 6:30 until 11:00 pm. After school, he would return home to get a little sleep before having to wake up early again to repeat the same process the next day.

He has graduated now, despite the struggle that stood in his way for getting his high school education, but like most others in town, he does not have the money or the opportunities to go to school. So he continues to work at the banana farm, collecting bananas every day and hoping to save enough money to one day be able to go to school in the city to study English. If he were to go to school, he would also leave Monapo, leaving his family without the income from his job on the banana farm.

Fabião is kind and intelligent and I have been thinking about him a lot. He deserves better opportunities than what he has in front of him, as do so many of our old students who have graduated from Monapo but now remain “parado” - stopped. He and the others students are why I want to go into development and education as a career. Time and time again, visiting with old students, the frustration of limited opportunities and resources was evident. Only a select few with money and connections are able to study when there is so much intelligence, creativity and potential in these young people.