So, where I left of in my last blog post I was slowly catching up to the
present day. We had just celebrated
Women’s Day on April 7th and I was getting ready for exams and the
end of the first trimester. Exam time
went by rather seamlessly here in Mangunde, but PCVs in other parts of the
country did not have it so easy. Word
spread quickly (well, as quickly as word spreads here in Mozambique) that this
year the Ministry of Education would begin provincially standardized final
exams, what we call “ACPs” here. Sounds
like a decent idea, right? That’s
probably what the Ministry of Education thought when they implemented them
too. Well, it was a disaster. Luckily Mangunde, being a privately funded
mission enjoys a certain degree of autonomy from the Ministry and we were not
submitted to such ridiculous and whimsical testing methods. We’ve heard, however, that we will begin the
provincial testing this trimester. From
what I’ve heard the provincial-wide tests were distributed in some cases only
days before the tests were to be given.
The content of the tests was, at best, a random assemblage of questions
loosely related to the discipline being tested.
This gave the teachers no time to prepare their students for the final
exam and, in many cases, ended up submitting the students to testing on
material they had not yet learned. Am I
surprised that they wouldn’t tell teachers this until a few days before the
test? No. I’ve come to expect a certain level of
neglect when it comes to organization in the central government and a barefaced
inattention to advanced planning. They
seem to just expect that teachers and students will adjust to this minor
change. Does nobody plan ahead in this
country? I’ve learned, now almost 19
months into my stay in Mozambique, that the answer is no – we have a teacher’s meeting in 10 minutes;
cancel your classes this afternoon; there’s no school today because the
administrator is visiting tomorrow and all the students have to spend the
afternoon cleaning the classrooms; the dates of the holiday break have been
moved up two weeks, cancel your trip.
Such is life in Mozambique. Those
that plan ahead are punished.
No matter, I got all 492 of my tests graded (I have eight sections of
biology and English with 60-70 kids in each class) and I booked it out of
Mangunde to begin this first phase of my vacation from a fulfilling yet
wearying life here in Mangunde. The
first event on the agenda for break was a weekend conference that had I planned
for Mozambican counterparts of the JUNTOS project. I am the regional coordinator this year for
JUNTOS and in April had to put together the “Training of trainers” or “ToT”
conference aimed at capacitating Mozambican teachers in leadership skills,
technical knowledge of HIV/AIDS and confronting gender issues. Not much of a vacation from the work and
stress of school, but nonetheless a lot of fun and an important event for the
success of the JUNTOS project this year.
JUNTOS is an acronym that stands for, in Portuguese of course, Youth
United in the Work for Opportunities and Success. It has a much better ring to it in
Portuguese, I promise. To boot, the
completed acronym happens to spell out the word “juntos” which means “together”
and is an informal national slogan that all Mozambicans stand behind. Anyway, across the central region of
Mozambique, there are 20 of these JUNTOS groups empowering youth to be leaders
and activists in their communities through the mediums of theater, journalism,
art or music.
This particular conference was a two day crash course for the teachers
on the basic objectives of the JUNTOS project, and some brief training in how
to lead sessions on gender, HIV/AIDS, self-esteem, puberty and others. Luckily, while I was behind the scenes
planning all of the seemingly petty details of the event like food,
transportation, supplies and lodging, I hired a trained facilitator to do the
dirty work and actually lead the sessions because you couldn’t pay me to step
into the conference room and lecture a bunch of adults in Portuguese about the
importance of abstinence and the changes that happen during puberty. The facilitator did a fantastic job with the
counterparts, but, like so often happens in Mozambique, he had some last minute
changes to the curriculum he wanted to make.
Thus, 20 minutes before the reproductive health session started the
facilitator stepped out and insisted that I, as a biology professor, would be
more qualified to lead the following sessions on the female reproductive
system, the menstrual cycle, and masturbation.
Well great, I thought. Here we go
again. Luckily, it’s not something I
haven’t done before. Between facilitating
my own JUNTOS group for over a year and teaching 8th grade biology
in which we have units on the male and female reproductive system I’ve spent a
good portion of my Peace Corps service talking about the infamous penis and
vagina. The 8th graders tend
to giggle when I throw up the poster of a gigantic penis, and are disturbingly
adept at sliding a condom over a prosthetic penis, but all in all, reproductive
system classes are always an experience.
You would think that the adult teachers attending the ToT conference,
then, would be slightly more mature and would have had the ability to say the
word “penis” without laughing uproariously.
This was not the case. By the end
of the session they were howling and telling stories about masturbation. One counterpart relayed a story to us about
how he proved that, indeed, you can’t urinate and ejaculate at the same
time. Thank you for that. Outside of a few minor hiccups—no complimentary
toothbrushes and having to eat chicken and fries with spoons—the event was a
huge success. All of the counterparts
came away with a great understanding of the objectives of the JUNTOS projects,
how to facilitate and motivate their youth, what potential projects they can
initiate this year, and, most importantly, that HIV can be spread if an
infected male ejaculates into your bath bucket before you take a bath, and, in
the process of your bath you clean thoroughly all of your orifices with the
infected water.
After the ToT conference was finally over and the echoes of trifling
complaints made by childish counterparts had faded from my consciousness my
vacation had finally begun. There was no
time to rest though. My plan was to hop
a bus headed north and not stop until I got to one of the seven natural wonders
of the world – the one and only, Victoria Falls. Victoria Falls, or simply Vic Falls, is made
up of a breathtaking stretch of the Zambezi River that lies is on the border
between Zimbabwe and Zambia, two countries that border Mozambique to the
west. In order to get to Vic Falls from
Mozambique and not get kicked out of the Peace Corps, you have to either fly
directly there or go overland up the length of Mozambique, into Zambia and
across to the border with Zimbabwe.
Because of an unstable political situation in Zimbabwe and the ruling
dictator, Robert Mugabe, has been unwilling to submit to democratic elections,
the Peace Corps has banned all travel to and even through Zimbabwe. Unfortunately for me, that meant that what
could have been a one and a half day jaunt through the verdant mountains of
Zimbabwe turned into a two and a half day trudge through the dry flatlands of
central Mozambique and Zambia. No
worries though, it was the destination that counted. On day two of the trip, the three friends I
was travelling with and I made the long-awaited passage across the border into
an unknown land, Zambia. To the
untrained eye Zambia might seem no different from Mozambique – same dry
grassland with rocky hills as a backdrop, and the same narrow pot-holed roads
with roadside stands selling charcoal, goats and anything else one could want
to stop and pick up on the way out of the country. If you judged a country simply by its roads
and landscape near the border, however, you wouldn’t be giving it a fair chance
to prove its true worth. On closer
inspection I found Zambia to be a charming place which I became quite enamored
with after only a few days there.
Why? You might ask…well, it’s
pretty simple, actually.
The capital of Zambia is a sprawling urban metropolis called Lusaka
which isn’t particularly beautiful but has clear advantages. While Lusaka has many desirable offerings,
above all, what sets it above any other African city that I have thus far
encountered is that Lusaka has, yes, Subway.
The first time I saw it I thought it was a mirage. I was entering the city on a bus and the
yellow and white letters of “Subway” blurred by and teased my imprisoned
appetite which lay behind the fogged up window of the bus. It must be in my head, I thought. When I was ambulatory later that afternoon,
however, and had a chance to check it out for myself, I learned that what I saw
was not, in fact, a mirage, but a real live Subway here in Africa! When I entered it was quite a surreal
experience. From the menu down to the bathrooms,
stock photos and wallpaper, it was identical to every Subway I have ever been
to in the states. The only exception was
that instead of $5 footlongs that had 19,000 Kwacha footlongs. Needless to say, I ordered a footlong oven
roasted chicken breast on honey oat with extra sweet onion sauce. Unfortunately, on this occasion they did not
have pepper jack cheese which would have completed my fantasy. Outside of the Subway in Lusaka, I found it
to be a remarkably modern city, compared to the cities in Mozambique that I’m
used to. There were shopping malls with
movie theaters, restaurants, and supermarkets.
Except for the clear absence of other white people, I could’ve been in
downtown Milwaukee. We stayed in Lusaka
for only one night in transit, for the following morning we planned to board a
bus headed to Livingstone, a town just a few miles outside of our final
destination, Vic Falls. It’s worth
noting that on our one night in Lusaka we went to the supermarket to pick up
supplies for dinner and ended up making fajitas with real tortillas, ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese. It may have been even more divine than the
Subway lunch we had on our way in. For
those who are unfamiliar with Mozambique, there is most certainly no
supermarket that sells pre-made tortillas and nowhere within six hours of me
that sells ground beef or cheese, so this was a special treat to say the least.
At last, though, it was time to see the one and only, majestic beast of
a waterfall that is Victoria Falls. We spent
the night in Livingstone and woke up bright and early the next morning armed
with our camera and ponchos to visit the falls.
We heard it before we saw it.
Half a mile awhile you could hear the low rumbling of the falls in the
distance. March through May is the wet
and therefore high season for Vic Falls which means that we can at the peak of
its volume and it didn’t disappoint. It
is said that Vic Falls flows at an average rate of 10 million liters per second,
but that in the high season it’s been measured at as many as 70 million liters
per second. In addition to that, it
boasts figures of 108 meters tall (354 feet) and 1.7 kilometers wide (1
mile). As we approached the falls and
could almost get a glimpse of them through the dense vegetation you could feel
the sonorous blasts of water almost viscerally.
When we finally peeked through an opening in the trees and got our first
sight of falls I was surprised to see that I really couldn’t see anything. I thought it was maybe just at a bad angle, but
every subsequent lookout we stopped and peered through we were struck with the
same image—mist, mist and more mist. It
turns out that while Vic Falls is magnificent in its power and sheer size, in
the high and wet season there aren’t a whole lot of falls to be seen. What we could see were vast blankets of mist
billowing up from a deep and narrow chasm that seemed to have been chiseled out
of the earth. While shrouded in mist,
the strong morning sun managed to pierce through the covering and create a complete
and vivid rainbow to give color to the scene.
At this point we had walked along the length of the precipice that looks
down into the gorge and while we hadn’t yet seen a whole lot of the falling
water we had certainly felt enough of it.
During the wet season, if you going anywhere close to the edge of the
108 meter deep gorge you will be drenched it what seems like a heavy downpour
coming down in thick droplets. It is, of
course, the mist billowing up powerfully from the bottom of the gorge. Because of the booming sound and the thick
mist that define Vic Falls it has come to take on the slogan “The smoke that
thunders” and you can’t take two steps without a local referencing that
catchphrase as he tries to con you into buying one of his “smoke that thunders”
nick-naks. In the dry season, however,
“the smoke that thunders” apparently doesn’t quite live up to its name. One can
allegedly walk along the cliff as we did without being threatened with even a
drop of water. Additionally one can
actually walk out into the river on top of the falls and swim in the small
pools overlooking the edge because of the absence of water.
That day we spent most of the morning walking the gorge, hiking down to
the riverside, and even walking through a small zebra sanctuary up near the top
of the river. We couldn’t leave,
however, without walking across the historic bridge that connects Zimbabwe and
Zambia over the gorge and provides one of the best views of the falls from a distance. The bridge also happens to be the host of a
bungee-jumping operation boasting one of the world’s highest bungee jumps. You fall off of the bridge and plummet 100
meters into the tumultuous mouth of the gorge where, if you’re lucky, the rope
with catch and sling you back upward to avoid you falling to your untimely
death. I have to say, I was skeptical
about the bungee jumping. Heights have
never really been a point of extreme interest for me. I was slightly nauseated just stepping onto
the bridge to begin with, let alone contemplating the thought of jumping off of
it. Add to this the fact that at this
very bridge about five months ago there was an international news story about
an Australian girls whose bungee cord snapped during her jump and she
miraculously survived the 50 meter fall into the teeming rapids below, and I
was downright terrified. They replaced
the ropes, so they say. It came time for
us to make a decision: do we jump or don’t we?
Just my luck, all three of my friends opted for the $150 Big Air
package, which includes not only a bungee jump, but also a zip-line across the
gorge and a gorge swing. Hmmm, talk
about peer pressure. If you were me,
what would you do? Risk falling to your
untimely death or swallow a little pride and be the cameraman? I went with a compromise. I opted for the “kid’s meal” of bungee
jumping, the zip-line across the gorge, hold the bungee jumping and the gorge
swing. You can make the zip-line sound
really bad-ass if you talk it up, but, in reality, is not that much more
adrenaline-pumping than the ball pit in the McDonalds PlayPlace. I stick by my decision, though. It was beautiful. I slid across the length of the gorge 100
meters over the water and spread my arms out to let the moist air blow through
my fingers as the sun lowered in the distance.
It turns out my friends did not fall to their deaths while bungee
jumping, but they did have some pretty sweet pictures to take home at the end
of the day because I was up in the cockpit shooting them.
After our experience in Vic Falls, we had one more day in the
Livingstone area before having to head back to Mozambique. We decided that we would take advantage of a
wonderfully diverse wildlife park that was within walking distance of the
Falls. Thus, we woke up early in the
morning and headed to Mosi-ao-Tunya National Park. We opted for a guided walking/driving tour of
the park and spent the next 3 hours or so testing our hands at spotting
wildlife. Over the course of the safari
we spotted numerous giraffes, countless impalas, a few elephants, one of which
charged the open-air jeep we were in at the time and nearly gave us all
heart-attacks, warthogs, wildebeests, a small family of white rhinos and a
number of other savanna dwellers. All in
all, it was quite a worthwhile journey.
After the safari we had one last taste of Zambian cuisine – Subway and
delivery pizza – and were on our way back into Mozambique. When we arrived at the Zambia-Mozambique
border around noon we quickly realized that we were, indeed, back in
Mozambique. We were in quite a hurry to
try to make it all the way down to Tete City, a good five hours from the
border, before dark, and we arrived at the border only to realize that the
guard was off duty and eating lunch. We
could’ve probably walked through unnoticed but figured it would be a bad idea
to illegally enter our own country of residence. The guard must have decided to also take an
afternoon siesta because we waited and waited for him to come. It’s good to know that Mozambique is really
serious about border control. Next time
you need to smuggle drugs into the country, try between 12 and 2pm, you won’t
see a soul there. Eventually, however,
he came and leisurely, unapologetically stamped us back into our
territory. The next day I arrived back
to Chimoio, the provincial capital, stocked up on food, and thus ended my
magical adventure which had taken me to far and distant lands. I headed back to Mangunde the following day
to begin the second trimester.
I will leave my story there for now.
It turns out that because of a couple of strategically placed holidays
in the Mozambican education calendar I only actually stayed at Mangunde for
about three days and gave exactly two days of classes after my Zambian
adventure before heading off for another week and a half vacation. I will pick up that story, however, in my
next blog. For now, I hope that all is
well at home and that you continue to enjoy the warm spring weather. Until next time!
