Mamuka, Ndopinda Escola!!

Boa tarde e boas vindas querida familia e amigos!  I wanted to talk today about some of the highlights and interesting things that have been going on around here, at Mangunde.  I’ve spent a number of blogs talking about leaving Mangunde, and I think I owe it to my beloved site to give it a mention today.

This week marks the first month of school under my belt, and, wow, nearly 2 and a half months at site!  Time does fly.  Training back in October and November doesn’t feel like so long ago, but is a distant memory now.  Mangunde is a relatively large Catholic mission school in the district of Chibabava and the province of Sofala.  The school was built by an Italian mission called ESMABAMA, which built and is currently running four different mission schools in the province.  I live in a charming, but small house provided by the mission.  My housemate, Tim, is also a Peace Corps volunteer, but has been teaching here at Mangunde already for a year – I replaced his former housemate who just completed his 2 years (we are a staggered site).  Also sharing our house is Gracinda, our friend and caretaker who does most of the cooking, cleaning and other tasks like getting water and doing laundry.  Gracinda has a 7 month old little boy named Jacinto, and a 5 year old niece named Anita who also live under our roof most of the time.  So, needless to say, it’s busy around the house most of time.  Our house is pretty nice for Mozambican standards – we have two bedrooms, a common room where we eat and then an entryway that more or less functions as the kitchen.  We don’t have running water, but we do have electricity most of the time which runs, most importantly, the mini-fridge and the fan, and cook on a gas stove.  I have a small garden behind the house that is currently suffering gravely due to lack of rain, but which is hanging onto life – so far it has produced a grand total of one zucchini which I proudly prepared in a chick pea and zucchini peanut stew last week! 

Our house is about a 30 second walk away from the main school building and is located directly in front of the soccer field that students play on everyday.  So essentially, it is part of the school, and students seem to treat it as part of the school as well.  It’s not uncommon at all for me to walk back to my house after classes and find 4 or 5 students hanging out on my porch.  It’s also not uncommon for me to sit down in my room after a long day and not be able to close my eyes for 3 seconds without a student calling out “Excuse me, teacher?” from the porch to ask for the soccer ball, help with homework, or to simply chat.  It’s definitely good that there is not a shortage of people to talk to and things to do, but sometimes in order to maintain your personal sanity you just need to shut your door and pretend not to hear when students are arriving in throngs after school is out. 

Things have been picking up here in terms of school though and I finally feel like I’m getting into a rhythm and starting to figure out how things work.  I have finally settled into my schedule – I’m teaching 4 sections of 9^th grade English, 3 sections of 8^th grade biology and will be starting 3 sections of 12^th grade computer classes next week (each section has about 60 kids in it) which means that I have about 400 students in total.  I think it is going to take some time to get used to, but I’m starting to learn their names little by little.  I teach biology in the national language, Portuguese, and supposedly teach English in English, but because they are only in 9^th grade and are definitely beginners when it comes to English, the English class often ends up containing a lot of Portuguese as well.  That’s ok though.  My Portuguese has been improving ever since I arrived in Mozambique and I feel very comfortable in conversation.  There are definitely still times when I need to pull out the old dictionary, especially if I’m talking about more technical stuff in biology class, but for the most part it seems like my students are understanding my lectures, which is a good feeling. 

Just because their understanding the words that I’m saying, however, doesn’t mean that they’re actually learning anything from the lessons.  Finding an effective teaching style and trying to engage the students into actually thinking critically about what we’re doing has definitely been one of the biggest challenges I’ve had in teaching so far.  There are a lot of problems with the school system that I’ve come across here that are really frustrating and hard to overcome, but possibly the biggest one is the lack of critical thinking that takes place in the classroom.  Being able to think critical and problem solve is something that should be learned at a young age and then developed as a student matures.  I think back to the kind of projects I did in elementary school – the teachers promoted creativity, problem solving, group work, art, music, exploration, thinking critically, etc.  It was fun!  I never really appreciated the quality and investment that that education had in me until I came here.  Here, there is a totally different emphasis on education.  There seems to be no notion that promoting creativity or investigation is beneficial for the kids.  From an early age, teachers teach in a very tradition way – rote memorization, format, rules and definitions.  The kids never learn to really think!  I’m obviously speaking in generalizations, but it’s alarmingly true.  Every single one of my 8^th grade biology students could tell me that a cell is the “fundamental unit of living things” and that “Robert Hook discovered the cell in 16?? something or other”…they know, ask them, I had never even heard of Robert Hook before coming here, to be honest.  But after a whole lesson on the levels of organization in the human body, none of my students could tell me which level the cell fits into – is it bigger than an organ, smaller than a whole organism – they had no idea.  It’s a hard reality to swallow when you’re trying to teach these kids concepts rather than just rote definitions.  It’s really hard for them to turn on those switches and start to really think and understand things without just spitting out memorized definitions.  What’s hardest of all is to see some of the homework assignments and tests that other teachers are giving out when students come by my house and ask for help.  Sometimes I just shake my head when I see the notes students have taken from class which are just paragraphs of definitions.  When I ask them what they talked about that day, they have no idea.

I try to get kids to ask questions and come up with answers on their own as much as possible, but it’s difficult.  I’m just one teacher, and it seems like that type of thinking and learning begins at an early age.  Sometimes I think it would be easier for everyone if I just wrote definitions on the board the whole hour like the other teachers do, but then I have to remind myself that I have a unique opportunity to teach these kids thinking and studying skills that will help them later on in life. 

Last week, I gave my first test in biology which ended up being a pretty entertaining experience.  Let me first explain what students are used to when it comes to test-taking in a Mozambican classroom.  Usually the teacher will write the questions up on the board and then leave the classroom until the end of the hour, opening the door for students to pull out their notebooks and cheat-sheets, talk to each other, and copy each other’s answers.  The other day I came in for one of my classes and the previous class was still finishing up a test – the teacher was MIA, and the students were walking all around the room getting different answers from each other with their notebooks open.  That’s what they’re used to.  I decided to take a few measures to prevent cheating on my test.  First of all, I wrote the test on the computer and made 4 different versions of the test that I dispersed around the room.  As I handed the test out, the kids began to murmur confusedly and the first question I got was, “teacher, his test is different than mine.”  I said, “I know.”  It took me walking around and writing -1 on about 6 or 7 different tests before people realized they couldn’t ask the person sitting next them for the answers.  People still would chance a quick glance at their deskmate’s test (keep in mind students are usually sitting 2 or 3 to a desk, sometimes 2 people to a chair so it’s kind of hard not to look even if you tried), but I was like a hawk watching them and promptly marking -1 if I saw “olhos viajando.”  Plus, you could always tell the people that were cheating; they were the ones constantly glancing up at you to see whether you are looking at them or not.  I think the record I had was one girl got marked for peeking 5 separate times.  Besides the obvious difficulties with cheating they also just had a really hard time with the questions and format that I was surprised by.  Like I said before, 99% rattled of the definition of the cell with no problems, but when it came to multiple choice the questions they were completely at a loss.  The amount of times I had to explain very carefully “circle the best answer” was ridiculous.  People were circling 2 and 3 different answers, no answers, writing words into the spaces or just leaving the questions unanswered.  Some of the more entertaining answers I got were for the question “what are 3 characteristics of all living things?” – people would write cart water from the pump,” “grind corn flour,” “walk,” etc.  On one question a student raised his hand very concerned and asked, “teacher, the real answer is not one of the choices, can I just write it underneath?’  I told him he could if he wanted to but that he should maybe read the question again. 

In any case, the result of this circus of a first test was that more than half of the students straight up failed.  We’re talking 10 or fewer out of 20.  I even got a couple students who, because of negatives for cheating, scored below zero.  Ouch.  I had one student who got 19 out of 20 which made my day, but other than that the average score was right around 10 out of 20.  I think they’ll get better as they get accustomed to my technique, at least I hope so. 

Anyway, that’s test-taking in Mozambique for you.  What else have I been doing, you might be asking?  One thing that has been fun for me has been English club.  We’ve now had 2 meetings and it’s been really popular and a lot of fun for everyone.  There are a few older students who did the club with the volunteer who left here last year, so they are very responsible and seem to know what to do.  We meet once a week and so far have played different team-building games and this week spent some time thinking of different socially relevant topics like HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, alcoholism and corruption to eventually do discussions and debates about.  The first week there were something like 70 students who came to our meeting!  I think as people realize that it’s actually a serious club, the number will drop to be a little bit more manageable, but for now it’s exciting to see so much interest for one of my projects.  Eventually the English club will become English Theater which is a PC Mozambique-wide project to get students to create and eventually present at a regional competition a theater piece about a socially relevant topic.  The competition is in September, but the students that went last year are already excited to get thinking about the piece that we’re going to present this year. 

In the kitchen I’ve been slowly getting comfortable with my co-existence with our maid and we’ve set up a sort of makeshift schedule so that I can cook dinner for us once or twice a week.  This has been fun and given me an outlet to be creative.  As the summer moves along and it cools down a little (although not much) I’ve found some interesting new materials to work with.  If you forgot, Mangunde is pretty isolated when it comes to food availability.  The is no town in walking distance, and the nearest “food market” is an hour or so away by car, so we have to stock up when we go into town or else just bear through a couple weeks of beans and rice and other locally available foods.  Despite this, however, I have found some new stuff available right here at Mangunde which has been fun to use. 

• There is a milk boy that comes around every week or so and sells cow milk straight out of the udder for 5 mts (12 cents) per cup.
• There is a honey lady that comes by and sells bush honey (I think they just go rob bees nest) for the ridiculous price of 20 mts (50 cents) for a jar.
• The little market at the end of the road has expanded and now features a few local ladies who sell watermelons, cucumbers and sometimes even bananas!…still waiting on tomatoes, onions and garlic which would be nice, but I’ll take what we can get for now.

Recently I made a killer spaghetti with garlic bread, a chick pea and zucchini peanut sauce that I made from my pathetic garden’s yield, a chana masala Indian dish, and hummus to put on bread for lunches. 

Another things that I’ve gotten accustomed to doing in my spare time here in Mangunde (which is becoming more non-existent everyday) is play chess on my porch with a few students that like to take me on.  We play almost everyday, and it’s lots of fun.  I’ve been beaten a few times, but I’m definitely ahead in the overall count.  In the afternoon after classes there is usually either a soccer game and a volleyball game going on in the field across from my house, so I like to take part when I have time.  Last week, I put up fliers for a volleyball league that I want people to get teams together for.  I offered to buy sodas and biscuits for the winning team, so there is quite a buzz around school about the start of the tournament.

I’m also trying to learn as much Ndau, the local language, as I can.  I spend a lot of time sitting on my porch with students trading 10 minutes or so of Ndau lessons for 10 minutes of English lessons.  It’s a nice way to interact with students and learn a useful skill at the same time.  It’s definitely a tricky language to learn though; I think I’m picking up a few things, one or two words a day, but it’s a slow process.  If nothing else it makes me understand how difficult it must be for my students to learn a language as different and unrelated as English is for them.  I used to laugh when my English students would try to pronounce the letter “r” but now I’m humbled when I try to say “eggs” – “nhzizanda.”  I don’t know how to spell it but that’s the best I could spell what would like “shee-zanda” but with a slight whistle and wisp of the tongue on the “shee.”  It’s fun though, and a good opportunity to interact with my students and with the people who live in the communities around the school.  One goal of mine is to really explore the villages and get to know people who live in the surrounding communities.  Most people out there don’t speak Portuguese so it is my dream to one day master Ndau and make some friends in the community.       

Ok, I think I’ve probably taken up enough of your time and I want to go join the volleyball game that is about to get underway outside.  I hope that all is well back on the home front and everyone in Madison is enjoying the protesting and political unrest that I’ve been reading about.  Sounds like exciting times over there!

Take care!

A beautifully sunny evening and my favorite baobob tree which splits the road in two on the way out of Mangunde. 

 This is Marta, which turned out to be male, but the name stuck.  Somehow, a local kid caught him and tied him up in a tree near my house.  

A small bank of huts in the zonas outside of Mangunde.  I like to walk and bike around on the paths out here in my free time.  On this day, I happened to be coming back just as an intense rain storm was moving in.  It was getting dark, but the sun was setting and still shinning brightly behind to create the rainbow.

The Long and Winding Road

So where did I leave off?  I know I left this blog with a bit of a cliffhanger in my last entry and I’m sure that all of you have probably been losing sleep night after night because of this.  So in order to cause no further agony, and to allow you all to carry on with your normal life of eating and sleeping I will jump right into this blog entry.  In case you forgot (since it’s been like 3 weeks and you presumably haven’t been sleeping or eating) let me set the stage again…

It had been raining all week.  The 25km road to get out of Mangunde and arrive at the national highway had transformed from a rugged dirt road to a perilously flooded mud road.  My plans had been to leave Mangunde on a Friday afternoon and make it to the provincial capital, Chimoio, that night and then board a 3am chapa Saturday morning headed North to Tete city, about 6 hours away.  I would spend the weekend there with friends and return to Mangunde on Monday.  Because of the insidious whims of Mother Nature and her powerful rain clouds, however, this plan was now in grave jeopardy.  I spent most of the day Thursday like a father in the waiting room of a maternity ward, pacing and awaiting any news of a car leaving the mission.  The clock was ticking.  What was the doctor doing in that room?  A nurse came out and gave the first piece of bad news.  There had been a complication.  Brother Antonio, who had tried to leave in a mission jeep early that morning rolled back into the mission 5 hours later looking defeated.  He had made it about 2km before slipping off the road and getting stuck in a muddy ditch.  The tractor had to come rescue him and pull his car out of the ditch.  Strike one.  2pm…3pm…4pm came and went fleetingly by, each minute putting another nail in the coffin of my naïve dreams.  This is a fact: it takes at least 4 hours to get to Chimoio and catching chapas from the main road becomes exceedingly difficult after dark.  4:30, two hours until nightfall, we heard a motor revving in front of  our house; it was a mission vehicle packed like Chuckie Cheese’s on a Friday night with people from the school and villages who were also trying to leave.  Mr. Pray, we’re going to try to give it a shot and get this baby out.  I was game.  I chucked my bag in the back and jumped in the jeep.  The driver gunned it on the gas and we were out of there, fully expecting to get stuck about 2km in and then have to wait another 5 hours into the night for the tractor to come pick us up. 

The rain had died down a bit, but the road was still treacherous.  As the driver carefully navigated the terrain, we often found ourselves stopped with the tires kicking out mud helplessly, but just when I thought it was game over, the wheels would find some divine source of traction and haul us out of the rut.  At other times, we would find ourselves spinning off the road sideways, but the driver always found a way to expertly crank the wheel left or right and put us back on track.  As we drove ourselves out of more and more seemingly desperate binds, I became more confident that we might just get out of there after all.  About an hour and 25km later, when we emerged from the fog and mud and turned right onto the national highway, we had made it.  Your baby was delivered safely, Mr. Pray, congratulations!  Let’s not get too optimistic yet though; there was still work to be done.

It was now nearly 6pm, the sun was setting, and I still had to catch two chapas at night and travel 3 hours to get to Chimoio.  Hmm.  I have to say, I was not optimistic.  I had conceded to myself that, well, it was remarkable to just get out of there for starters.  It could take me two hours just to catch the first chapa to take me the first leg of my upcoming journey.  By then it would be 8pm and dangerous to be out on the road, all my plans would be foiled and I would be stuck somewhere on a Mozambican highway.  Now, I don’t generally believe in fate or divine intervention, but what happened next seemed to be almost too good to be true.  Within 30 seconds of standing on the side of the road a chapa drove by which I flagged down.  Hoping that he could at least take me to Inchope, the next town two hours up the road from where I could pick up another chapa to take me the rest of the way, I asked him where he was heading.  The driver told me that he was headed to Inchope first (score!!), then on to Chimoio that night (What?!  Double score!!!), and then was heading up to Tete city at 3am the next morning (Get out!! That’s ridiculous!!!  That’s exactly what I wanted to do).  Suddenly my naïve and ambitious plan to make it 9 hours to Tete city for a 3 day weekend seemed like it might actually happen.  I was beside myself with disbelief.  What luck!  What’s more is that this unlikely chapa was not even full, or close to full.  There were only about 5 passengers in a van that usually seats 16 comfortably and 25 uncomfortably.  The driver was driving right past people trying to flag him down on the road; it was as if he didn’t want to pick up anymore people.  This does not happen.  If there is one thing I know about chapa drivers it is that they will do anything to pocket another 20mts and fit another passenger into an already packed bus, but this was like my own personal cab all of the way to Tete.  It was such a bizarre circumstance that I couldn’t help but think it was some kind of scheme to rob and murder me and the 4 other unsuspecting passengers who were getting the joy ride of their lives.  But, thankfully, we arrived in Chimoio that night unharmed, with the promise that if we showed up again at 2:30 in the morning we would be on our way to Tete city before we knew it.

Well, if only life were that simple.  I paid the driver 500mts in advance for a seat on the upcoming 3am chapa and went to find some friends at a nearby bar to pass the next few hours before heading back to the bus stop in the wee hours of the morning.  When I got back to the bus stop promptly at 2:30am, I was sleep-deprived and a little tipsy, but I couldn’t help but notice that there was nothing there.  I saw a couple of empty chapas, and there were a few homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk, but other than that, the area was completely deserted.  After almost an hour waiting there in the dark, a few groggy passengers started to filter into the area.  We had all already paid for our tickets and were curious where this shady driver had absconded to.  We started pounding on the chapa windows and found the cobrador (the money collector that sits in the chapas) sleeping in the back.  He confusedly woke up from his slumber, wondering what all of the hubbub was about.  When told him that we had paid for tickets for a bus that was supposed to leave at 3am, not at 5am and he seemed utterly dumbfounded.  Apparently the driver was nowhere to be found and the money we had paid him, which we were demanding back at this point, was at the local bar with our AWOL driver.  This is when things got interesting.  One of the passengers who had also just returned from the bar was a little more agitated by this disappearing act than the rest of us and decided to take matters into his own hands.  He was demanding that the helpless cobrabor return our money and was adamant that he would not take no for an answer.  After some verbal sparring, it finally turned into an old fashioned show down, with the passenger grabbing the cobrador by the collar, yelling in his face, and slapping him upside the head continually.  When that didn’t work my fellow passenger began reaching into the chapa window to pull out and throw down all of the pineapples that the driver had bought on the way up.  It was on.  At this point I was pretty awake and kind of excited to see what would happen next.  If you know me, you know that I generally don’t get involved in these kinds of altercations, but I did the best I could to show my support for the drunk guy laying into the lazy cobrador who wouldn’t give us our money back.  Every once in awhile I would chime in, “Yeah, you said we were leaving at 3, it’s almost 5 now!” and then I would fade back into the crowd. I did my part.  Just when things were getting exciting, however, our absconding driver finally showed up from the bar 2 hours late, chugged the rest of the bottle of wine he had, and revved the engine to signal that we were off! 

The driver and his eager co-pilot, having just come from a night in the bar, decided that it would be fun to blast a mix of rap and Mozambican dance music at 5am on their new woofers.  Hooray.  I was just happy that we were finally on the road.  The first few hours of the trip were pretty smooth, minus the lack of sleep and the blaring music of course, but then things got kind of ridiculous again, as they tend to do on the roads of this country.  There are always a number of police checkpoints that you have to get through on the major highways which I’ve never had any problems with, but you never know when you might come across an opportunistic cop who sees white people in a chapa and thinks “money.”  On one particular stop the officer, toting an AK-47, asked for my passport and was checking it much more scrupulously than usual.  After a few minutes of careful investigation he asked me to step out of the chapa and informed me that my visa was expired…which it was, thanks Peace Corps.  He made sure to be as condescending as possible in spelling out to me in English that we are now in the year 2011, and a visa for 2010 is no longer applicable.  Thank you Officer, I wasn’t aware what year it was.  Luckily, while I didn’t have it with me, my 2011 visa was in processing at the capital, and I had an official receipt which explained that I, indeed, was legal in this country.  When I showed it to the cop, however, he emphatically denied that this meant anything at all, “this is just a piece of paper, what does this mean?  Anyone could print this out anywhere.”  Hmmm.  Then he asked me whether I had my “exit form” for leaving the province without an official visa.  This is when I knew he was full of shit.  You don’t need an exit form every time you leave the province.  I didn’t really know what to do about it, though.  After all, he had the badge and the AK.  So I decided to just kind of look at him and not say anything.  This, surprisingly, was a pretty effective strategy.  The chapa driver was honking his horn at this point and wanting to get on the road again, and the corrupt cop’s partner was looking down clearly embarrassed by the conduct of his partner.  Under this pressure, the officer made one last attempt, “How about a couple of beers for me and my buddies?”  I almost laughed at this plea, but was able to restrain myself, and, given its previous success, I decided to continue with the silent stare strategy.  It wasn’t long before he gave me my papers back empty-handed and let me get back into the chapa.  Success!

The next stop we had on this ridiculous variety show of a chapa ride was a disease control station.  Apparently there had been some recently reported cases of Cholera in the area and officials were afraid of a Cholera outbreak spreading through the country.  Quick blurb about Cholera – it’s a bacterial infection that spreads through fecal contamination in water.  If you get it, you essential get explosive diarrhea so intense that you can die in 24 hours.  Ouch.  So I wasn’t such was this “disease control” station actually had in store for us.  At first I though that they were administering some kind of vaccine or prophylaxis to everyone that passed by this road, and I was worried about PC medical clearance because we’re not allowed to get treatment from anyone other that PC medical staff.  I soon found out, however, that I had nothing to worry about.  What had at first appeared to be a sophisticated disease control center defended by armed police turned out to be no more than a jug of water and floor mat.  Stand on the mat, run water over your hands, and get back in the chapa; no soap, no antibacterial lotion, just water and a floor mat.  It was classic.  I hope the water was at least treated.  I couldn’t help but get a kick out of that.

Well, after all of those distractions we were back on the road and were nearly to our destination.  There were only a few more stops in store for us.  At one point, the passenger sitting next to me yelled parragem, the word for stop, in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.  There was a village a few miles away, but other than that it was just bushes and a few sparse trees.  He informed us all that he had been herding goats out in these parts last week and had lost his wallet.  Thus, like any efficient public transportation service would do, we stopped the chapa and all got out to look for his wallet for 20 minutes.  Not surprisingly, we were not successful in finding the poor man’s wallet as he no idea where it fell out of his pocket. 

One thing that our chapa driver did not stop for was the dog that he nailed in the middle of the street.  Yeah.  I could tell that the driver’s buzz was wearing off because he was getting pretty accurate at trying to hit every animal that dared cross the road in front of us.  He seemed to be gunning for goats, dogs and chickens like it was a video game and he got points for tagging them.  Luckily, he was generally unsuccessful in hitting the unsuspecting animals, but there was one dog that was not so lucky.  It just stood there like a dear in headlights in the middle of the road.  It had plenty of time to get out of the way, but the driver was probably going 60 or so and didn’t even consider braking.  In fact, it felt like we sped up as we neared our unlucky victim.  I’ve never straight up run over a body before, but I have to say I was surprised by how smooth it was.  One tire, then the second, the dog didn’t even have time to yelp.  It was actually very sad and pretty disturbing at the time, but you get used to everyone hating dogs here pretty quickly.  I’m a dog guy, but I don’t even like dogs here.  They’re everywhere, they get into your garbage, they fight, they’re always dying of starvation, and they’re so mistreated by people that they’re very hostile to the point where I’m even afraid to walk by some dogs.  I’m not justifying it, but I’m just saying that people should keep their goats, chickens and dogs off of the national highway.  I don’t know how evolution allowed a herd of goats to think that resting for the afternoon in the middle of the national highway is a successful survival strategy.  Every time I travel, we have to come to a complete stop, honk incessantly and nudge 50 goats off of the road because they decided to camp out on hot pavement for an afternoon siesta.  I don’t get it.

Anyway, let me wrap this journey up, because my account of it is become as long and tortuous as the event itself.  I finally made it into Tete city, Hallelujah, and was able to meet up with my friends by noon on Saturday. 

Here is the ironic part of this whole journey: in the days preceding my journey, I had been fighting off a minor cold/fever thing that I was able to live through.  As soon as I got to their house on Saturday, however, whatever sickness had been growing inside of me the last few days came out of its cage in full force.  I said hi to my friends and then proceeded to spend rest of that day alternating between the bedroom and the bathroom.  It was not a pretty sight.  There I was, visiting for 2 days only and I spent the first of my two days listening to the party from a bedroom loaded up on Peptol, Tylenol and Immodium.  I must say, drinking the night before and then proceeding to go 30 hours with no sleep probably did not help my cause.  It was a learning experience.  Luckily I was able to pull myself together enough on Sunday to enjoy the day with my friends and actually eat some of the delicious food that they were preparing.  That pizza and birthday cake were so good that I think I would’ve eaten them even if I was dying of Cholera.  At some point, you reach a decision that some foods are so good that you are willing to deal with the consequences of eating them, whatever those consequences may be.  I had eaten so many plates of beans and rice the past month that when the pizza and cake were on the table I actually think I saw them glowing like you would a diamond in a cartoon.  It was surreal. 

I had a wonderful weekend though, and on Monday, which seemed too soon, I packed up my things at the crack of dawn and loaded up for what would be another 9 hour adventure on Mozambican roads.  My journey back wasn’t quite as eventful as my journey up, but it did have its share of unique personalities.  That afternoon I made it all the way to Muxungue, the town just down the 25km dirt road from my home, Mangunde.  Despite all of the good luck I had had that day, however, it appeared that my luck had run out.  It was around 6pm and getting dark.  By the time I got there, there were no more mission cars heading into the Mangunde that day.  I would have to spend the night in Muxungue and get home the next morning.  To finish off the story, a very friendly man I met on the chapa offered me some sardines and xima and space on the floor of his hut in Muxungue for the night so I passed the night there and caught an early morning ride back to the mission on Tuesday…

…Phew!  What a journey!  And all that for just a 2 day vacation.  Well, I’m going to leave my blog entry at that for now.  For any of you who made it this far, thanks for sticking with me.  To give you a minor update about other things in the world and my life I will most certainly post again sooner rather than later.  It has been 3 weeks since my journey up to Tete and a lot has happened.  I’m now fully into a rhythm here at school with a whole month of teaching under my belt.  Life here is slow at times, and way too busy at other times.  It is definitely a balancing act 24/7.

I hope that all is well with everyone at home.  The Packers won the Super Bowl, as I’m sure you guys probably heard!!!!  I wish I could have been there to enjoy the celebration.  I hear that there are some riots going on in Madison around now.  It sounds like things are getting pretty intense on the home front.  I would love to hear from you guys individually about how you are all doing back in the states.  It’s been awhile since I’ve heard from friends and family back at home, so feel free to email me anytime you want! 

Ok, take care, and happy valentine’s day!

 

Low quality video of singing and dancing in front of my new friends house!!

 Singing, dancing and playing guitar in the zonas with my new friend!

 Jam sessions with the students on my porch.

 Sunset over the river at Mangunde.

Chicken on a stick in Muxungue (the nearest town and market to me).

Singin' In the Rain..

Well, it’s raining.  It’s been raining, everyday, for a week.  For awhile, after it didn’t rain for a month here, the rain was a welcome and refreshing change.  Now, I’m urging you all to send some energy waves to the rain god to tell him to hold off for the afternoon.  Here is the problem: it is Friday; I’ve been teaching here at Mangunde for two weeks now, but have not left the school grounds for about a month.  I love Mangunde, life here when school is going on is full of energy, very busy, and a lot of fun.  A month, however, is a long time to spend in a small, isolated little plot of land.  My plan was this: leave Friday morning for Chimoio, head up to Tete city Saturday, spend the weekend there and not come back until Monday!!  I don’t have classes on Fridays and was able to rearrange my Monday classes to make it work.  My bag is packed.  I’m ready to see civilization again, to eat some food other than beans and rice, and to see some friends.  If only the rain god would see it my way he could have a little sympathy.  It’s 25km from Mangunde on a dirt road to make it to the National Highway, from which it would be smooth sailing.  When it rains, however, the “dirt road” becomes the “mud road” and it becomes nearly impossible to pass.  Therefore, here I sit; it’s 11am Friday morning, and I’m not necessarily emotionally ready to hold tight at Mangunde for another couple of weeks.  I don’t have any money (the nearest bank is 4 hours away in Chimoio) and the only food left available here is beans, rice and an assortment of leaves that nature didn’t intend humans to eat. 

Therefore, I’m going to do what I know how to do best when there’s nothing to do and when I’m putting off making lesson plans for next week – write in my blog.  I just wrote an entry about what school has been like for the past couple of weeks – it has been an adventure and a blast – so I want to talk today about life outside of school here at Mangunde (well, life outside of school doesn’t really exist here because you are always at school, but life outside of the classroom is definitely bustling as well).

This past Sunday was a great example of a fun and interesting day in the thick of life here at Mangunde.  In the morning, I woke up to dance music blasting from what sounded like the grounds in front of the main school building.  Curious to find out what this commotion was, I wandered over there and found practically the whole school chilling in front of the school, eye’s fixed on the front veranda of the school building which was functioning as a makeshift stage for the lip-syncing and dancing competition that was primed to begin any minute.  It was a warm, glorious morning with fluffy white clouds in the sky.  You could tell that the students had bathed and washed their clothes because they were looking spiffy in their best jeans, pressed t-shirts, and some were even sporting their knock-off Raybans.  This was all about looks and swag, and it was pretty exciting.  There was a student working the DJ table and another charismatic 11^th grader working the mic and encouraging everyone to drop their inhibitions to come up to the stage and dance.  Tim and I got up there and started doing our best white-boy dances to a chorus of laughter and the party had officially begun.  People were break dancing, poppin’, lockin’ and jumping all over the stage.  I could never in a million years see this happening at my high school in the US – everyone would be nervous and shy, but here, it is like a big little family.  Everyone was getting up there and strutting their stuff – well, I should add, all of the boys were strutting their stuff.  The girls were fully MIA at this party.  It’s unfortunate, but it is just one of those things in such a genderized culture that there isn’t that implied co-existence and friendship between the girls and boys.  Everything here is pretty segregated – they sleep on different sides of the campus, don’t eat together, and certainly today, don’t dance together. 

Anyway, as the freestyle dancefest wrapped up, the lip-syncing competition was poised to begin.  I took my seat at the judge’s table and got ready for the first act.  It was a riot.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but the kids seemed to choose mostly 80s power ballads sung by Mozambican or Angolan artists to lip-sync to.  Little 12 year old kids were up there on their knees, pouring their hearts out on the stage as they belted out the sorrowful Portuguese lyrics.  I tell you, I could never see this happening in the States.  A couple of groups of kids put on some Angolan rap to lip-sync and dance to which was pretty exciting to watch also.  All in all, it was a pretty impressive exhibition, and I was excited to find out that they do this every Sunday morning after church here!

After the show I agreed to meet with one of the workers at the health center who had been nagging me for the past couple of weeks to bring my guitar out to his house so that I could accompany his family in a few songs that they had been working on singing together.  Truthfully, I didn’t really want to go at first; I had a lot of lesson planning to do and it just seemed like another guy asking for another favor (which you get a lot here unless you start saying no to people).  Regardless, I decided to go, and it turned into a really awesome experience.  So, we took off from my porch with guitar and drum in hand, ready to make the trek to his house.  I wasn’t sure how far he lived away, but given that he didn’t seem very well off, I imagined that we might be in for a bit of a walk.  The sun was oppressive that day (if only it could be today…); sweat was running off my brow and down my arms, and my neck was getting singed in the scorching heat.  We walked down the main road that leads out of Mangunde, passed the little loja that sells oil and sugar, passed the enormous baobob tree that splits the road into two, passed the huts that usually mark the turnaround point of my runs when I run this way, and kept walking.  At that point, however, we had started talking, and, as I found out more about this mysterious man I was walking with, I became more intrigued and the extra distance and crushing heat didn’t seem so overpowering now.  It turns out that this man, who I had taken for a lowly hospital sanitation worker, was actually a student at the school as well.  He must be at least 40, and has a wife with 2 kids, but he works in the health center in the afternoons and attends 7^th grade classes in the mornings.  Lest you judge him for only being the 7^th grade in his middle ages, he had a pretty remarkable story to get him to where he is today.

I asked him whether he went to school when he was a kid, and he told me that he did, but that those were the days of war in Mozambique, and times were very different.  Many people had fled to Zimbabwe or South Africa, and the country was left with very few teachers.  There was no infrastructure and the government was in no position to worry about education.  Therefore, people were essentially on their own when it came to school.  Classes would be held under trees, or wherever they had space, and anyone who had passed 5^th grade was usually the most qualified teacher in the village.  He said that he loved school and that teachers would teach what they could, but that there were always more important things to worry about.  Everyone was afraid, all the time.  If you lived in the cities, you were at risk of a Renamo raid at any time, and if you lived in the rural zonas you were at risk of a Frelimo raid at any time.  Raids from the roaming bandidos affiliated with Renamo or Frelimo generally came at night, so most people left their homes and slept in the woods at night, only to return to their huts during the day.  Bandidos killed indiscriminately, with Renamo people under the assumption that anyone living in the cities would eventually be recruited by Frelimo, and Frelimo people under the assumption that anyone in the zonas would eventually be recruited by Renamo, making every civilian a potential enemy.  With trade routes cut off, and any semblance of industry completely annihilated, the people living in the zonas had nothing but what they could scrape up from the wild – no food, no clothes, no tools.  For food, people were reliant on the food they grew in their machamba outside their huts.  If the weather cooperated, they would hopefully grow enough corn to dry out and grind into flour to cook xima for the year.  But, as he explained to me very matter-of-factly, people were hungry and starving.  For clothes, often all they had were leaves.  As I was asking him more questions about his life, I realized that he could have been talking about the weather if you didn’t know what he was saying.  To me, his words were tragic accounts of a life of fear and suffering, and I couldn’t help but notice how unaffected he seemed by it all.  As we continued, I asked him if the killing was so widespread that most people around today have been, in some way, affected by the war.  He then added, without hesitation, that his village was attacked by a Frelimo raid when he was very small and his father was taken away by the bandidos as he, his mother and sisters watched.  He said that they have never heard from their father since and had to assume that he was killed.  Again, he could have been talking about the score of last week’s football game the way he casually dropped his father’s murder.  I realized, however, as he was saying this, that this is not an uncommon story at all.  It does not make it any less tragic, but I’m sure that, to him, it is not a unique travesty.  It was a reality for everyone who lived during the war and I would imagine that you get hardened to stories of lost children, destroyed villages and missing fathers pretty quickly.  He explained it best when he told me, “people would justify the killing by just saying, ‘this is guerra.’” 

After his father was taken away, his family fled to Zimbabwe, where they spent the next 14 years until he moved back to Mozambique about 10 years ago.  At this point, I was so invested in his story that I didn’t want to arrive at our destination quite yet.  The war is a very curious topic here in Mozambique.  I’ve read about the destruction and destitution that it brought to Mozambique for 17 years and seen some of the remnants of war in a society that is still recovering; however, in four months here now, I have talked about the war itself with almost no one.  It is as if it never happened.  You know that it was devastating to countless people and that nearly everyone lost a loved one or two, but people addressing any of that pain, or reliving those poignant days is eerily absent.  People do not talk about it, do not reference it, and certainly don’t want sympathy for it.  It seems as if the only thing people could do after such a bleak period was move on and focus on the challenges ahead without looking back.  It is not as if life is easy now.  Mozambicans still have to worry about feeding their families, avoiding HIV/AIDS, malaria, other diseases, and getting their kids to school.  Maybe it is just that they don’t have the time or energy to talk about the past, however difficult and evocative it may have been.

When we arrived at his house, I met his mother, brother and a number of children who belonged to one family or the other.  He was very proud to have me visiting his little homestead which consisted of one main hut, a couple of thatched shade shelters, and a latrine.  They sat me down in their nicest second-hand lawn chair and graciously offered me a glass of water.  He was excited to get to the music, so he hastily gathered his family around in a semi-circle and addressed them nervously.  At first, they were all looking down at the ground somewhat bashfully, but eventfully the music started to arise from within them and the traditional African melodies that they were singing took shape.  As the song went on, the modal harmonies and shrill call-and-responses began to seep into the song’s empty spaces.  I picked up the guitar chords pretty quickly and before I knew it we were putting on quite a show.  I gave one of the kids my camera to record the spectacle and we went on like that for 4 or 5 songs.  The kids got up and danced while everyone filled in the African harmonies and I accompanied in the back on guitar.  It was a blast.  Every time they finished a song all 10 people would sprint over to the camera so that we could watch what we had just played – laugh at the missed lines and evaluate the freestyle dance moves that were on display!  I told them that it was sounding really nice and they were giddy with excitement that their own little African Partridge family was on their way to stardom.  After a couple of hours a storm rolled in, and I decided it was time to call it a day, but I promised them that we would do this again in a few weeks and he promised me that he would get his family to practice that one song and go over the lyrics to that other.  Maybe, I told him, we can perform at the school’s Sunday talent shows one day!

Well, that was quite a weekend here at Mangunde full of song, dance and fun!  As I sit here finishing this blog entry on a Wednesday, now 5 days after I wrote the first paragraph of this post, you may be wondering, “What ever happened to the rain?”  “Did my prayers work?” “Did he make it out of Mangunde last weekend or was he stuck there unable to pass through the mud?”  Well, like any good TV series writer would do, I will leave that story for another blog post!  You will have to stay glued to you computer screens in order to catch the conclusion of this cliffhanger.  I will say this to give you something to chew on: as I was writing this post last Friday, I was indeed finally summoned by a car that was going to attempt to brave the mud road and try to leave Mangunde.  I boarded the outbound truck and what followed was quite an adventure!

If I don’t write until Sunday, cross your fingers for the Packers in the Super Bowl – and for me, because I still don’t know how I’m going to find a way to watch it…

Take care!