You get off the train after a long journey and turn around to watch it slowly disappear along the tracks. A cold breeze finds its way through your bundled clothing and you think to yourself, “now what?” Ok… it was three planes and a bus that brought me home from Mozambique at the end of my service last month, but I found the train metaphor more powerful. And that’s basically how I felt. Now that the holidays are over and I’m staying in one place for a while, my brain isn’t spinning quite so fast and I’m trying to piece together what the last two years meant. I can feel that I’m the same person, but I’d like to think that I’ve refined my values, grown in maturity and gained a broad new perspective. The other day I read a cheesy article in a yoga magazine that really stuck with me. It said that your inner self is constant and perfect, like a diamond, and that the diamond gets dirty and obscured by bad habits, social conditioning and misconceptions. So… perhaps in all of our efforts to better ourselves, what we’re really doing is shining up that diamond that has been there all along and letting our true selves shine. The challenge now is not to slip back into the old habits and comfortable ignorance that tend to accompany a secure, middle-class lifestyle. There are plenty of temptations, plenty of excuses. It’s hard work to maintain that objective point of view when you’re back in your hometown. Sometimes I feel like the last two years were a dream that I just woke up from. I recall feeling the inverse while I was overseas, that Mozambique was home and the United States was just a dream. It’s like the two worlds are so completely different that they can’t coexist in my mind. One thing that makes me a bit uncomfortable is the creeping dissatisfaction that started to accompany the end of my service. I suppose you could call it “burnout.” I know that I did my best, but I couldn’t help feeling frustrated, tired and eager to go home. Still, I left Mozambique on a good note, with friendly goodbyes and fond memories, and overall I’m proud of my accomplishments. As the train recedes into the distance, the weariness begins to dissipate and is replaced by a calm satisfaction. I’m ready to close that chapter of my life and begin the next, retaining all the valuable lessons that I learned.

A while ago, I started writing down two lists: things I miss about home and things I will miss about Mozambique. Thought you might find them interesting!

Things I will miss about Mozambique:

1. My Peace Corps friends

2. My Mozambican friends and neighbors

3. The open friendliness of strangers

4. People saying “hi” to you everywhere you go

5. My students, both the sweet ones and the naughty ones

6. The feeling of closeness in my neighborhood (everyone knows each other)

7. Unrelated people calling you “daughter,” “sister,” “mother,” etc…

8. Baby goats frolicking in my front yard

9. Showing up unannounced at someone’s home and feeling welcomed

10. The Limpopo River and “Holly the Hippo”

11. Fruit trees growing everywhere: mangos, tangerines, avocados, bananas, cashews…

12. Pristine, undeveloped beaches

13. Speaking Portuguese

14. Awesome 2nd hand clothes shopping in the market

15. My kitty, Khanimambo

16. My own personal Peace Corps doctor on call with free medical treatment

17. The slow, simple pace of life

18. The “forgive and forget” mentality (i.e. nobody holds a grudge)

19. Strangers going out of their way to help you (e.g. giving you a ride, carrying your groceries, fixing your bicycle, walking you to your destination…)

20. Getting excited about showers and parmesan cheese

21. Blunt, unapologetic honesty

22. Coconuts

Things I miss about home:

1. My family and friends

2. Safe, reliable transportation/driving a car

3. Grocery stores

4. Blending into the crowd and feeling anonymous

5. Fitting in, understanding the culture

6. Reliable, high speed internet

7. Coffee shops, good restaurants

8. Customer service

9. Mountains and forests

10. Winter, spring, summer and fall

11. Hiking, rock climbing, backpacking and other outdoor sports

12. Set prices on most items (i.e. no haggling)

13. Going out at night/after dark

14. Men being respectful of women (i.e. no catcalls or inappropriate proposals)

15. Toiletries: face wash, hair products, etc…

16. Being healthy without daily malaria prophylaxis

17. Climate-controlled buildings and vehicles (heat and air conditioning)

18. Swimming in fresh water without the fear of crocodiles or tropical diseases

19. Drinking from the tap

20. Discretion and politeness

21. Timeliness, keeping appointments

22. Feeling busy, always having things to do

23. Schedules

I was looking at the settings on my blog and I changed them so that you don't have to be a registered user to post a comment.

So now anyone can comment on a blog post. I'm looking forward to seeing your comments!

I was sitting in a bare room with tables and chairs, listening to my ipod and slogging through the unpleasant task of grading national exams, when I was yanked into a conversation among several male professors. “Do you do Geração Biz?” asked one teacher, probably in his thirties. “No, but I’m familiar with the group,” I replied. “Do you know what they do?” he asked. “Yes, they promote peer education about HIV/AIDS and other health-related topics in schools,” I said. “I think it’s terrible!” he exclaimed. I was completely caught off guard by his response. Up to this point, the only criticism I had heard about Geração Biz was that there weren’t enough active groups in Mozambican schools. Of course, I didn’t need to ask him to explain himself since he immediately began ranting about his frustrations. The other professors, also middle-aged males, chimed in or took the platform from time to time. Feeling like the accused and unable to get a word in edgewise, I just sat and listened. The whole “conversation” lasted the better part of an hour. The crux of their argument was that teaching sex education to students, particularly young girls, was promoting promiscuity. The idea is that if you teach kids how to have safe sex, you’re telling them that it’s OK for them to do it. We’ve all heard the same argument in the United States many times. It’s one of the driving forces behind “abstinence-only” education and even such stupidity as suggesting that the HPV vaccine should not be approved because it protects young girls from sexually transmitted infections. I sighed over the ignorance of it all. But the teachers made a second point that actually made sense. They accused “us,” as in all foreign influence in Mozambique, of forcing modern ideas on a country that wasn’t ready for them. After all, Mozambique as a nation is very young. It only achieved independence in 1975 and then spent 17 years embroiled in civil war. It hasn’t had time to modernize and even today the prerequisites for a social movement, primarily education and access to information, are unavailable to a large segment of the population. So, how can we expect Mozambicans to embrace the types of social change that took decades to implement in our own country? One might counter that Mozambicans write their own laws, so then are foreigners really at fault? I would argue that we are. Foreign aid accounts for 50% of the Mozambican government’s budget. As a consequence, the government adopts laws and policies that mirror those of donor countries. The last thing Mozambique wants is to offend a country like the United States that dangles foreign aid like a carrot that it can yank away at any time. I’m reminded of a talk that the former American ambassador gave to our group during training. It was immediately after the Mozambican elections and he was not at all pleased. He spoke frankly with us and said that the US would threaten to remove aid if the government continued to permit election fraud and block rival parties. Personally, I felt that the actions of the Mozambican government during the election were wrong, but talking to Mozambicans I never once heard anyone claim that the system was undemocratic. In fact, nobody cared at all. So, my question is not whether sex education or women’s rights or democracy or any of the other causes that foreign donors champion are good or important. My question is: where is the momentum for these causes is coming from? When I talk to Mozambicans, many of them seem either to passively accept or to actively resist those causes. Young people support the causes more than older people, but in general I don’t see the same undercurrent of activism and awareness that usually precipitates social change. Looking back at milestones of American history - women’s liberation, the civil rights movement, the PRIDE movement - all of our social revolutions came out of a great struggle that took decades of activism and education. We’re still fighting these battles today. The difference is that the achievements we’ve made were the result of will of the American people. Our victories, therefore, are powerful because they are our own. In Mozambique, the process is reversed. A change is imposed on the government and it slowly trickles down to the people. In most places, but especially in rural villages, tradition and customs are far more powerful influences on people’s behavior than anything the government does. As a result, conflicts arise any time government changes are enforced at the local level. As a public school teacher, I essentially work in a government institution and I have experienced this disconnect first hand. The curricula include topics like sex education, evolution and gender equality that seem to be somebody else's idea that the teachers are forced to follow. So… in our impatience to liberate the oppressed and modernize thinking in Mozambique are we actually stymying their natural development? By enforcing social change from the top down are we preempting grassroots movements that haven’t had a chance to gain their own momentum? My last example is an experience I had at the regional REDES conference earlier this month. For one of the sessions, two nurses came in to teach the girls about the female reproductive system and give them a condom demonstration. Our Mozambican facilitators took it upon themselves to remove the youngest girls from the audience and send them outside. This was a surprise to several Peace Corps volunteers who, infuriated, sent the girls back into the room. An argument resulted between some very opinionated people that later required damage control. The Mozambicans who removed the young girls (aged 11-13) argued that they weren’t ready to see a penis and would be traumatized. They also repeated the claim that teaching sex education to young girls promotes promiscuity. The Peace Corps volunteers argued that 12-year-old girls were getting pregnant in our communities and needed the information. No consensus was reached. Personally, I disagree with the Mozambican women’s claims but I also disagree with the reaction of the volunteers. After all, REDES is a Mozambican organization. Granted, much of our funding comes from the United States government, but I think it’s wrong to pick and choose when we want to listen to our Mozambican counterparts. If they’re not ready to accept change, do we really have the right to force it on them? And if we do, will it have the desired effect?

Friday morning my living room was covered in scraps of paper and cardboard as three students sat on the floor finalizing their posters for the provincial science fair. The days before had involved many hours of revising written reports, making models and finding big cardboard boxes for displays. By Friday afternoon everything was ready and we packed into a chapa and headed an hour away to the school that was hosting the fair. There, we met students and teachers from all participating schools in Gaza province. There were forty projects in total and as many teachers and visitors. I was quite pleased to find that a majority of the teachers were, in fact, Mozambican. There were relatively few Peace Corps Volunteers. Those of us who were present tried to keep to the background, though PCV’s were responsible for most of the logistics. By and large I was impressed with the knowledge and creativity of the students. Projects ranged from medicinal uses of the “miracle tree” Moringa olifera to circuitry to seat belts. Our three students, Alexandre, Ercília and Dércio, did an excellent job. They had rehearsed their explanations ahead of time and, though they were nervous, they all performed well. I had also worked with Ernesto, a student at another secondary school in our town, and I was happy to see him win a special prize for the best health-related project. He investigated natural remedies for stomach problems using a native vine (a picture of his project will be uploaded later). We spent two nights and one full day at the school. There were plenty of activities going on. Population Services International set up tents and offered confidential HIV testing. Geração Biz, a Mozambican peer education group, facilitated sessions about HIV/AIDS and other issues. One of my male students performed a great poetry piece about teenage pregnancy. Other PCV’s and I wrote and read a poem about gender equality. Of course, like with every Mozambican event, there was dancing. I somehow escaped being dragged into the dance contest but my female student won a prize for the best marrabenta. Aderito, one of my two counterparts from the agrarian school, came to see the fair and was very impressed. We brought a T-shirt back for my other counterpart, Clara. They are both pretty pumped about continuing science fair next year so I’m hopeful this great program will continue after I leave.

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Setting up before the guests arrive

Alexandre: "Effect of Light on Seed Germination"

Ercilia: "Methods of Soil Conservation"

Dercio: "Effect of Salinity on the Density of Water"

Ercilia, Ernesto, Alexandre and Dercio (front) with their certificates

Dercio, Alexandre, Me, Ercilia, Ernesto and Aderito

A cool project conducting electricity through cassava roots

A homemade electric saw using a fan motor

Geração Biz demonstration of a female condom

"Use a condom!"

You’re sitting in class, staring into space. The teacher is trying really hard to keep your attention but it’s just so confusing! You raise your hand to read off the board but as soon as you stand up you’re sorry you did. You have to sound out each word as you read it, stuttering on the first syllable. Your classmates start yelling the words at you and saying you can’t read. The teacher tells them to be quiet but now you’re sweating. Finally you make it through the sentence but you have no idea what it means. You sit down and start copying into your notebook. You’re 16 but you still have to concentrate on forming the letters. A lot of what you write is spelled wrong and you never go back to read it because it doesn’t make sense. When the teacher gives you homework, you copy from the smart kids because you can’t do it on your own. You don’t know why you passed all the other grades. Some of your friends slept with teachers but you never did. Somehow you always got a grade just high enough to pass. You live far away but your parents arranged for you to live with a family near the school. You’re treated like a maid and have to do the cooking and cleaning and babysitting. It’s tough having so many chores and studying at the same time but you do your best. Sometimes you have to leave extra help sessions early to go cook dinner or take care of the kids and there’s not much time for homework or studying. Teacher Clancy encouraged everyone to get a 14 or higher (out of 20) in the class. That’s the minimum grade to be exempt from the national exam. A lot of kids got to skip the national exam but you barely passed the class. Not surprisingly you failed the first round of national exams. It was so hard it seems impossible that you’ll pass the second round. You’ve been praying every night for a miracle. You go to extra help sessions every day. You’re so nervous that you don’t sleep well anymore. If you fail, your parents might make take you out of school. What would you do then? This is an example of the struggle that many of my students are facing. When I get frustrated I try to look at things through their eyes. Their persistence in the face of such obstacles is amazing. It breaks my heart that many of them will fail but I cannot allow a student to pass if he or she can barely read and write, has no grasp of problem solving or even basic mathematics, and, as a result, is unable to learn the core concepts of Biology and Chemistry. What pains me even more is knowing that the administration will change my students’ grades to allow them to pass anyway. I was beginning to see progress in my toughest students. I believe that if they repeat the grade they might have a chance to catch up and gain the confidence and basic skills they need to succeed. Instead, they will move onto the next grade unprepared, forced to sit through classes they don’t understand, feeling helpless and stupid. Today I graded the second round of national Chemistry exams. Three out of thirteen passed. The other teachers I was working with told me that we’d have to “help out” the other students by giving them extra points. I explained that giving them points wasn’t helping them. They really needed to repeat the grade. They agreed with me that artificially passing students was just perpetuating the problem. Those students probably never should have passed 5th, 6th and 7th grades and now they’re coming to our school lacking the prerequisite knowledge. The curriculum itself is also a huge problem. It combines 8th, 9th and 10th grade material into one intensive year. The result is an accelerated course that looks more like college than 8th grade. It is impossible to teach that much information even to well-prepared students. Some teachers compromise by “presenting” the material in a massive and incomprehensible flood of information. It’s rather like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping some of it sticks. I chose the alternate route of teaching only a fraction of the material in the curriculum but ensuring that most of my students actually learn it. I made my tests fair enough that a student who learned what I wanted him to learn could easily get a good grade. The end result was that students with a good basic understanding of Chemistry and Biology passed my course with a high grade and were exempt from the national exam. Those who struggled and lacked basic knowledge and skills were forced to take it. The national exam is horrible. If I were a kid faced with that exam I’d be crying every night. It tests the most minute details of an insanely over-packed curriculum. The good news for the students is that they only need an 8 out of 20 to pass. The bad news is that it’s so ridiculously hard that most of them couldn’t get above a 6. What happens next? The administration of the school is faced with demands from the ministry of education. All that matters is statistics and if the minimum number of students doesn’t pass then ministry officials will conduct an investigation (i.e. an inquisition). When the students fail, the teachers are blamed. I experienced this firsthand after my students failed the first round of exams. I was called into a room with exam monitors who asked me to explain myself. I talked about the root challenges with underprepared students and an over-packed curriculum but they didn’t want to hear it. The conversation shifted to “what did you do wrong as a teacher that caused your students to fail?” You can imagine how angry and frustrated I felt. I have the luxury of being a volunteer but other teachers have their jobs on the line. The only course of action they see is to boost grades. This was explained to me after I finished grading the Chemistry exams. The reality is that the administration and teachers are just as frustrated with the system as I am. They don’t want to change grades, but the hierarchy is so immutable and the bureaucracy so thick that they are essentially voiceless against decisions made from above. I acknowledge that the same problem exists in American schools. There are students in our own country who graduate practically illiterate. Still, I count myself extremely lucky to have been educated in the USA. I feel like most of my teachers did their best to help me learn, my parents supported me throughout and the education system, for all its flaws, was a heck of a lot better than Mozambique!

We recently hosted a science fair here at the Agrarian School. The fair itself lasted an afternoon but it was two months in the making. We met with interested students twice a week, teaching them the scientific method, helping them plan and execute their projects and then write up their reports. Students don't often get a chance to think for themselves as most of their schooling consists of rote memorization. Science Fair was a unique opportunity that encouraged curiosity, creativity and independent learning. There was no direct funding for science fair and students had to be resourceful. One student used cell phone batteries to power his circuit board. Another disassembled old phone chargers to get LED light bulbs. Others used bottles, bits of styrofoam, wood and avocado pits rescued out of the trash. Display boards were made with cardboard boxes donated by local vendors. The making of the display boards was the biggest challenge. We spent two long nights in the computer lab while the students chicken-pecked at the keyboard. They learned how to format with Microsoft Word and some of them made graphs with Microsoft Excel. All of the computers were virus-ridden and I couldn't save their projects on a flash drive or a disk so we had to carry the school's single printer from computer to computer and print out each project separately. One computer wouldn't accept the printer at all and I had to re-type the kid's entire project onto another computer. There was a lot of last-minute craziness (two students started their projects the day before the fair), but it all worked out. Only two of the eight judges we invited showed up but we found substitutes at the last minute. Overall it was a success and I appreciated the opportunity to work closely with some bright and motivated students. I also had a great counterpart, Clara. She's one of the two female Mozambican teachers at our school and has become a great friend. Below are some pictures and brief descriptions of the projects.Students preparing their projects

Samuel - Global Warming: a demonstration of the greenhouse effect.

Jorge - Conductivity of various substances.

Ester - Which foods attract more ants?

Helio - Which electrical circuit is more efficient: parallel or continuous?

Geno - The response of rocks when heated by fire

Alexandre - Comparison between corn and been seedlings grown in the light and the dark.

Lino - Comparison of the permeability of different types of soils.

Dercio - Changes in buoyancy with changes in the salinity of water.

Mastel - Growth of been seedlings in soils fertilized with cow and chicken manures.

People checking out the displays

Lino explaining his project

Judges discussing and selecting winners

Clara and me with the two winners: Dercio and Alexandre

The whole gang

The provincial science fair is in July and we'll be taking the two winners plus two female students. Ester was the only girl who actually participated in the local fair. Another female student prepared a project but her guardians prevented her from coming at the last minute. I'm hoping we can convince them to let her come to the provincial fair.

One of our judges was a science teacher from another secondary school nearby and he borrowed the manual so he can start a science fair of his own. Ours was just one of many science fairs all over Mozambique. Winners of the local fairs go on to provincial fairs and those winners go on to a national fair. Last year the winners of the national fair received netbook computers!

Warning, this post is not for the faint of heart! Mom, maybe you should skip this one.

Others of you have been waiting for photos like this. A boa constrictor was caught in a stand of bamboo about 25 yards from our house. One of the professors killed it with a shovel to the head. I think it was living off of the chickens that peck around in the garbage.

The students gutted the snake and dried the meat. The snake skin is on display and the dried meat will be sold for a good price to traditional healers.

It's a beautiful animal, but I don't think I could have convinced my neighbors to let a giant snake live next door...

Mulungo! Chilunguane!White! I used to bristle when I heard these things. I used to be angry. Now I sigh and look inward for strength and try to respond with a smile. I say to myself, “they are just ignorant. They don’t realize how much this hurts me. It’s just a word anyway. I am white, look at me. There’s no denying I’m different. But why do they feel the need to shout it at me?” Sometimes I just let it slide. Other times I try to open up a dialog, use it as an opportunity for cultural learning. I say, “I’m not ‘mulungo.’ I’m ‘Professora Clancy.’ I am a teacher here. Please treat me with respect.” Sometimes it even happens in my own classroom. There are three students who have the bad habit of chattering about me when I turn to the board, using the terms “mulungo” or “white.” (The word “white” is spoken in English as a whining, drawn out syllable that is incredibly irritating.) Of course I confront them about it. I tell them “words are like rocks. They hurt when you throw them around.” I remind them that in my classroom we show respect for each other. But it still happens. I gave a kid a disciplinary mark yesterday. The bell rang and I was writing the last homework question on the board when he shouted “Tchau mulungo!” (“Bye white person!”). Whenever I walk out my front door I can count on being the center of attention. People stare at me. Sometimes I feel like a celebrity. Other times I feel like there’s a horn growing out of my forehead. Sometimes people wave “hello.” Other times they wave like they’re waving at a circus freak. They get at thrill when I wave back, giggling and hiding behind each other. Children are the most shameless. I say, “they’re just kids, they don’t know any better,” but it is still humiliating. They shout “mulungo!” and chilunguane!” over and over at the top of their lungs. They say “howareyouuuuu?” and squeal when you respond. When you run into a group of them on their way home from school, they crowd around you, daring each other to go up and touch you. Teenagers make me angry. They are old enough to know better and they’re not cute anymore. I have teenagers stick their face in front of mine and shout “mulungo!” as they walk by. Last week I was running over the bridge towards a group of girls. One of them pointed at me and said, in Changana, “African girls are pretty. White girls are ugly!” I stopped them right there and said, “I understand you and I don’t like what you said about me.” “I said you were pretty,” she said. “Wahemba! You are lying!” I responded. The girls wailed in laughter, discovering that I could understand and respond in Changana. There was no apology, no remorse. No one ever says “sorry” when confronted. What bothers me about the children and teenagers is that they would never dare to do anything like that to an adult Mozambican. They would be beaten. Children and young people are quiet, obedient and respectful to their elders. They don’t see me as an adult. They don’t even see me as a human being. I’m like another species, an animal oddity that doesn’t need to be treated with respect or even humanity. All of this is tolerable for a while, but after months and months of constant abuse you get tired of just taking it on the chin. You get tired of being the bigger person, being culturally understanding, accepting the ignorance of other people. You get tired of trying to bridge the gap and show people that you’re more than the color of your skin. It’s exhausting and draining. I understand why discrimination breeds hate. When the battle of educating and tolerating has worn you out, you are left resentful and defeated. When I start to feel that way I focus on my Mozambican friends, the people who see past my skin color, who treat me like a person. I have the luxury of living in a walled school compound, in a neighborhood of professors. I feel safe and accepted here. Without this escape I wouldn’t be able to recharge. Without this sanctuary, I might become bitter. Another Moz volunteer said something to the effect of, “to be white in the United States is to not think about it.” I miss not thinking about it. Sometimes I find peace in remembering what it’s like to blend in. I think about walking down a busy street or sitting on a bus and being completely invisible. I just found a journal entry from a trip to New York City right before I left for Mozambique when I was anticipating the situation I find myself in now. September 10, 2009 – NYC There is a sense of freedom, walking around New York City alone, feeling that while people may notice you, you certainly aren’t the most notable person they’ve encountered that day and they likely won’t remember you. You can, amidst millions of people, feel wonderfully alone, more so than in any small town. In fact, the fewer people sharing your space, the less you can avoid their company until it is only you and no one else. In New York City, I am unremarkable. I know that when I go to Africa, I will no longer be able to escape in the crowd. I will stand out and be noticed in any context. So for now, I am enjoying my moments of solitude and ambiguity. When I go home to New England I will once again blend in but I won’t stop thinking about race. It’s important to acknowledge the fact that people are treated differently. Many minority people in the United States suffer discrimination far worse that what I’m experiencing here. It’s not just humiliation and irritation. They can face violence and unequal access to jobs, education, health care and other basic human rights. I only have to suffer racial discrimination for two years. Some people deal with it their whole lives.

It's been a while since my last post so I thought I'd kick things off with some fun pictures. I organized an art contest at my school a few weeks back. The theme was "World Peace and Friendship" and the contributions were sent off to Maputo for the national contest. I heard one of our students won third place for Southern Mozambique but I haven't yet heard who. Every participant from our school won a pencil, eraser, sharpener and a fancy certificate. The two winners got a set of colored pencils each.

I had a lot of fun with the contest. A few students really got into it and started coming over to my house for impromptu art lessons on the veranda. They don't often get a chance to express themselves creatively so this was a great opportunity for them. It was fun to see what they came up with.Young people talking about their dreams. At the end it says, "I dream of peace and unity."

My only contribution from a female student. It says "happiness is always in children," "always happy," "world peace and friendship"

He wrote it in English!

A dialog about tolerance and fighting discrimination.

"Communication between people on different continents"

Winner 1

Winner 2

Hope you enjoyed the show!

Usually my entries are somewhat objective but today I can’t be. I care deeply about my students and when someone is abusing them it is very much my concern. Today I had a conversation with my REDES group that confirmed a terrible suspicion: teachers at my school are asking female students for sex in exchange for grades and failing them if they refuse. And I discovered it’s not just a few teachers. The girls named two professors and said they are the only ones NOT guilty! Two out of the five girls present said male professors had approached them looking for sex. They both had the courage to refuse, but one of them failed the class because of it. It makes me physically ill to think that my colleagues, the people I work with every day, my neighbors who greet me and chit chat and seem like genuinely nice people are taking advantage of their female students. One of the girls who shared her story today said that when her teacher made an advance on her she responded by saying, “No, you’re my teacher. You’re supposed to be like my father. I can’t do that with you.” In fact, on my way to the REDES meeting I ran in to some male professors hanging out by the school. They called me over.

“How are you?” I asked.

“We’re not well,” responded one professor.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because you’re not here hanging out with us,” he said.

“Oh, well I will hang out with you later but now I am going to a REDES meeting,” I said.

“But explain to me, why is it that you only like to hang out with our women? You never hang out with men.” He said.

“Well to be honest, it’s because most men want to have a romantic relationship with me. It’s very difficult to find a Mozambican man who just wants to be friends,” I replied.

“Is it normal for men and women to be friends in your country?” He asked.

We went on to talk about the similarities and differences between our cultures in the way men and women interact. I explained that I am constantly being hit on, asked for my phone number, invited to date or marry people or to have a sexual relationship with men I hardly know. It happens every day. The professors promised me that they are different and I gave them the benefit of the doubt. “Of course you’re different,” I admitted. “You are my colleagues. You are very professional. We can have a good friendship.” So you can imagine my disgust when, after this conversation, I heard firsthand that they are having sex with their students. Even worse, they are using their authority to blackmail the girls into accepting. My REDES counterpart, who was also at the meeting, was equally disgusted. The professors the girls were talking about are our neighbors and friends. She explained to the girls that what their teachers are doing is wrong and that they have a right to refuse. She talked about the dangers of accepting that sort of offer. Because the man is essentially paying for sex, he holds the power and can refuse to use a condom, putting you at risk for STD’s and pregnancy. Even if he uses a condom there are other problems. Imagine the awkwardness you would face in the classroom, the damage it would do to your reputation if others found out and the risk that you would be expelled from school. The system puts the girls between a rock and a hard place. If they accept the teacher’s offer for grades in exchange for sex then they are compromising their values, their health and their reputation. But if they refuse, they risk failing. And if they speak out they risk being expelled! That’s why it’s been allowed to go on for so long. I’m afraid to think that so many professors are guilty of this offense and that they are protecting themselves by creating a system in which the students have no way to defend themselves. Our message to the girls they must refuse and then report the offense to their parents, to the school administration or to us. I also want to look into women’s rights groups in Mozambique and places where they can report this kind of abuse. Last semester, we discussed women’s rights at one of our REDES meetings. Among the rights listed were the right to education, the right to freedom, the right to say no to sex, the right to a life free of abuse and the right to speak your mind. We talked about how the actions of the professors violate these rights and how the girls must assert themselves and report that behavior. I was incredibly proud of the two girls who shared their stories of saying “no” to a teacher. That takes so much courage! At the same time I worry about the girls who lack that courage and are at risk of abuse. On the walk home, my counterpart and I vented our frustrations about the situation. It’s so wrong! She called it a “poison” that had infected the school. Apparently it’s been going on since the beginning. Some of the professors are currently married to former students. What can we do? Too often if the girl reports her situation she is kicked out and the professor stays. But this can’t go on. If enough girls speak up then they won’t be ignored any longer. For our next meeting I want to prepare skits where the girls can act out the scenarios they talked about and practice responses so that when the time comes they won’t be afraid to speak their mind.

This afternoon I set myself up on the veranda with a book to enjoy the fading daylight. Just as I opened Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, the neighbor boys spotted me and asked for English help. How could I say no? They ran off for their notebooks then crowded around my chair. I helped them answer questions like “What is your name?” and “How old are you?” We repeated the pronunciation over and over until I could at least decipher what they were saying. Then they sat at my feet to copy the answers into their notebooks. Their writing was interrupted now and then with questions.

“What is this?”

“A pen.”

“What is this?”

“A cat.”

They bored of English and the conversation moved to Portuguese.

“Ugh, tomorrow we have phys ed! Our phys ed teacher is really crappy.”

“Why?”

“He likes to hit children.”

“Oh no! Hitting children is bad.”

“No, hitting children is not bad. You must hit them in the ‘primary area.’ Hitting them in the ‘secondary area’ is illegal.”

“What?!? What is the ‘secondary area?’”

“Private school... I think.” Clearly the kids were confused about the definition of the “secondary area.” I was just disturbed to find out that hitting was sanctioned by the school system. Hitting children is wrong, regardless of what “area” it’s in. Of course I have seen students being hit, but I had hoped that it was at least technically prohibited even if that rule wasn’t enforced. Perhaps this explains an episode earlier this week. I had finished my class but stayed in the classroom to write in the grade book. The next period’s teacher came in but said I could stay and continue working while he taught. He asked the students to open their notebooks to their homework and began walking around the room checking, ruler in hand. Whenever a student presented unsatisfactory work, which was nearly every student, he proceeded to whack them repeatedly about the head and shoulders with a ruler. Some students laughed nervously, others flinched, others hunkered down and took it.

“No, you must write ‘y’ here! How can you forget to write ‘y?!’ Hurry up, write it, write it!”

Whack, whack, whack.

“Where’s your ruler? Rulers cost 4,5 MTN! How dare you come to class without your ruler!”

Whack, whack, whack.

“This isn’t your homework. These are exercises we did in class! Don’t lie to me!”

Whack, whack, whack. I watched silently. Clearly the students were used to such treatment. Clearly it was ineffective. I don’t think it was hurting them physically, but the psychological toll was obvious. When he got to one of the female students she nearly dove under her desk. “What? Are you scared of a ruler? It doesn’t even hurt!” He said, but the girl was gun-shy. I had noticed this early on when I pretended to tap students on the head with a stack of papers. The way they flinched indicated a history of abuse. Hitting is not confined to school. Far from it. Hitting seems to be the only form of discipline in Mozambican households. If a child has a black eye and you ask where he got it, he will tell you, “I was hit.” If you ask why, he will respond, “because I fell playing and scraped my knee.” As if a scraped knee wasn’t lesson enough. Valerie and Louise understand the hitting problem all too well. They both work at a preschool here and are constantly trying to get the preschool teachers to employ alternative methods of discipline. When one child hits another, a common occurrence at a preschool, the teacher punishes the child by hitting him. The volunteers tried to explain that hitting a child only teachers him to hit others.

“It is never necessary to hit a child,” they said. “There are other methods of discipline.”

To which the teachers responded, in all sincerity, “there are other methods??” Living in a place where hitting children is standard practice made me think about what discipline was like in American schools 50 years ago. I was fortunate to grow up in a school environment where hitting was not allowed, but a generation before me hitting was still acceptable discipline. Two generations before me children were whipped or hit with rods. I expect that Mozambique follows the same trend and that the next generation of Mozambican students never experiences this abuse. Non-violent discipline can be far more effective, but it requires creativity, persistence and an understanding of child psychology. I hope that students and teachers will learn from the example of Peace Corps volunteers and see that there is a better way.

It takes a village to raise a child… that’s an African saying right? I certainly feel like our whole neighborhood is one big family and all the children belong to everyone. I often host neighbor kids on the veranda, playing with blocks or coloring. When they’re thirsty they come ask for water. When they fall they come ask for a Band-Aid. When I return from a trip they call out and greet me with smiles. This afternoon I was taking a break from lesson planning to play the guitar. I heard some giggling and saw eyes peeking through a crack in the door. “Well open up the door then!” I said. Eight little boys crowded into the doorway. “Do you want a concert?” They nodded emphatically so I started playing. It didn’t take them long to catch on. They danced and clapped and swayed. Mauro shouted, “teacher, I want to sing!” “Ok, go ahead,” I replied. They began singing children’s songs in Portuguese and, much to their delight, I picked up the tune and started strumming. They fell right in with the rhythm of the guitar, singing at the top of their lungs and dancing up a storm. We went from song to song, making up our own concert as we went. It was thrilling, being a part of their music. Mozambican children sing and dance with such pure, uninhibited joy. When did we lose that innocence? Every Mozambican I’ve met dances and sings and revels in music without the slightest hesitation. I envy them. While I enjoy music and dancing, I find I can never fully let go. I’m always fighting my inhibitions. Who tells us early on that in order to dance we must dance well? In order to sing we must sing well? Talent is not a prerequisite here. It seems like dancing and singing aren’t even conscious decisions. It’s like scratching an itch, satisfying a desire to be a part of the music.

The rains have subsided and the heat has returned but for once I’m happy about it. Until yesterday it had rained every single day since my arrival back in Mozambique. It never lasted more than an hour but the accumulated effects of rains here and in Zimbabwe and South Africa have swollen the Limpopo River to the top of its banks. My morning runs take me over the bridge and I’ve watched the tops of trees disappear under the rising silty swell. The once shallow, lazy river is now an angry brown snake, swirling violently around the bridge columns. One morning the eastern bend was obscured by mist and it looked like a vast bay opening up to the ocean.

The talk among neighbors is of flooding. The devastating floods of 2000 are still fresh in people’s memories. The renovation of my school was part of the recovery effort and we only re-opened the doors last semester. Broken farm equipment, desks, filing cabinets and other flood-damaged materials littler the school campus in rusting piles. Even the paint on the houses still shows signs of “the night they’ll never forget.” Dona Nelia was telling me that they awoke with water to their knees and had to leave most of their things behind. She pointed up to a faint line in the chipping white paint of my house near the top. “That’s how high the water got,” she explained.

At first this year’s rains were good news. Josefa explained that January is a “month of hunger” because people spend all of their money and eat all of their food during the excess of the holidays and then are left with nothing. The rains have brought excellent yields in corn, pumpkins, sweet potatoes and other crops. “Now the poor people will eat,” she said. But feast could become famine if the Limpopo continues to gorge itself on rain.

This afternoon, after a long day of sweating, I went for an evening walk behind the school. Where there were once plowed fields there is a wilderness of grass and resin plants high over my head. I feel like an insect in the grass. When I got to the riverside I saw that, despite the pause in rains the past two days, the river level had actually gone up slightly. I came back and reported to Dona Nelia and another neighbor who were sitting outside on a straw mat. They said that the upstream dam is discharging little by little. Apparently the halting of the rains has not put us out of danger. Dams in South Africa and Zimbabwe will also have to discharge. People in the flood plains may be forced to evacuate.

Here in my neighborhood we’re going on with business as usual. Watching the skies with a weary eye and praying we don’t hear the loudspeakers calling for evacuation. It’s an unsettling feeling to think that your fate is in the hands of the weather gods or the politicians who decide when and how much water to let out of the dams.

To the folks back home, there’s no need to worry about me. As an American I have the unique privilege of an entire support team monitoring the situation and looking out for my welfare and safety. What I worry about are my friends and neighbors who don’t have the luxury of escape and who don’t deserve to repeat the heartache of the floods.

A woman stands, arms at her sides, looking at the camera. Her sleeveless blouse sags on her skinny frame. Around her waist is a capulana, on her head a kerchief. Her feet are in flip flops. It’s late afternoon and the light casts a long thin shadow to her left and casts a warm glow on the two mud houses behind her. One house has a thatched roof topped with an old tire and a corrugated metal door painted with words you can’t make out. The words say “Puff Daddy” and I was hoping to capture this incongruity when the woman appeared. She spoke only Changana so I indicated that I wanted to take her picture. She posed as such and I took it and brought it to show her. Normally people are satisfied with seeing themselves in the screen but this woman wanted something. She began talking urgently, with me not understanding a word. Her unknown demand became more and more forceful and finally I excused myself and jogged off. The mystery woman lives in the mud hut village behind our school. I call it the Riverside because it sounds classy. Really it’s quite beautiful. The houses are made of mud but the yards are tidy and swept and planted with flowers and shrubs. The space between yards is filled up with corn and pumpkins, chickens and goats. The worn footpath winds along the Limpopo River, a million-dollar view. I used to take that path during my runs. People would wave and say “hi” and neighborhood kids would drop their games and start running with me. By the end of the neighborhood I would have quit a gang of followers. I would run backwards, do grapevines and high knees and laugh as they tried to copy me. At the last house they’d turn back and I’d go on running in peace. After the photo incident I began having anxiety about running through Riverside. The same woman, if she saw me coming, would run out and block my way in the path, yelling at me in Changana. It happened a few times and I finally stopped going that way. When I printed some photos for my REDES group, I put hers in the lineup too, thinking I’d mend things by bringing it to her. I never got around to it before the break but on Sunday I decided to do it. It was a hot sunny day, 100% humidity after all the rain and I was dripping with sweat. I appeared in her compound and walked over to the shade where she was sitting on a straw mat. There were children beside her sucking on mangos and a younger man in a chair. “I’m here to talk to the grandmother,” I said. He smiled and gave me his chair. I sat down and greeted her in Changana. “Hello. How are you?” She smiled, “I’m fine and you?” “I’m fine. It’s hot!” She responded with something in Changana. I nodded goofily then pointed at the corn, tall and green after the rain. “Food! Well. Eat.” She said something I didn’t understand then I turned to the man and said, in Portuguese, “I have a gift for her.” He translated and I handed her the photo. She took it, ran her finger over it, looked up at me, then back at the photo. After a minute she burst into a grin and took my hand, squeezing it and chattering. “You did well!” translated the man. They analyzed the picture and figured out where she was standing when it was taken. She said something about the school. “I am teacher! I teach!” I explained in Changana, pointing at the school. Her face changed as if she finally understood why a strange white girl appeared at her house in the first place. She grabbed my hand again. “Friend, my friend.” I said. She smiled and nodded. “I go,” I said, “see you later.” They offered me mangos but I declined politely. As I walked home in the hot sun, I felt light as a feather. That is likely the only photo she’s ever had of herself. Now I have a new friend and can once again go running through Riverside.

Dear friends and family,

The price of a post office box in my town has gone up to something unreasonable, so rather than renew it for this year I'm asking that all my mail, letters or otherwise, be sent to the Peace Corps office in Maputo at the following address:Clancy Brown

Corpo da Paz

345 Avenida do Zimbabwe

Maputo, Moçambique

Letters and packages do so much for my morale and I really appreciate them but I have to warn you that some things get "lost" in the system. Corruption is a fact of life here. Please don't send anything large or expensive. Some things arrived in weeks, others in months, others never got here.If you don't mind the risk, I'd love some snail mail or packages. If not, e-mails are wonderful. News from home in any form is always welcome!

I arrived at the Maputo airport on Thursday to pouring rain which, in addition to my hefty luggage, was reason enough to cough up 350 meticais for a taxi to the chapa stop. It has continued raining on and off since I returned. Rain brings cooler weather and it has helped my transition from Maine winter to Mozambican summer. It also brings the landscape to life. The dry, dusty, dun-colored Mozambique that I left has transformed into a verdant paradise.

This morning I went for a run with Rex. Tall flowering grasses had overgrown the school compound and I picked my way through carefully. When we made it out to the rutted muddy back road my skin was speckled with seeds. At 5:30 in the morning the bird songs were raucous. It seemed that every bird I’ve ever seen was out singing and chasing off competitors. It was beautiful and distracting and I kept slipping in the mud, much to the amusement of women walking to the fields.

I started watching my footing and noticed interesting tracks in the mud: small rodents, goats, birds and something that looked like a weasel. A rodent skittered in front of us and Rex followed him into the grass but didn’t make it far through the thick growth. The trees were heavy with fruit and standing water had created an abundance of insects. The tall grass looked like great habitat for birds and rodents alike.

I wondered if snakes were taking advantage of the abundance too. One time I asked someone why most people’s yards are swept dirt. They explained that grass attracts snakes. That rodent running by would be good snake food, so would bird eggs… The more I thought about it the more nervous I got. I’ve been told that black mambas, the most poisonous snake in the world and a common sighting around here, are territorial and if you make the mistake of trespassing they’ll go after you. Looked like prime territory to me.

The snake phobia finally got to me and I turned back early but I won’t let it keep me from venturing out again later with my binoculars, though I think I’ll stick closer to civilization. You don’t see too many snakes near people’s homes because they’ve all been killed. I respect the mamba but I’ll let him have his territory and we’ll have ours.

I’m home! … my Mozambican home that is. It’s confusing when I call multiple continents “home.” I just returned today from a month long break in the United States. While stateside I did experience some “reverse culture shock,” but my overall feeling from the trip was one of comfort and support. I was amazed to see how many people love me and are thinking about me. I’m truly fortunate. I was also reassured that all the things I left behind will be there when I return – family, friends, mountains, good coffee, nachos… I’m a little shaky after a long day of travelling, but I want to take a moment to reflect on some observations of American life after spending a year overseas.

The first thing my dad did after picking me up at the Portland Jetport was to drag me to Best Buy. You can imagine the sensory overload of 50 high definition flat screen TV’s blaring at me at once. Then we stopped at the grocery store. I cannot explain the absolute euphoria I experienced walking through the aisles. Anything I could possibly desire was at my fingertips! Let’s just say I was on cloud nine. It was overwhelming: the choices, the opportunities! I felt like I needed an algorithm to decipher the cereal aisle. I settled on wild Atlantic salmon and asparagus for dinner with a nice bottle of white wine.

Food was a centerpiece of my visit. I was reacquainted with cheese, ice cream and other marvelous dairy products, though my stomach took a while to catch up. I experienced coffee anxiety in front of a café counter while I gaped at the endless menu board. The clerk grew impatient.

“Well, what do you like?” she asked helpfully.

“Coffee… I don’t know. What do you suggest?”

“Do you like milk? How bout a cappuccino?”

I said “sure” but the options kept on coming: whole milk, skim or 2%? Shade grown? Organic? Fair trade? Seasonal flavorings – gingerbread, eggnog, peppermint? Small, medium or large? For here or to go? Restaurants presented the same overabundance of choices, especially a place we visited in Florida that boasted the country’s largest array of beers on tap – talk about variety!

I believe capitalism creates as many problems as it solves but coming from Mozambique, a formerly socialist country, I was able to appreciate some of the advantages of the American system. Offering something to please everyone is part of capitalism’s tendency to fill every niche. For the consumer, it means that if there’s something you want then someone’s bound to be selling it. In Mozambique there are a lot of things I can’t easily get: cheese, good coffee, quality shoes. Even when I can get it, there’s only one option. Cereal? expensive imported Corn Flakes. Another advantage of capitalism is customer service. In a competitive marketplace you’ve got to please your clients. It was so nice to be well attended at a restaurant and be able to order anything on the menu. In Mozambique the waitress acts like you are wasting her time and the menu is just a tease with appetizing dishes that they don’t actually serve and never have.

“I’ll have the pizza.”

“We don’t have that.”

“Ok then, how about the fish?”

“We don’t have that.”

“Right… the seafood stew?”

“We don’t have that.”

“Well, what do you have?”

“Chicken.”

I usually ask them to make me an egg sandwich. We then wait two hours for our mediocre food while being eaten alive by mosquitos. I prefer to eat in.

Customer service wasn’t the only difference in personal interactions. One thing I noticed while stateside was that nobody noticed me. A few strangers said “hello” or started small talk, but mostly I was free to walk down the street without anyone turning their head. I didn’t mind the lack of unwanted public attention because I had plenty of attention from family, friends and boyfriend the whole time. In contrast, I haven’t been back in Mozambique even 24 hours and I’ve already been called “mulungo,” been surrounded by gawkers at a chapa stop, had my hair stroked by strangers, been asked for money and had two random people insist on taking my phone number and calling me repeatedly.

In the United States we are living in a world that is increasingly connected but with paradoxically fewer personal interactions. One example comes to mind. I was taking a ferry out to an island in Casco Bay with Allie. It was the typical winter crowd of weathered natives: lots of flannel, cartharts, paint-stained jeans, timberland boots, hunter’s orange. Mainers aren’t the most talkative bunch but there is typically friendly conversation and gossip among locals. I was watching Allie play with her iPhone and noticed that it was strangely quiet. When I looked up, six of the eight other people on the ferry had iPhones in hand, busily scrolling and texting and twittering away. Nobody even noticed the people sitting right next to them.

At first felt assaulted by all the attention I received when I returned to Mozambique, but now that I’m back at site I feel welcomed and loved. Neighbors and students heard I was in town and stopped by to say “hello.” The folks at the store and vegetable vendors were happy to see me and asked how my family was doing. People waved, someone stopped to give me a ride home, the neighbor kids peered around my veranda giggling and the dogs flopped themselves on the ground wagging their tails.

I’m happy to be back in Mozambique but it will take some time to readjust. I miss Sean a lot. I miss my family. But I just need to give it time. As Sean said, I still have important work to do and I’ll be done before I know it.

Check out this 3 part series on Mozambique. So far they've only posted part I. Due to limited internet capacity I can only read the dialogue, but it sounded like a decent overview to me.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec10/mozambique_11-22.html

Seems like the reporter only went to Maputo and Inhambane though...

What is “WanChiton” you ask? Why it’s the capital of the United States of America! Well, that was the best answer I got on the bonus question of a recent Chemistry test. Some at least guessed places in the USA: New York (spelled “Noy Ork”), Los Angeles, Miami, California... Others were way out in left field: Malaysia, Beijing, China, Madrid, Mexico, Italy, Europe, Brazil, Botswana... Some of them were convinced they were right. Once came up to me after class, “teacher, it’s Italy! What?? You sure it’s not Italy?” “WanChiton” got half credit. To be fair, I doubt most Americans could name the capital of Mozambique.

I add bonus questions like that to give me a laugh while I’m grading. Otherwise it’s a depressing activity. Some students are doing well but a majority are not improving like they should be. I had high hopes this time around since I sacrificed several lessons to review, gave multiple after school extra help sessions, wrote study guides, coached them on study skills… It makes me think that some just don’t care and others have had their brains cooked by 8-12 years of rote memorization. The test is tough but when I look at their performance on individual topics, almost everyone has shown some improvement. Extra help sessions make me the happiest. When a struggling student finally gets something right he or she squeals and starts dancing. It’s a great feeling. I concentrate on the small victories.

I’ve gotten used to the way of things at school but sometimes it’s frustrating. Tuesday morning was a typical example:

I went to school two hours before my first class so I could some lesson plans and tests. There is one working printer in the office and it only takes discs. The disc drive on my computer is broken so I took my flash and a CD to the computer lab in the other building. It had rained, so there was a field of slippery mud in between. I got to the lab only to find it locked so I traversed the mud back to the office. Apparently someone had just taken the keys so I went back to the lab. No luck. Back to the office. Apparently the keys were with the director who was nowhere to be found. I went back to the lab, muddy and annoyed, and found it magically open.

Another teacher said, “why don’t you ask a student to carry the computer from the office up here to the lab?”

“I’m afraid he will slip in the mud and drop it.”

“Oh, you’re right. Then we wouldn’t be able to print anything!”

My disc took 25 minutes to format and then I finally made the transfer. Right as I got back to the office and stamped the mud off my feet, the power went out. I talked to the secretary. “Yeah, someone has to go to town and buy more electricity. It could be a while.” At this point I had 40 minutes until class. I went to the side of the road and caught a ride to town then walked to a place with a printer and computer. As soon as I sat down the computer crashed. I left and walked to the other end of town to the only other public printer. After paying 4 meticals per page, I looked at my watch. 10 minutes until class. I sprinted to the chapa stop only to find the chapa already full.

“Are you sure you can’t fit one more?”

“No, look, it’s full.”

“Please? I’m in a hurry!”

The driver nodded and I dove in head first over the front row. My back was arched against the roof and they closed the door on my butt. The woman whose face was in my armpit didn’t seem to mind.

It might have been funny except that I was concerned for the small child in front of me. She was crying in the way that malnourised children do: a constant, quiet, persistent whimpering. You could tell just by looking at her: a full set of teeth in the body of a baby, skinny arms, big belly, thin hair, papery skin. She may have been 2-4 years old. The mother gave her bread but I could see she was already stunted by a diet of empty carbohydrates. I thought of giving money but decided it was inappropriate. Besides, often as not money is not the main barrier. Vegetables and fruits and beans and eggs are healthy foods that are relatively cheap or can be grown on the sort of small personal farm that most families have. The barrier is habit, tradition and ignorance. Babies, especially girls, grow frail after being weaned because they are fed gruel mixed with nothing but salt, sugar or the leftover juices of meat. I appreciate the demonstrations at the hospital where Jenna works. They teach the mothers of malnourished children how to grind up vegetables and proteins and mix them in with the gruel to make a more nutritious meal.

I put the image of the little girl out of my mind when we arrived at school. They opened the door and I fell out backwards. I handed the driver 5 mets. He demanded 7 so I gave him the rest without protest and ran to class, arriving just in time for my 2:00 pm class only to find out that my students were still working in the kitchen… They showed up 15-20 minutes late and some didn’t come at all. This happens often enough that I’ve learned to adapt, though between that and the slow pace of learning I have only gotten through a fraction of what I hoped to cover this semester. And what I had hoped to cover is an even tinier fraction of the national curriculum. Those students who hope to finish my class with a 50% average and then pass the national exam have another thing coming!

On a brighter note, the water came back!! Perhaps you saw my blog about pumping water. That went on for the better part of two months. Last night at our study session a student burst in the doors and said “water’s running!” The class erupted in cheers and singing and dancing. Students lifted each other up in the air and shouted for joy. One said, “good! I haven’t taken a bath in almost a week!” The hand pump we were using is a real pain. It’s broken so most of the water comes out the sides. It's the only working pump for the school, the professors’ neighborhood and two villages behind the school so there are always a lot of people there with all of their water jugs. You have to wait your turn. The water itself is disgusting, briny and cloudy. Josefa asked me to stop wearing white clothes because they were coming dirtier after the wash. Anyway, now our 20 minutes of running water three times a day feels like a huge luxury!

Other good news: I'm coming home! My family bought me a plane ticket so I can go home for Christmas/New Years. I'll be arriving Dec 6th and leaving Jan 5th. I'll spend most of the time in Maine but also a week in Florida and a few days in Vermont. If you'll be around I'd love to see you! Just e-mail me or call my house.

"Challenges" here could refer to my darling students or to the situation, depends on my mood. Some of you have heard this rant, but it bears writing about. I think it’s important for readers to understand the root challenges I face as a teacher. It explains a lot about the Mozambican school system. These are things that occupy my mind on a daily basis and have proven to be far more difficult aspects of Peace Corps service than, say, having to carry water or deal with a hot climate.

I am feeling frustrated with school at the moment, as I always do after correcting tests. On my last Biology test only 12 out of 35 passed (34%). It’s incredibly discouraging after dedicating so many hours to planning quality lessons, making beautiful posters, grading homework, giving extra help sessions... to find that it doesn’t seem to be working!

I'm encountering three main problems:

1. Biology and Chemistry are the two “key” disciplines of first year. If they don’t pass those disciplines they can’t go on to second year.

2. Both Biology and Chemistry have national exams that the students must pass. These exams are ridiculously hard.

3. The students lack the prerequisite knowledge and skills to learn the material in the curriculum, which combines 8th, 9th and 10th grade in an accelerated one year course.

The grading system in Mozambique is different than in the US. First, they grade out of 20 instead of out of 100. Second, the expectations are set very low compared to US standards. You can pass with 50% and many students are thrilled to get even that. 70% is considered exceptional.

Even with the low standards, the bar is set high. Students cannot continue to the next grade if they don’t pass Biology and Chemistry. With other disciplines the administration can decide to let them go on even if they’re failing (one of the reasons for the problem in the first place). Since I am teaching Biology and Chemistry, there's a lot of pressure on me to pass these kids/inflate their grades.

Students who pass with a grade of 10 or above (50%) still have to take the national exam, but if they pass with a grade of 14 or above (70%), they get to skip the national exam. The latter is preferable since the national exam has a very high failure rate. It’s almost impossible to prepare for it because the questions are specific and cover an unreasonable amount of material. The curriculum for regular secondary schools is jam-packed as it is and in a technical school like mine the problem is compounded by condensing three years of material (8th, 9th and 10th grade) into a single year. Did I mention that the Chemistry curriculum is from 1986, when Mozambique was in the midst of a civil war?

I’m looking at an old national exam now and wondering why, when there are only eight questions, they dedicated an entire question to naming the twelve parts of the microscope. Why is that important? It’s all the more ironic when you consider the handful of schools that actually own a microscope!

The first two issues wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the third: the very low level of my students. I am trying to teach a course that surpasses the difficulty level of American high school AP classes to kids who struggle in the most basic skills. Many of them still have to read aloud and I can hear them softly murmuring during a test. Many of them have trouble writing even when they are directly copying a text (I’ve had kids misspell their own name!). Math skills are also appalling. Many still have trouble with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Things we take for granted, like reading a table or a graph, summarizing a paragraph and writing something in your own words are near impossible tasks. These kids belong in fifth grade, not 1st year technical (i.e. 8th, 9th, 10th grades accelerated).

So how do these kids end up in my class when they really don’t belong there? There are a lot of reasons. Three that come to mind are:

1. Many Mozambican students pass a grade by cheating, bribing or performing sexual favors.

2. It is now possible to pass 5th grade then skip 6th and 7th grade by taking a test.

3. The technical schools changed their calendar so that students must wait around for 6-7 months before starting their first year of technical school.

The latter is a new change that has negatively affected our school. The youngest incoming students are 13 years old. Who would let their 13-year-old sit around the house for 6-7 months waiting for school to start? Most parents found a different alternative. The result was a very small incoming class (about 40 students total) that was largely comprised of students who simply hadn’t found something else. I hate to say it, but it was essentially “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” That said, I do have some jems in my class and a good group of hard workers. They keep me going.

I guess all I can do is my best, but the students will have to meet me halfway. I’m planning on dedicating an entire class period to teaching some basic study skills and I’ll be giving a project based on national exam questions. This on top of quality lesson plans, graded homeworks and extra help sessions, is all I can do right now.

The purpose of this entry was not to complain. Ok, maybe a little bit... but also to give you an idea of what my job is like. I'm sure American teachers can relate to many of my frustrations. These challenges are not unique to Mozambique. If you have any suggestions or encouragement don’t hesitate to send it my way!

Neighbor boys sharing a bike

Filling up jugs, cooking pots, buckets...

Young girl carrying water

Taking my turn at the pump

Girl with her baby

Students at the pump

Making one of several trips back to the house with a heavy load

“Vale a pena ter nada mas ter agua.” (“If you have nothing else you must at least have water.”) That is what Josefa said this morning as we helped her get water at the pump. The electric pump that services the school is broken so now we have to go to the manual pump behind the teacher’s neighborhood, fill our water jugs and carry them home. We didn’t exactly have running water before (it came on for about 10 minutes three times a day) but it was a whole lot easier than going to the pump.

The nice thing is that we get a taste of water pump culture. There are students, working members of professors’ households (i.e. relatives they’ve taken in) and people from the mud hut village behind the school compound. Changana is the predominant language and some people don’t speak any Portuguese, but there’s really not much to be said. One jug can be filled at a time so everyone sits around and waits their turn. People trade off working the pump (which is surprisingly tiring!) and help each other put water onto their heads or (should they be so fortunate) into a wheelbarrow. It’s a quiet atmosphere of waiting, mostly silent save the non-stop chugging of the pump.

It’s normal for young girls to be sent in pairs to get water. Some of them look younger than they are due to malnutrition but are surprisingly strong. Today there was a girl of only 6 or 7 sent all alone to fill two 25 L jugs of water and bring them home in a wheelbarrow. She waited a long time at the pump and eventually got frustrated, crying and trying to push her jug under the water to the annoyance of the others. When she did fill the jugs she made it no more than five yards from the pump before she could go no further. The other people started talking.

“How can they send that girl alone to get 50 L of water? She’s too young. What kind of mother does that?”

“She lives with her stepmother.”

“Oh, that’s it then. Her stepmother sent her. Stepmothers are no good.”

“I live with my stepmother and she’s good.”

“Ok, well some are good but most are bad. It’s better to have a mother.”

“And her father?”

“He lives with them but he has no voice for his children.”

“What a shame.”

“Does she go to school?”

“I think so, but they won’t let her go for long.”

I finally got tired of listening to their idle gossip and went to help the girl. I carried her wheelbarrow through the school compound, up the small hill behind and all the way to the beginning of her village. I knew that if her stepmother saw me helping the girl would be beaten, so I left her there and said to go home and ask for someone to take it the rest of the way. When I left my hands were bright red, my arms hurt and I had broken a sweat. It’s no easy task. I can’t imagine doing that at age 6.

When Valerie came to help at the pump the conversation became more lighthearted.

Joesefa said, “When you marry a Mozambican you will come to the pump and get water like this.”

“It’s a good work out.”

“You don’t have to go running, just come here and pump.”

“Valerie is a Mozambican woman now. Look at her pumping water with her hair in braids.”

“Yes, but a Mozambican woman pumps water with a baby on her back.”

In fact, there were people with babies on their backs, including a very young girl of maybe 14. I know it was her child because she was breastfeeding it. I was happy to see the baby fat and healthy, but sad to see a young girl’s life changed forever.

There is a lot to be learned at the water pump. You realize how precious water is, you begin to understand life in the villages and, most importantly, you gain an appreciation for the Mozambican woman. When life gets tough the man takes off. It’s the woman who stays. People celebrate male politicians and war heroes but it's the women who keep this country (and every other country for that matter) running smoothly.

Here are some more photos I took last night at our neighbor's birthday party.

Val's gone native. Nino and me

What a spread!

The neighborhood terrors (ahem!) I mean kids

Kids are kids no matter where you are

Nino feeding cake to his godmother

Sharing champagne for a toast

Para cima, para baixo, para esquerdo, para direito, para centro, para dentro!(up, down, to the left, to the right, to the center, inside!)

DJ's working the music

Valerie and Louise with neighbors.

Nino and Dona Adelia

Hello Friends! I thought I'd brighten up my blog with some miscellaneous photos I've taken recently. Enjoy!

sweet potatoes from my garden

Josefa helping me wash sweet potatoes

The girls at our picnic spot by the river

Valerie (my roommate)

Louise

Jenna

Jenna, Yours Truly and Louise

We biked 4 miles out into the "bush" for our little picnic

Ceremony in the town plaza for Tourism Day (I was the only tourist)

Girls with traditional beautifying face mask

My neighbors braiding hair in our backyard at night

This morning I ran my typical route down the long dirt road behind our school. I was up by 5:10 and out the door by 5:25. Rex was waiting at my doorstep, wagging his tail. The two of us jogged through the three rows of identical cement houses that make up the teacher’s neighborhood, then past the graveyard of farm equipment destroyed by the floods of 2000, then out the back gate of the school compound, and past the pig sties. All the pigs died about two months ago from pig illness (not swine flu don’t worry!). Before I’d have to hold my breath and when I rounded the corner I sometimes encountered the squealing mess of a pig slaughter. The pig killers, knife in hand, would say “good morning” and invite me to help them. Not the most pleasant thing to wake up to!

After the pig sties the road skirts a village of mud huts, then the reed structure of a church by the river. At the first ¾ mile or so there’s a field worked by our students opposite the crumbling overgrown walls of a “matadouro” (slaughterhouse) from colonial times. The only inhabited structure after the church is at mile 3. I call it the witchdoctor’s house because it very well could be. The path to the lonely house is guarded by two tall, straight papaya trees standing like sentinels. The house itself is removed from the dirt road and is nothing more than scraps of plastic, reeds, sticks and bits of aluminum. In front of the house is a tiny swept yard surrounded on all sides by scrub and grasses. I once saw an old woman out front and waved. She did not wave back.

All along the way are banana plantations and many fields of corn, tomatoes, kale, cabbage and lettuce. About a mile beyond the witchdoctor’s house is a large field of sweet potatoes and an orchard of fruit trees with a barbed wire fence. The orchard includes coconut palms, mangos, papayas, and various citruses.

I always have the company of people working the fields or walking the dirt road, mostly women but also old men on bicycles. Many of them speak very little Portuguese and are thrilled when I try to greet them in Changana. Sometimes I say “na tsutsuma!” (“I am running!”). Occasionally the women will decide to trot along with me. I’m impressed how well they can run with flip flops on their feet, capulanas around their waist and a basin of produce on their head. Besides the farmers I have Rex by my side. He’s a happy, energetic dog, fox-like in his coloring and his tendency to pounce on small rodents in the grass. Sometimes he plays tricks and crouches in the grass then shoots out as I run past.

When I get to mile 4, I generally turn around though sometimes I walk out to the river’s edge. A large sand/mud flat extends on either side of the river there and is bordered by reeds. The banks are held together by acacia and fig trees. You can hear characteristic “tink tink” of the blacksmith lapwing and see little sand pipers running around. Closer to the water’s edge are strangely perfect craters in the mud, possibly fish nests. Herds of cows are led down to the river to drink here and boys pull up in decrepit wood boats to fish off the flats with reed poles.

Inland from the river there is a variety of habitats. In between the cultivated areas, stretches of savanna scrub are reclaiming abandoned farm fields. Among the scrub are black patches of charred ground from purposeful brush fires. Various trees dot the landscape, only some of which I can identify. The acacias are the most “African” with their greenish wood, intimidating thorns and tiny paired leaflets. The fig trees, with their thick, spreading branches and partially exposed roots, look inviting to climb, but I’m too afraid of snakes to try that. When I run under a sausage tree, I look up to make sure one of its rock-hard fruits the size of a 1L soda bottle doesn’t fall on my head. It would probably knock me out.

I’m beginning to pick up on the subtleties of the seasons here. It’s nice being in a place long enough to see flowering and fruiting of the trees. Today I stepped off the road to take a pee and heard a loud and curious buzzing then noticed several trees swarmed by bees pollinating the delicate inflorescences. A few weeks ago there was a sudden explosion of red when the flame creepers came into bloom. Now they’re going into seed and the landscape is returning to drab shades of tan and green.

My knowledge of local birds is also improving, partly because of the birding I did with Sean. A lot of birds we identified in Swaziland have suddenly appeared at my site, meaning that they were here all along but I’ve only recently started to look for them. I particularly enjoy the hoopoe with its striped wings and finger-like crest feathers. It hops on the road probing termite holes with its curved bill. Today I had the luck of watching two yellowbilled kites mate. One was perched in a tree and let out a sharp screech. The other made three wide, swooping circles before alighting on the same branch as its pair. I hope they build their nest in the same tree.

It’s nice to become familiar with my own backyard here. It makes me feel more at home. My runs on that long dirt road are a way for me to escape and clear my head in the mornings before diving into a full day of planning, errands and teaching. It’s also a relatively solitary activity, where I can go for long stretches without talking to anyone save an occasional wave or “hello.” It’s how I “get away” without actually leaving site.

So I suppose this entry will be under the category of really strange things that have begun to seem normal. In other words, if you were to see such a thing back home it would end up in the local paper but here nobody bats an eye. There are too many examples to name so I’ll concentrate on one subcategory: strange places to find a goat.

Perhaps one of the first things you’ll notice when visiting Mozambique is the ubiquitous goat. There aren’t exactly as many goats as people, but it’s close. Any patch of green has a goat grazing on it, typically tied around the neck and attached to a tree or telephone pole. Other goats roam free, chased around by herd boys. In our school compound the goats provide a background chorus of bleating: “Baaaaaaaaaaah!” Like the hum of an air conditioner, it’s something my brain has learned to tune out.

The goats come in many shapes, sizes and colors. Some are cute, others not, but the baby goats are always adorable. It’s fun when a neighbor goat gets pregnant. Her belly swells until you look at her head-on and it looks like she swallowed a root beer barrel. Then one day you see a brand new, squeeky clean baby goat wobbling on its knobby legs with its shriveled umbilical cord still attached. When we first arrived at site a pair of twins was born and Valerie named them Merry and Pippin. The two hobbit goats had the sweet habit of curling up in the sun on our veranda.

So goats are part of the scenery, but even so there are sometimes when I say, “Now that is just not normal!” Mainly this has to do with goat transportation. In our first months at site we picked up on these oddities more readily. I remember my first month being shocked at the site of a goat teetering at the top of a tall pile of water jugs hastily strapped to a trailer that was speeding in front of us on the highway. Since then I have seen many goats strapped to the roofs of chapas or otherwise precariously attached to moving vehicles.

Sometimes the goat is inside the vehicle. One of the girls got a ride in the back of a truck and nearly sat on a rice sack occupied by an unfortunate goat. Another of the girls got a ride in a VW hatchback and heard muffled cries from the rear. The poor volunteer didn’t know what to think until the driver said he was taking a goat to a party. Even Sean got his own goat-in-a-car experience when we were travelling by chapa. The driver pulled over at one point, picked up a goat and shoved it under the back seat next to Sean’s backpack. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll tie her down so she can’t chew your bag.”

Goat transportation doesn’t stop with cars. I’ve seen goats attached in all manners to bicycles. Sometimes there are two people and a goat on the same bike! Either the goat is strapped to the back and the second person is sitting on the cross bar, or the person is on the back and the goat is riding up front with its hooves draped over the handlebars. In any case, goat-by-bike transportation is always entertaining.

Sometimes you have to get the goats across the river. Goats aren’t good swimmers, so people put the goats on their heads and wade through the water themselves. Carrying your goat is perfectly acceptable. Often I’ll see people walking down the road with a goat over their shoulders.

My most recent goat story is from Jenna. She was walking through town and saw a man yelling at some kids with a herd of goats. It was their father telling them to turn the goats into the police station because they had been found grazing on his land. Later, Jenna saw the herd of goats in the police station compound waiting to be picked up. Apparently the owner of the goats will know to look in the “lost and found” for his misplaced herd.

There are probably other goat anecdotes that I’m forgetting but it all seems commonplace these days. It will be strange to return home to a place where goats are confined to petting zoos. I wonder what folks back home would think if I rode through town with a goat on my handlebars…

It's a Thursday night and I'm listening to the wind howl outside. The doors are rumbling in the doorjams, a metal gate is swinging on a rusty hinge and the trees are rustling. The lights keep flickering on and off as gusts jostle the shoddy wiring to the house. August is the month of swirling winds that pick up dust and knock the red leaves off amendoa trees. The winds signal a change in weather. We're leaving winter and headed quickly towards summer. Already today I began to feel the heat. During Chemistry class I had a moment of wooziness and realized that, while explaining the contributions of revolutionary chemist Antoine Lavoisier before his death by guilotine, I had gotten rather over-heated. We had a lot of material to cover that period because we started 20 minutes late. I have the misfortune of teaching a post-lunch period on Thursdays and Fridays and the cooks are chronically late in preparing the daily beans and rice. Granted they are cooking over woodfire, but you'd think they could start earlier! To add insult to injury, my second class today (Biology) was cut 20 minutes short when we lost electricity. It was already getting dark and I had to face the fact that my students couldn't see the board or their notebooks. When they started using the light from their cell phones to see the page in front of them I finally gave up. These interruptions are irritating and it’s tempting to think how nice it would be to work in a reliable American school system, but then I remember all the unexpected interruptions we had to deal with there - snow days, bomb threats, fire drills... at least I don't have those things to worry about.

Other than the typical inefficiencies and frustrations, things are going well. My little bird walks are becoming a weekly affair. Last Saturday I had a large group of male students. A few of them got pretty serious about it, telling the others to be quiet so they could hear the birds, intensely following a dove from tree to tree and arguing over the identification, excitedly pointing out every bird they saw... It's pretty darn cute to see teenage boys get worked up about nature.

My girls group (REDES) is getting back on its feet. We're still making earrings out of bottle caps and scraps of capulana and I'm hoping the girls can begin selling them soon. Our next project will be embroidery, taught by my neighbor Dona Adelia. The meetings are a chance to talk about important issues and we're working on a curriculum including topics like safe sex, family planning, nutrition, good study skills, higher education, HIV/AIDS, etc... Other plans include taking the girls to a conference in September, writing to American pen pals and visiting the preschool where we painted the mural last semester. I just hope I can keep their interest and continue having a good turn-out.

There's also work to be done in my garden. I had a huge harvest of tomatoes, many of which I've given to neighbors since we couldn't eat them all ourselves. It was very satisfying to hand a huge bag of tomatoes to the same neighbor who was quick to criticize my failed corn and pumpkin. He was actually full of praise saying, "Wow! And you grew those without any artificial pesticides or fertilizers? Those are healthy tomatoes." He said he'll help me when I replant the garden. It will be good to have his input.

Tomatoes from my gardenThere isn't much time for extracurriculars at the moment though. I've been swamped with work trying to plan Chemistry and Biology. It didn't make sense to plan too much before the semester started seeing as I didn't know what I was teaching, how many periods, how many students, etc... I didn't find out I was teaching Chemistry until after classes began! Needless to say I have a lot of catching up to do, on top of grading. I'm hoping to get ahead with my lesson planning so I can relax a bit and be better prepared. Sometimes I need to do a scavenger hunt around town to find supplies for an in-class demonstration but I have a growing collection of useful materials in my room: balloons, vinegar, baking soda, iodine, food coloring, modeling clay...

I'm also trying to keep up my running habit. It's important for my sanity. But to run, I must wake up early, which means not staying up late preparing for school. Also, as summer approaches, I have to run earlier and earlier to escape the heat, sometimes waking up at 4:30 am!

That's my simple life here in Mozambique at the moment. I'm off to bed now because it's already late. Nobody is blasting music and the neighborhood dogs are quiet so I'll be able to fall asleep to the sound of the wind.

So I’m back from my bird walk by the river. I took three of my female students with me. At first two of them were talking on their cell phones, but once we started to see birds they really got into it. We ended up identifying 10+ different birds and talked a little about where you see them, the kinds of nests they build, how they hunt, etc… It was late enough to see bats hunting too, which led to a brief lesson on echolocation. I love teaching science outside! It’s also great to get to know students outside of class, which is easy at this school since many of them live on campus.

I like to be available for my students and sometimes they reach out to me. The other day, for example, a student came up to me after Biology class and asked me to feel her breast. I did, and felt a large tumor. She said she’s had it for about a year now and had already gone to the hospital. They sent her home with some stomach pills which obviously did nothing. This morning I accompanied her to the hospital and the nurse tried to do the same thing. When I saw the prescription for ibuprofen, paracetamol and erythromycin (pain relief, pain relief, antibiotic). I stormed back in and told the nurse that merely poking the tumor and writing a prescription was not ok! I asked to see the doctor but, it being Saturday, he was out. We will return on Monday and demand a biopsy. If they don’t have the means to do that here I plan on going to Xai Xai. I was frustrated with the hospital for giving out pills like candy, but I was glad to have been there to help. Patients like my student go to the hospital and leave with pills thinking they have been treated when really they’ve only been processed and dismissed.

Having venting my frustrations, I want to express that, despite all the challenges, I am feeling good about this semester. Although I enjoyed teaching English and think I made a difference, I think teaching science in Portuguese will be even more powerful. I have a chance to give these kids some valuable knowledge that can improve their lives. Knowledge of science will help them in agriculture, it will help them to stay healthy and make informed decisions, and it will help them to see and appreciate their surroundings in a more profound way. Science is also a great tool for teaching critical thinking skills, which are all but erased by the “memorize and repeat” method they are subjected to throughout primary school. Even though the task seems impossible, I can find solace in the small accomplishments. There’s no way they will leave my course without learning something valuable. And I am learning too.

Things are peaceful today. I left the front door open to enjoy the gentle, late afternoon breeze and perfect temperature. I’m waiting to see if some students drop by to join me on a bird walk by the river. On Monday I saw a crocodile for the first time in Mozambique! I was running over the bridge and some ladies were leaning over the rail pointing to something swimming upstream. I’m hoping it gets left alone since fewer people are bathing and washing their clothes in the river this time of year, but you can’t really blame the locals for hating crocodiles. One of the other teachers told me about his friend getting killed by one in that very river. Anyway, I’m hoping to see it again during my bird walk.

I took it easy today but I need to get back to planning soon. Classes began last week. I’m no longer teaching English or Computers since I’m working full time at the Agricultural Institute teaching Biology and Chemistry. The Chemistry got added on at the last minute. Actually, I only received my class schedule on the first day of classes (Monday)! Needless to say it’s been a hectic week trying to plan my lessons the day before and write my curriculum at the same time.

Teaching two sciences in Portuguese is tough, but I’m enjoying the challenge. So far things are going well. The students at the Agricultural Institute are more serious and better behaved than those at the regular secondary school where I was teaching English, despite the fact that many of them are younger (8th grade equivalent). My Portuguese is good enough to communicate my points, but does cause occasional confusion. The students are pretty forgiving and I make a point to say we are “learning together.” This week I gave a general introduction to studying science and tried to get them excited about it. We learned about the Scientific Method and performed a few small experiments as a class. We’ll have to move faster next week to cover more material, but I still want to do lots of demonstrations and group activities to keep them engaged (and to give me a break from lecturing in Portuguese).

A note on the curriculum: it’s impossible! For the technical high schools, they squeeze three years’ worth of material (8th, 9th and 10th grade) into one year. Each of those curriculums is overstuffed as it is and the end result is a curriculum that covers more material than any college-level intro science course. In Chemistry I’m expected to take them from “define a solid, liquid and gas” to the basics of Organic Chemistry and protein structure. There is pressure to cover the material since there is a national exam for each discipline. Not surprisingly most kids fail the national exams. Some of those kids drop out and others repeat. I have a quite a few repeaters in my class.

Another challenge has to do with the school itself. While our school was being renovated, we moved into the upstairs of the neighboring superior technical school (a very small university). There’s not enough space, so the dorms and offices and classrooms are all on top of each other. There are classrooms connected to dorms without even a door to separate them. Bunk beds are crammed into very tight and uncomfortable living quarters and students have little space to live, let alone hang out.

Last semester there was a shortage of classrooms. This semester there are more students and an even greater shortage. Since I’m teaching first years, we get the shaft and have to wander around looking for a classroom where another teacher hasn’t shown up. If we don’t find one, we get stuck in a large, echoey room with a tiny chalkboard propped up on a table. The chalkboard has water damage so I can only write on half of it, leaning uncomfortably over the table to do so. The kicker is that they finished renovating the old school about two years ago and it is sitting there unoccupied collecting bat droppings while we continue to suffer makeshift quarters.

Why aren’t we using the beautiful renovated school? The answer I keep hearing is that the school is afraid to move into the new building before they are provided with new desks, chalkboards, tractors and other promised school supplies, the rationale being that the Ministry of Education will deny them these materials if they think they are “making due” without them. Apparently the money is there and hasn’t made it through the chain of bureaucracy. It’s been two years, which makes me wonder if it ever will…

A third challenge is student life at the school. So far I’ve been impressed with the students, but they are pushed very hard. First of all they have an intense course load. On top of that, they spend the mornings working hard in the fields. When they’re not working in the fields or in class, they’re cleaning the school compound. The kids who live in the dorms have to do a lot of this work on an empty stomach. A lot of days they don’t get breakfast and sometimes they don’t eat anything until late in the afternoon. On Friday I had to delay my 2:25 pm class by 20 minutes to let them eat lunch. They hadn’t eaten all day. When they do eat, all that is served is rice and beans. They eat beans twice a day, every day. Apparently they used to get meat once a week, but they haven’t seen that for a while.

When I heard about the living conditions of students I was appalled, but at the same time I can see that the school is struggling just to keep afloat. There isn’t much money coming in from the ministry and although the students pay to attend, it isn’t very much. Still, I am inspired by the eagerness of some of my students and I look forward to getting to know them. There were very few enrollments this year so I only have 33 students but I’m teaching them two disciplines - a total of 10 class periods a week. Each period is a new lesson, so that’s a lot of planning on my part but it’s enjoyable work and it keeps me busy.

Mulungos on the beach

Boats on shore

"The Perch"

Plenty of white sand

From the bus window

Sean with a barracuda that we cooked for dinner

Sean and me

On the beach

Boats in shallow water

People fishing on a sand bar

The island reef where we snorkeled

The dhow boat that took us to the island

After snorkeling

Sean

Dhow boats

More boats

Egrets hanging out

People getting off ferries from the archipelago to the mainland

Lady showing off - damn those women are strong!

Taking bags of live crabs to market

The view from our hostel

A baobab tree

A typical scene from the school where I was teaching English

Neighborhood rugrats

Sean grating coconut

Dinner with friends

Louise, Tim, Florencio, Jenna, Sean, Me, Valerie

Sean watching the rhinos

Rhinos

Checking out a lion

Yeah, he could get through that fence if he wanted to

Hippos and rhinos by the watering hole

Elephant butt

Bull elephant

Savannah

Lions

Lions

Lions in front of our safari jeep

Lions

Ostrich

Hippos and a crocodile

The view from our door

Our bungalo

Nice scenery

Sean on the way to Execution Rock

Zebras running away

Sean

On top of Execution Rock

A family Christmas photo

In front of the hippo pond

Crocodile island

Zebra

Zebras

Warthogs and guinea hens

Some impalas

Checking out the birds

Found this guy in the road

As promised, I’m posting a blog entry about my trip with Sean. Rather than give you a play-by-play, I will post pictures and tell stories as I remember them. Here’s one:

Seashells

In Vilankulo we stayed at a beachside hostel called Baobab Beach Backpackers. On the second to last day, we went for a long walk to collect seashells. There were some magnificent ones like you might buy in a gift shop and we got a little excited. Later, as we emptied out the shopping bag on a table at the hostel, we saw the extent of our cache and, with a little guilting from one of the other guests, we agreed to put most of them back on the beach and save only the best few. The next day we took a 5 hour chapa ride to Maxixe then a wooden boat across Inhambane bay and another chapa up the peninsula to Tofo beach. At Tofo we stayed in a reed bungalow, also on the beach. The second day at Tofo after it had gotten dark, I was sorting through my bag when I heard a strange rustling sound. I was sure it was a rat since we had seen rat droppings in the room so I started looking around. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my seashells from Vilankulo rocking back and forth. I picked it up and found a hermit crab! Somehow he had survived in a plastic bag for three days! I named him “Frankie” and walked him down to the waters edge, gave him a little hermit crab pep talk and let him go. There wasn’t a hermit crab or shell to be seen, but I figured he’s a survivor. Now and then I think of Frankie dragging his shell along the wet sand in the moonlight and wonder if he’s enjoying a second chance at hermit crab life.

There’s another great one about a goat, but I’ll get to that later...

Sean left this weekend to return to the USA and I’ll be starting classes on Monday. He kept up a journal during his adventure here in… (gasp!)... AFRICA! and he wrote four guest blog entries, which that I’ve posted below. It was nice to hear his reflections. Sometimes he noticed things that I didn’t or had forgotten about. Other times he reaffirmed my own conclusions. I think you’ll enjoy the new point of view.

I also need to catch you up on our adventures so later I’ll post some entries and photos of Swaziland, Vilankulo and Tofo after that. Be excited – there are lions!

Some final thoughts while I’m here on the concept of vacation. Vacations are usually undertaken to escape the challenges one faces at home. To “get away” from something. But in general, vacations are typically supposed to be easier than whatever else you do while not on vacation. While I’ll never suggest that there is anything challenging about sitting on a beach on the Indian Ocean, this trip has certainly had its major challenges. But more so, getting used to this supersocial culture, its inefficiencies, and its transportation has been very difficult. I felt like I had really accomplished something after hearing some German friends reveal that they were looking to flee Mozambique, entirely fed up with the transportation system. I have gotten at least a little more comfortable here, to the point where I can get on a chapa by myself, can walk at night in Maputo without shaking in my boots, and can tell when I’m being lied to at the market. Much of this trip has been paradise, but it has been interspersed with intense unease (relative to my standards). I sure appreciate Tofo beach a lot more having gone through comparative hell to get there.

Africa has definitely loosened me up, made me look at my own culture from the outside, and allowed me to experience firsthand some of the challenges faced by those living here, allowing me to have a much better understanding of why things do or do not work here, and how to make change or take action in a way that is effective and appropriate for this place. After just 4 weeks here, I think the key realization is that I really don’t understand the system at all. Perspective has become one of the most important words to me, and in no small thanks to Clancy.

While I have definitely enjoyed my time here, I am excited to return to the comfort of the United States. In some ways, my return to the U.S. will itself feel like a vacation. I suppose the most successful vacations are ones where you take some back home with you.

Clancy and Valerie have gone off to school for the morning, and the cleaning woman inadvertently locked me in the house, so I’m lounging about, trying to sort out this business of being a white minority. It is hard to separate my skin color from the other reasons why one from the U.S. may be uncomfortable here. Being a minority means a lot of things, and skin color is only one of many aspects in which my minority status is expressed, especially in this country. The language gap is probably the most difficult part of it all, even though I’m becoming fairly decent at understanding Portuguese. It is pretty uncomfortable to hear the word “mulungo” interspersed in (loud), rapid Changana, knowing that the strangers sitting next to you are talking about you. I try to remember that one’s personality doesn’t change depending on the language being spoken: Folks are very friendly in Portuguese, and are probably no different when speaking Changana, even if it is rude to do so when we’re in earshot. In the next town over, which has been historically quite removed from foreigners, I definitely felt stared at and isolated. Clancy mentioned that the folks there have a habit of informing her of exactly where she and the other PCVs have been at every point throughout the day.

At our site, however, I’ve felt surprisingly more comfortable than I expected to. The market is a bustling place, but I seem to be a passing fad. It’s also significant that I’m a tall, white male, which apparently engenders an air of intimidation rather than the vulnerability that a female would experience. As a result, I’m mostly left alone, and Clancy isn’t the target of cat calls when I’m around. On the chapa, no one seems to care about me, I’m just another obstacle to climb over to sit down (or otherwise occupy, creatively, a piece of empty space in the vehicle). At school, the students are mostly respectful, and are either very approachable or very shy. Beneath the loud and dynamic entity that is the classroom atmosphere, I could tell that the students really cared about making a good impression on me and wishing me the best on my visit here. One student raised his hand and stood up to say, “Tell people in America: we may be of different colors, but we are all one man.” I don’t feel like just a celebrity, but also an ambassador by default, and more often than not a catalyst for positive curiosity. I do feel privileged here for sure, and 95% of people here have been wonderful.

I immediately noticed that the PCV girls in this province stick together like sisters, in much the same way that minorities gravitate together in the U.S. I understand much better now why neighborhoods around the world often end up ethnically segregated, since minorities want to be in the company of those who are sharing the same experience. Human nature, really. Being drawn toward the familiar.

All in all, being a minority keeps me on my toes and engaged all day, every moment, but mostly because I know I’m being evaluated constantly. I do feel safe here… not safe like in the U.S., but as safe as a white person can be in third-world Africa.

It is interesting that school seems to be a construct of American or European industrialism, and is applied to other developing countries regardless of whether this method is consistent with their culture. For instance, every aspect of Mozambican culture is social and collective. Truly, no man is an island in this country, and people grow up relying on each other. Now imagine putting 45 teenage Mozambicans in a small classroom and asking them to something absolutely independently: take an exam without speaking. Moreover, they don’t seem to be bothered that the teacher is watching them cheat. They barely try to hide it, and every time Clancy turns her back, half the class looks around for moral support and silent (or not-so-silent) conferencing. Even when I’m looking right at them! Kind of like herding cats or filling a bucket of water using a slotted spoon.

Though Clancy’s classes hybridize 10th grade material with pre-school behavior, the students are certainly interested in learning, so much so that they are at the edge of their seat to try out every new English phrase. Still, I can’t help but feel that the structure of western schools doesn’t work well here. There is a lot to like about this student body and culture. Half of the class jumps up to volunteer in English exercises and dialogues- that just doesn’t happen in the states! I feel like these kids could be extremely good at things which we struggle at, but the structure of the schools must be re-directed to realize this potential. What kind of alternatives are there to the style of secondary schooling we receive in the United States? I have no idea! How else could the same important information be delivered and received in a way that is more conducive to and effective in this extremely social culture?

Hi all, this is Clancy’s boyfriend, Sean. I’ve been having a fantastic time visiting Mozambique the last 4 weeks, and I am about to make the long trek back to the U.S. tomorrow.

Being a visitor has been daunting, fascinating, and informative for both of us. For Clancy, a fresh dose of American perspective after 9 months of acclimating to Mozambican culture has reminded her of certain weird or abnormal aspects of the culture that have become second nature to her. (For instance, traveling with 26 people in a chapa built for 14 is not something you would normally expect to get used to). For me, having Clancy as a guide has allowed me to get a truly Mozambican experience without [most of] the frustration of being alone and disoriented in an unfamiliar place.

I’m getting familiar with the pace of life here, and beginning to understand “Mozambique time.” It seems that Mozambicans are active all day, but the pace is slower, and less can be accomplished in x hours. For instance, a half-day in town can be filled up by buying a single bag of groceries, printing 2 pages of a document, withdrawing money from an ATM, and getting an egg sandwich. Why? People walk slow, talk slow, and must chat with anyone and everyone in passing. Every item is purchased from a different person at a different stall, accompanied by a short conversation. I like it very much because you often meet the actual person who planted and harvested the item you will consume. Buying food from a vendor takes a while because money exchange takes several minutes for no particular reason.

Mostly, the infrastructure is lacking, so tasks take longer because technology is not setting up a foundation upon which to work, and no steps can be skipped as a result. Tangentially, cell phones must have improved the quality of life dramatically. People always seem to be on the move, but moving slowly, and never in too much of a hurry to hang out. “I’ll be there soon,” could mean anything here.

The big, bad, scary image of Africa as a sad, sick, dangerous place is wrong. Some parts are bad, but there are plenty of good strangers watching out to make sure you don’t wander into those parts. People will go an hour out of their way to make sure you get to the right bus stop. Folks are impoverished and live very difficult lives, but they are happy, thankful, and peaceful. At the market, if you buy a 10 met sandwich with a 100 met bill, the vendor will walk away to find change, and you can be confident that they will return with your change, even if it takes 10 minutes. If you get on an international minibus to Swaziland, you can turn your passport over to the driver knowing that you’ll get it back (though this did give me a minor heart attack the first time).

I’m back after a long hiatus from the blog world. I won’t try to catch you up on the last month and a half, but I will try to explain my lapse in posting. There’s no good excuse really, I was just in a slump. My motivation was lacking and I was feeling all the symptoms of burn-out. I’ll explain the frustration I was feeling at that time. Don’t get me wrong, there were still a lot of bright moments – enlightening conversations, wheels turning in the classroom, having fun with friends, travelling to the beach, watching the World Cup… But it’s important to tell the whole story, the ups and the downs.

It started towards the end of the semester at the Agricultural School. Things were dragging. Attendance at REDES was dwindling. Girls lost interest towards the end of the semester and wanted to go to town on their free afternoon instead of attending meetings. The corn and pumpkin in my garden failed miserably and my neighbor didn’t hesitate to explain, after the fact, all the things I did wrong. The semester ended at the Agricultural School so my REDES and permaculture projects, which didn’t have much momentum anyway, went on hold for two months. In the meantime I was still teaching English at the other secondary school. The students there are known for being challenging and it was wearing on me. I felt like I spent hours planning a lesson only to have it flop because troublemakers would waste huge amounts of class time despite my best efforts at classroom control. A few students were really motivated, but the whole class got dragged down by the others who would shout ten or fifteen minutes before the bell, “teacher, time is over!” “teacher, I’m hungry!” “teacher, I need bathroom pass!” In addition, they all seem to have the attention span of a six-year-old and it’s extremely hard to keep them on task. Sean attended one of my classes during the last week of school and accurately described it as “teaching high school and preschool at the same time.”

In addition to work-related burn-out I was getting tired of the stresses of daily life. Everywhere I go I am noticed. It’s like being a celebrity. People know where you are and what you’re doing at any moment, they gossip about you… Everyone wants to talk to you, wants your attention, there’s no escape. I can’t walk down the street without saying “hi” to everyone and stopping to have conversations with anyone who wants to. It is a charming aspect of small town life but it gets tiring. Sometimes I want to go from point “A” to point “B” and not deal with anyone, but that would be unacceptably rude and could hurt my reputation in the community.

On top of my celebrity status there are constant reminders that I stick out solely by virtue of my skin color. I am often addressed by people as “mulungo” (“white person”). It makes sense. What are they going to say? “Hey, you in the hat!” Often I’m the only white person around. But it gets annoying. What’s harder to deal with is the negative attention from children who see me as some strange animal. They chant “muluuuungo!” or shout it rudely “hey mulungo! hey mulungo! hey mulungo!” For some reason they don’t feel the need to respect me like their other elders. Both children and adults ask me for money. If not money they ask me for other things – my clothes, my stuff… Men unapologetically ask me for my body. It’s constant. You can get used to it, but it still wears on you and after a while your patience wears thin. The only true escape is in my house. Sometimes I hole up and try to find peace in that sanctuary, at which point the neighbor children begin banging incessantly on my door wanting to borrow building blocks or paper and pens, wanting to show me what they’ve drawn, asking me to take care of a boo-boo and give them a band aid…

I was in serious need of a vacation. I’m writing now after a week of travelling in Swaziland with Sean. Swaziland is so peaceful, people generally leave you alone, the scenery is gorgeous and you can see all the African big game. It was just the escape I needed, but I’ll post about that later. Sean’s been here for two months and will be writing some guest entries. He’s helping me put everything in perspective. This is all pretty new for him, but we’re having a great time. Next on our itinerary is a trip up the coast to see the beautiful beaches of Mozambique. He’ll leave right before I start the next semester at the Agricultural School. I’ll be teaching Biology. No more English. I’m hoping to have renewed energy and motivation and get a strong start to the new semester. I also plan on continuing my regular blogging, so stay tuned.

(This is a post I wrote quite a while ago but never put up. Better late than never.)

For a test grade at the end of their unit on HIV/AIDS, I assigned my English students a composition. They had to write about someone they know who has been affected by HIV/AIDS in some way. Yesterday evening I sat down to begin grading. I was sorting the papers alphabetically but stopped when I saw one of my favorite students and decided to read that one first. I read it once through and put it down. My head was spinning and I got up. I took a deep breath and when I let it out there were tears in my eyes. How was I going to get through these?

I decided to take a bath and noticed we were nearly out of water. I went outside to see if it was running and accidentally locked myself out of the house. Valerie was gone and there was no one to let me back in so I started walking. It was a half moon but it was enough to light up the clouds and illuminate the rutted dirt road around campus. I was afraid someone would see me wandering aimlessly and looking up at the sky. I felt lost and dizzy, like the ground was about to give way beneath me, but made it back to the house. I paused at the garden to watch the moonlight reflect off the moist green leaves then sat on the porch, letting the mosquitoes bite me, crying quietly until Valerie returned with the keys.

Moments like that I am faced with the reality that young people are dying early because of ignorance. When I first walked into the classroom all I saw was a sea of faces. Now there are names and voices and stories… individuals. I can’t think in percentages anymore, I think in individuals. You can’t be objective when you look into someone’s eyes. It’s so real, this epidemic. And it’s not fair. Young people live and make mistakes. But why must so many promising lives be cut short?

Follow up:

As I was reading the above mentioned compositions, I felt frustrated and angry not only at the reality of HIV in my community but also at the audacity of my students. There were so many copied or plagiarized compositions that I had to offer a make-up composition because too many received automatic zeros. To me, that reduces the legitimacy of everyone else’s stories. It becomes hard for me to know who was writing from the heart and who was inaccurately copying from an HIV education pamphlet in English. Was my first student telling the truth about his status or did he want a good grade? When I handed it back to him I mentioned that I appreciated his story and was available to talk.

Regardless about what they decided to write, I know that all of my students are somehow affected by HIV. A friend, a relative, a neighbor… they must know someone whose life has changed dramatically as a result of the disease. I also know that the odds are high that at least a few of them are infected themselves. I wish they would take this reality seriously. It’s a scary thing to have to live with, especially as a teenager, but ignorance can not be an excuse for needless suffering.

I recently took a vacation to Swaziland for the Bushfire music festival. It was four days of awesome afro-beat/indie music, great food and dancing. There were people in animal skins with drums, women in crazy outfits and recycled jewelry and "emo" guys with eyeliner tears down their cheeks. The concert-goers were an equally eclectic group from all over the world. Jenna, Valerie and I stayed at the Mlilwane Game Park reserve and got to see some classic African wildlife including impalas and other ungulates, wildebeast, warthogs, velvet monkeys, zebras, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, birds... We got pictures of some of it. There was no need to pay for a game drive since you could just walk down the road and see the wildlife on foot. Signs warned us not to get too close as there were no fences separating you from the animals. All in all it was a great adventure, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. I plan on returning to Swaziland in July to see lions, elephants, white rhinos and giraffes in Hlane Game Park.

Crossing the border.

We caught a ride and made a friend.

Swazi countryside

Our lovely accomodations, a "beehive hut"

The doorway to our beehive

The view from our hut

Impalas

Read the sign

Crocodile/hippo pond

There's the croc

More impalas

Valerie and me

Warthog crossing

Warthog digging up grubs

Warthog and zebras

Zebras!

Another beautiful undulate

Wildebeast

This guy was hanging around our hut

Brilliant blue kingfisher

At the festival - funky inside venue

The big stage outside

Housemates : )

Jenna, Anna, yours truly and Valerie

Hanging out with local kids at a grocery store

As promised, here are some photos of the evolution of my garden. It’s amazing to look at what was once rock-hard, dry, dusty ground and see big beautiful green leaves and soft soil. Now it’s time to organize the second phase: training students in this technique so we can make gardens for people suffering from HIV and malnutrition. It’s a big challenge and will take a while to get off the ground, but I’m hopeful. Before the garden

The ground was rock hard

The neighborhood kids helped out

I pay my labor in cookies

Digging the trenches

One bed dug

Notice the hole and swales for water control

After planting I covered the beds in straw

Yay, things are growing!

And growing

Tomatoes after transplanting, carrots on the left

The pumpkin is taking over

Corn, beans and pumpkin in the same bed

Swales in action during a rain storm

Very fresh produce

Mozambique is big. Really big. Look at the bottom of the blog page to see a map with Mozambique lined up against the eastern seaboard of the US. It’s even bigger when you consider the poor state of ground transportation. This didn’t really sink in until this weekend when I travelled north to Maxixe to visit Luisa, a Mozambican friend who I met at the REDES conference. It looks close on the map, but it takes seven hellish hours on a chapa to get there.

I was out the door by 6:00 am, just as the sun was coming up and got a ride into town where I serendipitously caught the Maxixe chapa as it was filling up. They insisted on putting me in the front next to the driver. This always happens and it makes me very uncomfortable for several reasons. One: I get that seat because I’m a white woman. Two: the driver always wants my phone number. Three: I have an unobstructed view of the terrifying scene unfolding on the other side of the windshield.

The first leg of the trip goes down a road I have travelled many times. We passed women selling fried dough balls and people waiting at the end of dirt roads going nowhere. Little boys with reed fishing poles were sitting with their feet dangling above the canal that runs alongside the road. The irrigation spills off into little wetlands that sport a variety of birds. I saw ten cattle egrets roosting in a low tree and a host of other unidentified birds with long and interesting bills. I wished I had my binoculars but of course that would be impractical on a chapa going 70mph where you can barely move your elbows.

When we passed Xai Xai I was no longer in familiar territory. The road degraded into a pothole ridden mess. It then got even worse when we entered the construction zone where most of the pavement had been torn up leaving only rutted sand. The bushes and road signs were painted with orange dust and it blew in the windows of the chapa. This continued for two or three hours until we moved onto fresh pavement and my brain finally stopped knocking against my skull.

Occasionally we would pass through a tiny cluster of cement shops and restaurants brightly painted with advertisements for Coca-Cola, condoms, cell service and beer. If you blinked you would miss it and enter back into a long stretch of widely spaced reed and mud homes mixed in amongst cashew and mango trees, tiny farm plots, and sandy yards with pecking chickens. The main difference between this and my region were the coconut palms. The farther north we travelled the more palm trees we saw. There were foot holes chopped into the trunks where people had climbed up to harvest the coconuts and there were coconuts everywhere! - huge piles of them covered with leaves on the side of the road, giants sacks of them being hefted onto the bed of a truck by strong men, basins of them on the heads of women approaching the windows of our chapa.

Finally we entered into the city of Maxixe and I hopped a different chapa that took me out of town and left me on a sandy stretch of road lined with reed homes and fences. I bought some tangerines and was munching on one when I heard “Clancy!” I saw Luisa, spit out my tangerine seeds and gave her a big hug. We walked up the road and entered one of the palm leaf fences. Her yard had an avocado tree, some pumpkin vines, a little corn and garlic, and some sort of citrus I couldn’t identify. At the back was a tidy three room house with a cement floor and walls of neatly packed reeds. It was adorable and she had decorated the interior walls with translucent white sheets to keep out the dust.

From the top of the road you could see the distant ocean and the sea breeze made for a cool and pleasant evening. I took a bucket bath outside behind a reed wall and then we made a spectacular shrimp dinner. After dinner we took a walk up the sandy hill. Children stopped their games when they saw us and started trailing behind shouting “howareyouuuu!” and “mulungo!” Turns out the word for “white person” is the same up north too, even though they speak Chichopi instead of Changana. When the children had become sufficiently annoying we went back to her house and watched Brazilian soap operas before bed. Mosquitoes easily passed through the spaces in the reed walls and there was no mosquito net. The insecticide Luisa sprayed seemed to do nothing because I woke up covered in bites, praising Doxycycline and wondering how Luisa doesn’t constantly get malaria.

We had leftover shrimp for breakfast, took baths and went to the city for church (luckily she is Catholic, which made for a relatively short mass as opposed to the 5 hour long evangelical services). Afterwards we took the ferry across the bay to Inhambane. I was short on time, anticipating the seven hour ride home, but we were able to tour the city and I bought postcards and a big straw hat. After quite a bit of walking we sat on a bench to rest, watching fishermen waist deep in the water managing the fishing lines in their bare hands and stuffing the catch into a cloth pouch slung over their shoulders. A few dhows were out sailing in the distance and other boats listed to one side on the muddy shore. For the ride back I insisted on taking one of the little wooden ferries, basically an aquatic version of the chapa. While we waited for it to fill up I watched a boy catching fish of the side. Like the men on the beach, he had only fishing line, hooks, a few bait shrimp and his bare hands. In the fifteen minutes we waited there he pulled up five little black striped fish and slipped them into a bucket. When the boat was frighteningly full, we motored off across the bay, scaring up three flamingoes that flew overhead.

Back in Maxixe I bought some cashews for the road and bid farewell to Luisa, promising to return in July. The trip back was just as long and painful as the trip there, but it was worth it. It’s hard to make friends with Mozambican women my age here. Most of them already have children and live hard and practical lives. We don’t generally find too much in common. Luisa is 26 and living in Maxixe while she finishes 12th grade. We both have the freedom that comes with not having children or husbands. Had there been a man in her house it may have been completely different, but since there wasn’t we were able to hang out and feel at ease. I hope to make more great Mozambican friends like her.

During the past few weeks as I was teaching my English students about HIV/AIDS, I kept thinking about the movie RENT and the message of “living with not dying from HIV.” The Mozambican version of this slogan is “vida positiva” (“positive life”), as in you can be HIV “positive” and still have a “positive” outlook on life. Seeing as over 1 in 4 people in my province is HIV positive, I suspect that nearly all of my students have known someone who has had the disease. It’s possible that one or more of them is HIV positive themselves. Therefore, I was surprised at the level of ignorance and stigma I encountered in the classroom. I heard things like “if you have HIV you are dead,” and there were a few cases of jokers pointing to a classmate and saying “hey teacher, this guy has HIV.” When I told them they were going to have a guest speaker who was HIV positive they were aghast. “Teacher, you mean the visitor… she has HIV?”

There is a hospital down the street from my school where another PCV works and I often stop by to visit. The hospital does great work helping HIV positive people in surrounding communities, even going door-to-door to check up on them (which is hard when they live out in the bush and there is no car to take you there). I had arranged one of the hospital’s trained HIV positive activists to come speak at my school but of course when I came to pick her up she was nowhere to be found. I talked to my friend Dona Olga, a technician at the hospital. She left and came back with two women, one older and one younger with a baby strapped to her back. Apparently they were just patients waiting in line for their anti-retroviral treatments and she had convinced them on the spot to come speak to my classes.

A fellow English teacher, Bernard (remember the lobolo and the killing of the cow?), was kind enough to come in and translate from Changana to English since the women didn’t speak Portuguese. Each woman told her story in turn: how she found out she was HIV positive, how her family reacted, how she began taking the anti-retroviral treatment and is now healthy and strong enough to keep working the fields. The woman with the little girl strapped to her back explained that she found out as a result of mandatory HIV testing for pregnant women. The students were amazed to learn that an HIV positive woman can give birth to an HIV negative baby if a high dose of anti-retrovirals are administered before and after birth.

The women talked about prevention, treatment and about the need to fight discrimination and stigma. They said their families were supportive but they were afraid to tell their neighbors. They reminded the students that you cannot get HIV from sleeping in the same bed as, eating of the same plates as, kissing, hugging, touching… a person with HIV. Lastly, they asked us all to be supportive of our neighbors and friends who are HIV positive.

During the break period we went across the street and I and bought sodas and cookies to share. We chit chatted about our respective lives and Bernard translated. The little girl on the woman’s back grabbed and sipped at a Fanta and the mother said something in Changana. Bernard smiled.

“What is it?” I asked.

“She said that the soda you gave her is blessed.”

The students really seemed to engage with the speakers. Here were two women who look like their aunts and grandmothers, who speak their native tongue, standing in front of them alive and well and unafraid to talk about their HIV status. In each class, a student got up to thank them for their courage in coming to speak with us. Perhaps the most striking moment was when Bernard and I shook hands and kissed the women at the end of the visit. The older woman said, “see? They are not afraid!” and the students clapped.

I’m tired of being a spokesperson for the American people. I used to think it was part of my job description as a PCV, trying to represent the reality and diversity that is the USA. Now I realize how pretentious I was being. I realized this after school today as I was sitting in the main office chatting with our pedagogical director. He was asking the typical, “Will you take me to America with you?”

I said I’d pack him in my suitcase.

“No really, I’m tired of Mozambique. I already have my education, now I want to see America.”

The conversation continued with me explaining that he needs a visa, not easy to get for a Mozambican entering the US. Still, he was hopeful he’d find a way, joking that we could get married, asking me what American life is like.

“It’s better there, right?” he said.

I told him that depends on who you are. I explained that life can be very difficult for some people, that there exists poverty and violence. He asked what life would be like for him upon arriving in the States. I said that life for newly arrived immigrants can be very tough indeed.

“When they see me will they say, ‘Oh you are Mozambican?’” he asked.

“Well no, probably not,” I said. “They’ll probably think you’re American until you start talking. There are a lot of people that look like you in the States.”

“Really?” he said, “there are a lot of black people?”

“Yes of course,” I replied.

“They were slaves right?” he asked.

“Well their ancestors likely were yes. Generations ago people were taken from Africa and sold as slaves in the US.”

“So they’re African after all?”

“No, they’re African-American.”

At this point I was feeling good about my tactfulness with the race issue, especially given that I was speaking in Portuguese, but I knew I was going to slip up at some point. Whenever I have these conversations with Mozambicans I eventually say something I regret.

“You call them African-American after all? Not negro?”

“Yes, it’s not like here where you say negro or negra.”

“But they call each other ‘nigga,’” he said.

I have heard my students say this. I see it scrawled on the chalkboard after break periods. Mozambican kids hear it in rap songs but don’t know about the hate-filled connotations of that word, the controversy. When I ask what it means they say, “It means ‘black person,’ like me teacher.”

My students relate most to the segments of American culture featuring people that look more like them, but what finds its way to Mozambique is not a fair sampling of African-American heritage and culture. Rather they get a distillation of the most sexualized, materialistic and violent gangster rap our country has to offer. I don’t know why this happened, but it’s what I see. Mozambican kids idolize and emulate these images. They wear cheap brass “bling” over their uniforms. They write “G-unit” on the chalkboard. I was upset to walk into class one day and see an enlarged and frighteningly accurate drawing of a handgun done in chalk on the board. A bullet was leaving the gun and headed for a face.

When we did a lesson on professions and future aspirations, I had students in each class tell me they wanted to be “hustlers” and “gangsters.” I even had one tell me he wanted to be a terrorist.

“Do you know what a gangster is?” I asked.

“Yes teacher, he is a big guy, a big chief.”

“Gangsters kill people,” I said.

“Yeaaaaahh, they are big men with guns!” he said excitedly.

“Do you know who they kill?” I asked. Silence. “They kill mothers and fathers and sons and daughters. Do you want to be a gangster?”

He looked down, “No teacher.”

“Good, I hope that you will not.”

I don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes. Rather, I want to more accurately represent the diversity of America. I want to tell the story of all its peoples. But what I’m realizing now is that I am not a representative of American diversity. I am only a representative of my own life experience. So inevitably when I try to represent what I cannot, I run into trouble.

When my director said, “but they call each other ‘nigga,’”

I said, “Well, that’s ‘gangster language.’ I can’t call them that, I must say African-American.”

“But they can call you ‘white?’” he asked.

“Well… yes.” I said.

“And you can’t call then ‘nigga?’” he asked.

“Of course not!” I said, exasperated, “If I did I’d be shot.”

“They’d shoot you?” he asked.

Here’s where I had gotten myself in trouble. Right here with this “they.” I was perpetuating the same stereotype that I wanted to break.

Backtracking, I said, “well no, I mean yes… it depends. In some places yes, I could get shot, but of course not everyone is like that. I want to say something… I shouldn’t group people by race like that. There are all different types of people, some good and some bad, in every race.”

I’m not sure I saved myself on that one. My director wasn’t antagonizing me, he was just curious. I’m pretty sure nothing I could have said would have offended him, but I offended myself. The race issue is hard to talk about, but it’s necessary to talk about. I will continue to talk about it. What I’m learning though is that I need to stop trying to represent the whole American people. The fact is I don’t represent all Americans, nor do I represent all female Americans, all white Americans, all 20-something Americans, all Americans form the Northeast… I only represent myself, Clancy Brown.

Being on call as a chaperone, big sister, teacher for 40 + Mozambican teenage girls for a week straight is no easy task let me tell you! But last week was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. REDES (Young Women in Education, Deveopment and Health) is a Mozambican girls’ organization started by a Peace Corps volunteer. My neighbor, Dona Adelia, joined me at this year's REDES conference. I also brought two girls from the agricultural school, Fernanda (21 years old) and Leocadia (16 years old), to represent our group.

The conference took place in Xai-Xai at a hotel on the beach, but there was little time for sunbathing. The week was jam-packed. Even by fast-paced American standards it was intense and our Mozambican counterparts complained that they didn’t have enough time to digest their meals. Some of the girls who attended have never been away from their families before, have never slept in a hotel, and have barely left their village… I can only imagine how intense this week was for them. Hopefully it opened their eyes and gave them new opportunities and hope for their futures.

Each day had a theme:

self-confidence

our healthy lives

women’s rights

your future and education

development

On Tuesday, for example, the girls learned about HIV/AIDS biology, transmission and prevention. We had an outside agency come to the hotel to offer HIV testing and counseling. It was also a day for general sex education. There were accurate diagrams of sex organs, condom demonstrations, the works! The girls made bead bracelets representing their menstrual cycle. They talked about pregnancy and family planning. There was also a nurse who came in to answer all their questions. Even though many of them receive sex-ed in schools, it’s often superficial and sometimes inaccurate information. For some, this was the first time they had a safe, girls-only environment where they could ask tough questions about sex. Ages ranged from 12 to 27 so there was a wide range of experiences. Some weren’t even clear on the details of vaginal intercourse. Others had already had many sexual partners or even suffered abortions.

Guest speakers came throughout the week to talk about their personal experiences as Mozambican women, how they overcame adversity, became educated and assumed leadership positions. The girls read a translation of the poem “My Short Skirt” from the Vagina Monologues and talked about women’s rights. We discussed gender-based violence in its many forms (beating, sexual abuse, emotional abuse). This last discussion brought out personal accounts by some girls that brought me to tears later in my hotel room.

Sexual abuse is frighteningly common in Mozambique. In small groups we discussed the particular issue of teachers having sex with their female students in exchange for passing grades. It’s considered common practice in too many schools. When word gets out the school administration usually just transfers the teacher somewhere else where he will continue to abuse his students. In general there is no justice when Mozambican women suffer sexual assault. Accordingly, their families sometimes take justice into their own hands.

With so much heavy information to absorb, it was important to break things up with a little levity. There was much singing, dancing, clapping and laughing to be had throughout the conference. Music was a fun way for the girls to express themselves on serious issues. Each day a group of girls would write and perform a song related to that day’s theme. We even had some particularly talented individuals get up in front of everyone and sing songs they had written themselves. And dancing… well, Mozambicans LOVE to dance! Any chance they had to break-it-down the girls were all over it, the teachers too!

Each afternoon, I led break-out sessions on public speaking. I have already seen what a challenge this is for my female students. In English class I normally ask for half boys and half girls when calling students to the front. The boys jump up immediately but it’s pulling teeth to get the girls to volunteer. Of course the boys like to tell me it’s because the girls are lazy and stupid, at which point I remind them that their teacher is a girl and they’d better watch their tongues! When I finally get the girls up they put a notebook in front of their face or cover their mouth with their hand. It doesn’t help that the boys vocally criticize them when they make mistakes. “See teacher? Girls don’t know anything!”

With these experiences in mind, I tried to create an environment of encouragement and positivity. We started with some warm-up activities then we brainstormed good public speaking skills. To practice we did the “60 Second Hall of Fame” where each girl took a try at standing in front of everyone and talking for 60 seconds without stopping. Those who succeeded got certificates. If they didn’t succeed they could try again at any time throughout the week.

The last day of the conference I was eating dinner when I got tapped on the shoulder. A group of girls was standing behind my chair and said “teacher, we would like to hit you.” Startled, I asked them why. “Well, you didn’t give us certificates!” I said they could have another try at the Hall of Fame after dinner, but then I was caught up in some planning meetings. Much later, around 10 pm, I got a knock on my hotel room door. Three girls came in and said they were ready to try again. We went down to the dining room, me in my bare feet, and all three of them did the whole 60 seconds no problem. They were so excited they grabbed my hands and jumped up and down for joy.

Saturday breakfast was bittersweet. I looked around at the 40-50 girls and could name two thirds of them. Some of them had shared personal stories that I will never forget. Some of them had made huge accomplishments during the week. There was much hugging and kissing and goodbyes. Later that night I got text messages from friends I had made, some of the teachers or the older students, asking if I got home safe, saying they missed me.

I learned a lot that week, but most of all I learned that making a difference isn’t about numbers and statistics. When you hear about the numbers of women affected by HIV/AIDS… you say “oh, that’s terrible.” But when you have a friend who confides in you when she discovers her HIV status, suddenly there is a face to all those numbers. It hits you that each of those women is someone’s daughter, wife, sister, mother, friend...

And those other numbers, the ones NGO’s report to show their “success” rates to donor organizations. The number of people they have “educated.” That doesn’t mean shit. You can hand out 100,000 pamphlets and not help a single person. What matters are the individuals. If I helped even just one girl find her voice, if just one girl can find a brighter future because of this conference, then it was all worth it. However, I think that not one of us who attended walked away unchanged and none of us will ever forget that week.

I did not set my alarm yesterday and was pleased to sleep in past 6:30. I was less pleased when I saw the text message from Bernard saying I must be in Hokwe at 8:50. I rushed out the door with a banana and a handful of cashews. It was a strange morning. Normally the sun is out and gaining strength by 7:00 but it was nowhere to be seen. There was only a dense fog draped over the road and the fields. It created a dream-like sensation, walking down the road, seeing bodies emerge from the mist. I saw a group of women with impressively large bundles on their heads. Their wide bottoms swayed back and forth, keeping balance as they walked. I caught up with them on the bridge and greeted them in Changana. They were delighted.

“Dishile!” (“Good morning!”)

“Dishile khanimambo! U ya kwine?” (“Good morning thank you! Where are you going?”)

“Ni ya Hokwe. U ya kwini?” (“I’m going to Hokwe. Where are you going?”)

“Ni ya bazaar.” (“I’m going to the market.”)

They told me they were on their way from harvesting in the fields. One of the giant bundles was filled with lettuce, another with pumpkin leaves. I commented on how productive their fields must be. They smiled. I continued into town and walked into a general store where I bought two pretty capulanas. Then I went straight to the chapa stop and caught one headed to Chilembene right as it was filling up.

Almost an hour later I got off in Hokwe and asked some kids how to get to Bernard’s neighborhood. One of them pointed up the road and said “That way. It’s far. You should take a car.” Lucky for me a car came up the otherwise desolate dirt road right at that moment and I flagged it down. The driver, chief of the borough, took me out to the main highway and dropped me at a line of telephone poles leading off the paved road into the bush.

He pointed, “That way. Just keep asking people, they’ll show you the way.”

I got out and asked some women, their hands soapy from washing clothes. One left and came back moments later with an older man, his skin and clothes equally weathered from years of sun.

“He’ll show you the way,” she said.

The man’s name was José Machel and we made conversation in Portuguese as we walked. I followed him down the line of telephone poles then we turned off onto a worn path that skirted a grove of cashew trees. He indicated a line of people in the distance. “We mustn’t go that way. They are headed to the cemetery,” he said. So we took a different way, passing by compounds of small circular houses and tidy swept yards. The roofs were thatched with many layers of reeds and the mud walls were painted with geometrical designs, lines and dots. Neighbors called out to José, asking where he was taking the white girl. At one point he told me to put away the umbrella I was using for the sun and we navigated the narrow space between two barbed wire fences. After about an hour of walking, I was startled by the site of rows upon rows of tiny and identical cement houses spaced out among sandy yards dotted with mango trees. Turns out it was part of a foreign-sponsored re-housing effort after the floods in 2000.

We had only to say that we were headed to a lobolo ceremony and neighbors led us straight to the home of Bernard’s parents where a large crowd of men in slacks and button-down shirts sat in plastic chairs and women in capulanas and head scarves sat on straw mats. They were all under a make-shift tent. Bernard greeted me quietly, explaining that the ceremony had begun and I sat in a chair with the men. In the center the exchange was already taking place. One person read items off a list, things requested by the bride’s family to be paid by the groom. As items were read, they were placed on a straw mat and distributed to appropriate members of the bride’s family. Stacks of 200 metical notes were counted out. Suitcases filled with new clothes and capulanas were presented. Then came cases of beer and soda, jugs of wine and, tied to a tree behind us, a huge black and white cow.

The groom himself was not present during the lobolo for fear of being beat up by his future in-laws in case the gifts didn’t meet their expectations. Instead, he sent a substitute on his behalf. This was the man dressed in a suit and polished shoes who counted out the meticais. When the amount came up short he started sweating and dug around in the many pockets of his suit to make up the difference. He hit another snag when some of the old women began complaining about the cow.

“That cow is old!” they said in Changana. “He took our daughter when she was young, yet he has the nerve to give us a cow that is old?”

After much heated discussion they accepted the cow. The ceremony ended with singing and presentation of gifts by the other guests. Each family or group was called up in song and danced with their gifts before the bride and her mother, draping them with capulanas, waving new sets of flower-printed glass cups. When it was my turn, I awkwardly presented my capulanas, kissed the bride and her mother on the cheek and sat down.

The rest of the day was left to food preparation and sitting around. After the lobolo was presented the black and white cow was replaced with another. I had the opportunity to witness the entire process of killing, butchering and cooking the cow.

(Warning, the following is not for the faint of heart)

They fastened a strap around the cow's horns and tied the animal as tightly as possible to the trunk of a mango tree. When a man came over with a hatchet I held my breath. I thought maybe he’d go for the forehead, but instead he whacked it on the back of the neck. The animal thrashed wildly against the tree. Whack! Still thrashing… whack! On the third hit the animal dropped to the ground with a thud. After a few minutes, the muscles stopped twitching and the men began cutting off the horns.

At this point I was invited to get something to eat since it would be a long time before the real meal began. Somehow I still had an apetite and finished a plate of oily pasta and French fries then sat drinking tea with the women as they cut onions and sorted rice. After a while I returned to the scene of the cow slaughter. Several men were working simultaneously, peeling back the skin, scooping clumps of blood into a pot. The rib cage and gut were opened; organs were separated and removed for cooking. Step by step the animal was disassembled. At the end nothing was left but the grassy contents of its intestines, which were buried in the sand. Most of the rest of the animal was eaten – blood, liver, tongue, brain, bone marrow… They thought I was nuts for not eating it but were kind enough to prepare me a plate of fish.

The day went on into night. People ate their fill and ate some more. Music was blasted at top volume from speakers set up on the front steps of the house. They even had the TV hooked up to show music videos. A cake was presented and broken into bite-sized pieces to be passed around to all the guests.

The singing and dancing and drinking continued, probably through the break of dawn, but I took advantage of a ride with the one single car that had somehow navigated the long sandy paths out to the party. I squeezed in the backseat with a small child on my lap and we bumped along in the dark until we made it out to the main road again. An hour or two later they dropped me at the entrance to my school compound.

One thing I have learned in my first months of Peace Corps service is that success isn't about numbers, it's about individuals. That hit home last trimester when it seemed everyone had given up on school. For some reason trimester exams were given three weeks before school ended. Many students and professors considered the following two weeks to be an "extended vacation." Attendance dwindled. I was frustrated at putting hours of effort into planning lessons then showing up to nearly empty classrooms. Still, I was determined to set a good example and arrive on time and prepared for the few students who cared enough to keep coming. Below is an excerpt from my journal:

I walked the fifty minutes to school today, hoping to get some exercise and clear my head after another night of bad sleep. I arrived to a group of boys hanging out under the flag pole. I asked why they weren't in first period and they explained that the teacher hadn't shown up (not surprising). I told them I was off to class and one boy said, "but teacher, no one is here." I said that wasn't true, a few students were around. Even if I had one out of 50 students, I explained, I would stay and teach him or her. "Do you know why?" I asked them. They shook their heads. “Because each student is important. Each one of you is important to me." They liked that idea and I got a few thumbs up.

Sure enough, I arrived at my first period class to find one lone student. A few more trickled in when they saw me there. At the end of the period there were six students. In 45 minutes, those students got the individual attention they lacked in their normally over-packed classroom. We discovered and corrected several learning gaps and I saw things beginning to click for a few of them that had really struggled. Second period was better, with nearly half the class showing up once they saw I was prepared to teach, but last period was disappointing. I arrived to a classroom completely empty save a teacher calculating averages at a desk.

"Where's A01?" I asked.

"Oh, they all left," she said.

I was deflated, but then I saw one student from that class walking in the courtyard. I asked him if he wanted to have English class and he looked at me funny then said "yes." We went to the library and worked with some reading cards. His pronunciation was good and I had assumed he understood the material well, but then I discovered he was still having trouble conjugating the verb "to be" in the simple past and present. I was stunned, but then I found out that though he couldn't fill out a verb table, he could use the verb tenses in conversation. It was a great insight into his learning style that I may not have gotten in a normal classroom setting.

That day I only taught a handful of my students, but those students learned and so did I. I really believe each student is important. As long as at least one shows up I will stay and teach. I don’t just want to teach them English, I want to teach them that they are valuable as individuals. They cared enough to come to school today and I want them to know that at least one of their teachers cared enough to stay and teach them.