So, what is year two like here in the Peace Corps? Here at Mangunde? Is it much different from year one? When I look back on the year that I had last year and the year that shaping up in front of me this year, there are, of course, some things that haven't changed. Mangunde is still Mangunde. There are no vegetables to be found anywhere except for the occasional meal of squash or cassava leaves, and transport in and out of the mission means waiting hours for a car that may never come and giving yourself a bruised behind while you absorb the 25km of rocks and mud on the way out. The students are still as active as ever, participating in clubs and sports and not studying when I tell them that we have a test the next day. Gracinda, our Mozambican housekeeper, is still living with us, fetching our water, washing our clothes, cooking a lot of beans, and gracing our presence with her eternally playful now 21 months year old son, Jacinto. The days are busy, the nights are still hot enough to require a fan aimed directly into my face, and the emotional roller coaster of living in this culture and in this world rides on.
There are, however, many things that have changed, both internally and externally, about my life here in Mangunde. On the surface level I now have a new roommate, Mike. The end of 2011 meant the departure of Tim, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who had entered Mangunde a year before me and already completed his two years of service, and opened the door for a new Peace Corps volunteer, fresh off the boat from America and freshly sworn-in after training in Namaacha.. Mike, or Teacher Mike, as the students here like to dub us, is part of the Moz 17 group (17th generation of PCVs in Mozambique) and arrived to Mangunde in December, seamlessly taking up lodging in Tim's vacated room, just on the other side of the wall from my now veteran domicile. Much like I had done a year before, Mike spent his first month at Mangunde with virtually no one here to talk to. I was enjoying my break in Malawi, Maputo, Cape Town and then America, while he was here sitting in a barren room trying to integrate into a community that had not yet formed around him. I could relate to his experience. During the holidays, Mangunde becomes a ghost town. The teachers, students and workers that make Mangunde such a vibrant hub of activity during the school year venture to their homes and families during the holidays and leave Mangunde as a shadow of its full self. Despite the difficulty that one's first month at Mangunde tends to present to newcomers, Mike adjusted well and always kept an open mind about what his life in Mangunde might eventually shape into. By the time I arrived back in "The Gunde" as I like to call it, we were ready to take on the year together.
So besides a new housemate, what changed here at Mangunde since last year? Well, in addition to losing Tim, my PCV housemate, we also lost a beloved member of our household here, Anita. Anita is Gracinda's 10 years old niece who was living with us and helping with the baby and chores when Gracinda was at school. Anita's mother has a lot of kids on her hands, and it is very customary in this culture to pawn off your children to a relative who is in a better financial situation to take care of them. That's why, for example, you will often see professors here living with 3 or 4 children who are not their own, younger siblings, cousins, nephews, nieces. Thus, Anita had been living with us here in Mangunde, because we had a favorable situation where meals and housing were provided. Unfortunately, however, she went back home this year and was replaced by two of her older siblings, Inoria and Jose. So our family is growing. Six mouths to feed is a lot. I have to say that while I enjoy the company of all of our guests, especially little Jacinto, I can't deny that it hasn't been a source of minor frustration. Food, which as you know, is a highly valued commodity, and one which takes considerable effort to get into the mission from the city disappears at an alarming rate when it is spread across six mouths. Here is the clip we are riding now: one liter of oil per week, one kilo of rice per day, one flat (30) eggs per week, one kilo of sugar per week... If you are not familiar with metric measurements, let me just say that a kilo is a lot of rice. One kilo is 2.2 pounds. In addition to filling bellies, we also considerably fill our small house. With people coming and going, cooking, crying and playing it can be difficult to find some often much needed privacy. Even in my second year here it can often feel like I'm merely an occupant in someone else's house. Coming out of training and being catapulted into the big time as a real live PCV, most PCVs have the compulsion to take control of some of the more concrete parts of their lives to give them comfort - cook, clean, redecorate their house, etc. In a culture which can feel so different and in a job which has so few observable rewards, it is often the little things that you do for your personal self that keep you going. Here at Mangunde, we never really got that side of PCV life and I can't deny that I've always been a little regretful about it. The upside of having a house full of Mozambicans, however, is that there's never a lonely moment. You can always count on someone being there to talk to or joke around with, and you feel like a greater part of the Mangunde community. What natural separation we have from the community because of our skin color and status is offset by our house being a hub of activity, having Mozambicans always around, not just our live-in family, but also students and professors constantly stopping by and chatting.
What is else is new here in Mangunde? 'Wake Up!' our school's English newspaper has begun its 5th(??) year of action. Every week I meet with my students in a classroom toting a bag of Portuguese-English dictionaries and they delve into stories that they want to post in each week's edition. While it's not the most useful dissemination of information for the school (no one else speaks English), it's fun and a great opportunity for the students to work on something and feel proud about showing off their knowledge and skills to the community. We currently have sections for Local News, National News, Sports, Poems, Curiosities, Music Lyrics, Biography, Story, HIV/AIDS Health, English Language Corner, Interviews and a few more.
In addition, we have an English Theater Club that is now in full swing here. Once a week on the evenings we find an empty classroom and get to work preparing small community theater pieces in English to present at the school or in the community. Mozambicans in general, seem to be naturals at theater, and the students love having the opportunity to perform and learn English at the same time. At the end of the year, we'll write a play and send 10 kids to the regional competition to show off their English Theater talents.
Lastly, I am the leader this year of two separate HIV/AIDS youth groups. Here in PC Mozambique there is a nationwide network of mixed gender youth groups that focus of spreading knowledge and promoting behavior change related to HIV/AIDS, gender equality and other salient social issues. The group is newly renamed as JUNTOS (Jovens Unidos No Traboalho para Oportunidades e Sucesso) and has been hugely popular here at Mangunde since it was first introduced a few years before my arrival. This year I was both overjoyed and overwhelmed when 80 students showed up to my first announced meeting of JUNTOS. It showed me that the students are really passionate about creating change in their communities, or at least don't have anything better to do in the boarding school of a mission in the middle of nowhere. Because of such a flood of interest, I decided this year to divide the groups into two, a music group and a theater group. So far, while it's a job to organize everything, it has been a stunning success. A few weeks ago, each group presented their work, a theater piece and a choral medley, in front of the school assembly.
These are all groups that I began last year and am continuing this year. So it seems, at least on the surface, that year two for me here in Mangunde, is very much a continuation of year one in terms of projects, classes and general activities. I don't know how exactly to describe it, but I can say with confidence that year one is not, in fact, anything like year two in reality. When you arrive to your site at the beginning of year one, you have dreams and expectations, often romanticized, of how your Peace Corps experience is going to take shape. Visions of projects, change, the complete annihilation of HIV and malaria in your community, economic development and complete food security float above your head as your walk through your community for the first time. Your students will learn English in one year and all thank you for the time that you sacrificed to help them. I don't know how to say this without coming off stubborn and jaded, because I'm not and I do value my experience and contribution to the community, but at some point in your first year as a PCV you learn that you are not Jesus. You cannot turn water into wine, or feed 500 people with one loaf of bread and a fish. People do what they know, and listen to what they can understand, and they often don't know or understand us Americans.
Changing people's behaviors, whether it be getting them to study, use condoms, put up mosquito nets, not cheat, make composts, or clean up Jacinto's pee with bleach, is the hardest thing a PCV can try to do. That doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means that it must be done tactfully, and it's one of the most interesting things you learn here as a PCV. I could stand in front of my JUNTOS group and lecture them for an hour about gender equality, and all of them would probably nod and agree that it is also a man's responsibility to help take care of the children, but at the end of the day they will all go home and balk if their wives or mothers ask them to sweep the floor or watch the kids for a day. What is a PCV to do? If my Mozambican counter-part gets up in front of them and leads a discussion about gender equality, however, they are suddenly interested. He is one of us. He understands. We're in this together. At first when I came here I had a big head and wanted to do everything myself, but it took me awhile and a few slices of humble pie to realize the importance of using local leadership in any of your projects. I am hereby announcing that this is one of my goals for the rest of my service in Mozambique - to do as little as possible. When I do things, nothing happens and no one gains. It can be frustrating and counterintuitive, but when I give other people the resources to do things on their own, suddenly it clicks and you can see progress. I should've known that before because it's one of the basic tenets of the Peace Corps and sustainable development in general, and I think I did know it, but it really takes experiencing it first hand to realize how truly powerless you are if you try to create change by yourself. Anyway, that's my take home lesson for the day. Hopefully, with all of my different clubs and events that I'm coordinating I can learn to empower others to make a difference in their communities that is exponentially greater than the work what I could do alone.
Ok, well I went on a personal harangue there for bit, so to close this blog on a more jocular note, I'll share with you a few interesting things that have happened to me here in Mangunde in the past couple of weeks. First thing. Today in my computer class there was a kid who had picked up the mouse and was pointing it at the computer screen like a TV remote. Sometimes the things I see in that computer class are just too much. People thinking it's a touch screen and trying to drag the icons around with their fingers. On another note, I've now become completely comfortable with the Mozambican man-man handhold. I can take a half hour walk with some of my students and maintain the "man-hold" throughout without too much awkward discomfort.
A few weeks ago I was in class singing a song with my students about prepositions of place (it's a pretty technically challenging song: 'in, on, above, below, in front of, behind, next to, we know!!') and for the first time teaching here I lost complete control of the class. They were getting really into the song, which made my day, so I let them keep going and we repeated the chorus three or four times. I even improvised a descant line that soared above the chorus of student singing underneath me. It was a beautiful moment of class participation and harmony that I'll cherish forever. When I had had enough I waved my hands signaling the end of the song. They, however, were not ready to be done with the song. They continued to belt out the prepositions despite my frantic waves, some of them so into the song they were on their feet dancing and clapping excitedly. This went on for what seemed like forever and I eventually put my hands down and stopped trying to tame the preposition-crazy mob. Eventually I looked out the window and saw that there were a good three or four other professors who had left their classrooms and came to see what all of the commotion was about. They looked quizzically in the room no doubt wondering what kind of antics this strange American teacher was up to in his classes. After the students saw the other teachers the finally calmed down and found their seats, but the other teachers laughed it off and my embarrassment was sealed.
Ok! Thanks for reading! Until next time...
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