Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Classroom Correspondence

The three goals of Peace Corps Mission are:
1)Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2)Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3)Helping promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans.

Of these three points I especially value the second two, cross-cultural dialogue can be extremely illuminating and I personally feel like I have learned sooooo much. Though truthfully, sometimes "cross-cultural dialogue" can be frustrating, especially with the tired conversation of "I want an American girlfriend/wife". And for whatever reason it is impossibly hard for me to redirect the conversation here once it enters the Red Zone (maybe other PCVs have better luck? any tips guys?), and my tolerence in recent weeks has waned to a point of an emotional allergic reaction in the form of impatience and bitchiness (hmm... I don't think this is the PC way) when the "Are you married?/I've always wanted to be with an American" comes up. Thankfully not everyone is like that and everyday I am around students, colleagues, etc. who continue to engage and teach me, so I always have a positive interaction to focus on.

One of the ways PC helps facilitate Goal #3 is through classroom correspondence. I thought I'd post the first couple letters I wrote to a 5th grade class that I have been paired with in Salem, OR. Not sure if it is of interest, but maybe I talk about things here that don't usually show up in this blog.

Email #1:
Hello Ms. D.'s 5th grade class!

I'm excited to hear from you guys and be your penpal! I am also from Oregon, I grew up in Portland (I went to Chapman Elementary School)and then studied Marine Biology at the University of Oregon. I miss Oregon a lot but I'm learning so much here in Mozambique.

I live in a city in central Mozambique, it is about the size of Salem more or less and I teach biology at a University. Before I came to teach at the university, I taught 8th grade biology in a very small village in the north called Ile (or Errego). Next
year I am going to move back to a village to teach high school biology at a vocational school.

I'll try to answer all of your questions!!!

Mozambique is very very beautiful (I feel so lucky to be here), and HUGE!!!! In the south there are dry, flat sandy palm grooves, in the central part of the country it is more green and lush with less palm trees, and in the north it is more rocky (they have these big granite
rock formations that everybody says look like sleeping dinosaurs). The beaches have brilliant turquoise waters and you can buy fresh fish and squid for dinner from fishermen right on the beach when they come in at the end of the day.

The culture here is agriculture based, most people have land that they farm through the year, which are called machambas. So even though most people don't have jobs and cannot earn a lot of money they are able to provide food for their families and live a good life. Things that they farm: corn (maca roca), couve (a big leafy green... it is like chard), sweet potatoes, yucca/mandioca, lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, and other things. Most people have chickens, and a few people keep goats too. A lot of what they can grow depends where in the country they live because the environment varies a lot.

Soccer is very very popular here. During the World Cup, everyone was getting together all the time to watch the games. Mozambicans were especially proud because it was being held in South Africa, just south of us, and is one of the first major world sporting events to be held in Africa. People play soccer all the time, every weekend there is day long tournaments that everybody goes to watch. Most of the soccer fields are dirt fields, which get really really muddy during the rainy season.... but that doesn't stop anybody!

I haven't seen too many predators here yet! A lot of the big game animals were killed during the civil war because it was the only food people could find. Now that Mozambique is not in a civil war people are trying to do things to protect the animals. I have seen lots of
baboons (they are kind of scary and pretty aggressive..... once I was eating peanuts with a friend and one charged at us... we had to toss our peanuts so he wouldn't come up on us.....needless to say that is how I learned not to snack around monkeys), some smaller tree monkeys,and hippos. Last week I saw a secretary bird, which is very large and looks almost prehistoric, it eats snakes. There are big snakes in the region where I live (black mambas!!!) but haven't seen one yet, I don't mind snakes back home but they get really big here, so I'm okay not seeing one. A friend found one in his outhouse and another one
found one on his porch (it was so big that it sat up and looked at him).

I think the most difficult thing for Mozambicans is the school system, it is very hard to get a good education here. A 5th grade class has 60-110 students, there are no books or anything to use. Even if a student is really really motivated they don't always get the education they deserve. But I can talk more about the schools some other time if
you are interested.

The best part about living here is the food. The food is influenced by India, Portugal, and China and the result is....YUM! Coconut-bbq-chicken (called: frango zambeziano), garlic sweet potato fries (called batatas fritas), regular french fries, rissois (little shrimp stuffed morsels), matapa (green leaves cooked in coconut milk with peanut flour), feijoada (a bean stew with peppers), and piripiri(hot pepper sauce to put on pretty much everything). Plus papayas, mangos, pineapple, guava, passion fruit, lichi, when they are in season.

I could keep on going but I'll end it here before I start to ramble!!! :) Eat lots of apples for me because the apples here are expensive and no good!

Paz e amor! Ciao e ate proximo!

***

Email #2:

Hello Ms. D's 5th grade class!!!
It was in Portuguese (it said: peace and love, bye and until next time), Mozambique was a Portuguese colony so I speak Portuguese here. They got their independence in 1975 but then had a civil war, which ended in the mid 1990s. There are also a lot of local dialects! People who speak dialects from the south can't always understand people who speak dialects from the north (it would be like if you had a special language with everyone from Salem but couldn't use that language to communicate outside of Salem, or understand the special
language from other places like Portland or San Francisco), so they use Portuguese. Since I teach my classes in Portuguese I just have been focusing on learning Portuguese (I didn't know it before I came, but I used to speak Spanish which has helped me learn Portuguese), but
I hope next year to learn more local dialect (I'm not sure which one yet). Some names of the dialects are: Shona, Sena, Macua, Lomwe, Xitsua,and many many more.

Here are some fun things to say in Mozambican Portuguese:
--Fafoca: these means gossip, people love to gossip here so it is a
good word to know
--Ate logo: means until next time, it's a lot like "hasta luego" in Spanish
--Mato: the bush, or the country; to say the word "shortcut" you say "cortamato" which roughly means cutting through the bush
--Mangueira: mango tree, it is almost mango season, I am very excited.
--Amor: love
--Catana: machete

I have not seen any ostriches, unfortunately, but I have seen many baboons... probably 70-100at this point, they aren't that common but I do see them frequently. I see them on the roads and sometimes on the outskirts of little towns but they can be pretty aggressive so I
try to avoid them. I think baboons are more common outside of Mozambique because I saw more baboons in Zambia and Malawi when I was traveling there for my summer vacation. I'm not sure how many big game animals are still around, I have not seen any. There is a big
national park (called Gorangosa) near where I live where they have some elephants and lions, but most of the animals hide away from people and sometimes people will go to the park for a week and still not see anything because the animals are so shy. Some times people get lucky though, my co-worker was at the national park last weekend and saw 40 elephants!!! I am very jealous and wish I had been there!

I got so hungry reading about your favorite foods! Even though I get good food here I still miss food from back home.

I haven't heard of people learning out on boats here in Mozambique, but they do have little wooden boats on the coast that are called dhows that they use for fishing.

A vocational school is for students who are going to go on to a trade like becoming an electrician, or a plumber, or something like that. Instead of going to a normal secondary school (grades 8, 9, and 10)they go to a vocational school that will teach them the same thing as a secondary school (Portuguese, Math, etc.) but also things for their profession. A lot of students prefer vocational schools because they will have a skill that will possibly get them a job after their studies. Here in Mozambique it is a very big deal if a student finishes 10th grade, many do not make it that far. Some don't continue because they don't want to, other can't continue because they have too many responsibilities at home (working in the fields, taking care of siblings, or even starting their own families).

Well.... I live in a city so it is pretty hard for me to know everybody, I am still making friends. People are very friendly and because I work for a well-known university often times they know who I am before I know how they are. They like coming up to me to ask me
questions about life in America. Lots of people want to learn English too, so they like to try to speak English with me for practice.

I am in Mozambique for 27 months, that is how long the Peace Corps service is. I started about 1 year ago and my service will be ending in December 2011.

It was wonderful to hear from you guys. What are you guys going to be for Halloween? We don't have Halloween here, unfortunately. I sure wish we did! We have other holidays though for different historical days, like Mozambique Independence Day. During these holidays people like to play loud music and dance, Mozambicans are very very good dancers.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

ZAP!

This last week the electrical company cut power to the house because, supposedly, a bill hadn’t been paid. I mean the most literal sense of the word “cut”, though “hacked” would really be an even better fit. After a rather exhausting day at work I came home to find a bunch of wires hanging from the side of the house. Actually I found the mangled wires the next day since it was 6pm when I first found out there was no power, which is way too late to start poking around the house for possible causes. I spent the night alone by candlelight… romantic, I know. Now I’m fine with no power, but the problem is when city-houses-that-are-set-up-to-have-power don’t have power things get complicated (complicado: this is what people say when things are a pain in the ass, as in “a situação é muito muito complicado//the situation is very very complicated”…. other words, like “difícil”, come off a bit strong, I learned this the hard way, so even when the situation is more than complicated it is better just to stick to “complicado”). When I don’t have energia I also don’t have water, because to pull water from the well I need an electrical pump, and there are no neighborhood communal pumps (that is what the villages have), no river, nada. My romantic night sozinha was briefly interrupted by my guard (the older guard was working that night): “We have no power” “I know we have no power, I noticed just now when I got home, I’ll figure it out tomorrow when the offices are open” “But I am suffering out here in the dark” “Okay…. I understand that the situation is not ideal but there isn’t anything I can do about it right now because it is night” “But the water tank doesn’t have much water” “I know, I also need water from the tank, I am frustrated too” “But how am I going to see the robbers” “Listen extra carefully, be alert” “But we have no power” ……… I’m really too tired for a cyclic conversation…….. The next day the university kindly started figuring out things with the electrical company, four days after the payment was made my house was reconnected and six days after payment was made the electrical company left the electric bill on my front porch, the very one that supposedly hadn’t been paid in the first place…. Ah, gotta love the order of things: cut energy for an unpaid bill, and then, many days later, actually provide the bill to the customer, but don’t forget to charge them those reconnection fees.

So I’m back to normal: wearing rubber flipflops when I cook with my stove…. or else the current grounds from the hot plates through my body…ouch (don’t even think about stirring that pasta water with a metal spoon), following the strict rules of what I can plug in when (oven + computer = blasted fuses), and not touching things like the ends of plugged in cords or the CD drive on my computer (ouch, again). I wonder how many times the human body gets zapped before your nervous system starts getting wonky.

Mato

Every PC site has its own vibe, its own challenges and strengths, so when people talk about the Peace Corps Experience or Life at Site it can be hard to know what exactly they are talking about. The point is, every volunteer is getting an interesting and eye-opening experience no matter where they are serving, the specifics of their experience is inevitably unique. I recently went to visit a gal friend of mine who lives at a mato site, while I see the pluses and minuses of city life, she gets to see the pluses and minuses of mato life.

Visiting her was a bit complicated, mostly because she doesn’t have cell reception, so no check-in text to clarify logistics (gotta love the cellphones: some PCVs are resistant to cellphones because before service these volunteers imagined PC would help purge their dependency on electronics, sure a valid desire but, man, do cellphones make coordinating for both work and social so much easier). I talked with her on a Tuesday (she had been at another site with network) and mentioned that I’d head down to her site that weekend if standfast (i.e. PC travel restriction during the riots) was lifted. By Thursday standfast was lifted, I radioed her via another volunteer saying I was coming (though I’m not sure the radio message made it to her), packed my little bag, set my alarm clock for bright and early,…. Yay, so excited!

There was one major hitch, I wasn’t totally sure where she lived. I knew the name of the town, I knew the crossroad off the main highway that heads in her direction, and I knew transport was difficult and frustrating for her and I should get to the crossroads as early as possible to get a car into the village.

When I told the chapa to pull over, the driver doubted my request, no this is really where I want to get off. He pulled away, leaving me at a crossroad between the EN1 and a dirt road with a restaurant/bar, some farmers trying to hitch north on the main highway with sacks of corn, and a man leaning on his bike telling me: “you just missed a car”. I began to wish I had a plan B.

I sat under a baobab tree, at first with a man who had a satiny, snakeskin print shirt and classy shades---this was his cellphone tree, the spot where there was sometimes (but not always) network. His big watch and shiny clothes seemed odd at these crossroads. Eventually he caught a ride to another village down the dirtroad on a bike, and then I was alone....just me and the baobab tree and some burrowing ants. As more kids (their bums peaking through ripped seams) passed by, men on bikes, women carrying bundles on their head, the “you just missed a car” turned into “you missed the last car going to Estaquinha for the day”. Now I really was starting to wish I had a plan B. Could I walk? Nope, too far, one teenage boy estimated the distance at roughly 80 km (okay I kind of doubt this distance but it is too far to walk nonetheless).

One man came up (multiple times) and offered to resolve my situation: we can go grab some drinks at the bar and then he could take me there on his motorcycle. He had no teeth. This seemed like a really really bad idea, an even worse idea than sleeping in the shrubs on the side of the road, which according to him was my only other option. <>

And just as the need for a plan B was starting to get urgent a car came by. While I felt better in the car, I was still not totally sure the car was going to the right place, the driver said Estaquinha…. I think? At one point the car stopped and almost everyone got out, and I asked the woman sitting next to me if this was Estaquinha…. She just stared at me, so I asked again, same non-response, maybe she didn’t speak Portuguese (oh man, I’m not in the city anymore)… well it didn’t turn out to be my destination, so good thing I had gotten back in the car.

The driver, who was sweet and inquisitive, eventually stopped the car in front of a group of little concrete houses and said: “your friend gets out here.” “Are we in Estaquinha?” “But your friend gets out here.” I was hoping he was talking about my actual friend, not one of my other “friends”. Often people I meet think I am friends with all other white people. It is not uncommon to hear: “oh I know your friend John, he lives in a vila in Gaza.... he is from your land, from either New York or Chicago or London…. No, he doesn’t live in Gaza now, he lived there 5 years ago….. I think you know him or maybe he knows you? No eh?” So when the driver talked about my “friend” I was starting to worry I was going to be crashing at the house of some other white lady, not my PC buddy.

I ran up to the nearest house with people, two men laying out on straw mats. “Good afternoon? How are you? Does the Professora Rebecca live near here?” One of the men let out a single: “Yes.” That was it, nothing more affirmative or negative, just “yes”.

Guess this is the spot.

****

My friend who I visited is a wonderful actress and I really enjoyed watching her work with her students in prep for English Theater, a PC run regional competition. There were a couple of things that I thought were particularly interesting while watching her students perform (1) greetings: culturally it is very important to greet everyone and ask how they are before you bulldooze into whatever point you need to talk to them about… I still have a hard time remembering to do this without being prompted by someone else. The students struggled to resist their urge to extensively greet each other at the start of every scene (which was a necessary dialogue cut considering the time constraints of the performace). (2) that weird clapping thing: at one point during the play the characters arrange a bride price, and all the actors start a slow rhythmic unified clapping. After the third time watching the scene I realized that this was not some accidental motion. “What are they doing?” I whispered to my friend, “You know I’m not so sure…” It turns out that the slow group clapping is just one of the essential steps to the bride purchase. She later told me that when they were getting ready for the final performance the students were stressed about finding the appropriate props for the scene, specifically two plates that you sandwich over the bride-money.