Bom dia! Today is Saturday,
November 3rd, and my time here in Mozambique is quickly ending. Officially my COS, or close of service, will
take place on November 30th, and I will no longer be a PCV, but will
be an RPCV (Retired-PCV). I find myself
in a certain limbo, thinking about the future and trying to plan my post-PC
life, but at the same time trying to close my service in a meaningful way. When you get into the last few months of your
Peace Corps service you begin to deal with questions and good-byes that you’re
not necessarily prepared for. Mozambican
colleagues all ask you if you’re leaving for good, and whether you’ll come back
to visit them; other PCVs ask you where you’ll be living when you get back to
the states and what you’re planning on doing; and you ask yourself what this
experience has meant for you and your future, and what you want to do with your
life after November 30th. I
don’t have answers to any of these questions yet, so my general strategy has
been to focus on my life here in Mozambique while I’m still here to enjoy it
and hope that the rest will work itself out when the time comes…
Here in Mozambique the last three months have been a whirlwind of school
responsibilities, trips, and Peace Corps functions, and have left me with very
little free time, as you may have deduced from the lack of blog posts. Only now, when things here at school are
winding down to the end of the year, my Peace Corps colleagues are already COSing
and many of my goodbyes have already been said, do I have the chance to sit
down and reflect on these last few months of living in Mozambique.
In the classroom with my 10th grade English students this
trimester has been all about preparing them for the mandatory national exam
that they will take next week. In
Mozambique, 7th, 10th, and 12th grades have
national exams that students must pass in order to proceed to the next grade or
graduate. These national exams are
notoriously difficult and force many students to repeat the same grades over and
over. Because of this, many of the 10th
and 12th graders here in Mangunde and around the country are in
their 20s, repeating 10th or 12th grade for the third or
fourth year as they try to pass the national exam. Try solving these English questions that
appeared on the national exam last year and you’ll see why:
I didn’t hear you -------------
in. You must have been very quiet.
a) came b)
come c) comes d) coming
I must go now. I promised ------------- late.
a) I wouldn’t be b)
not been c) not being d) to not be
Now imagine that you don’t speak English. How would you pass the test? Well, here in Mozambique there are a few
ways. You can study your ass off, learn
as much as you possibly can and hope that the questions aren’t all ridiculously
difficult like the questions above. Some
students do this and they are the future of Mozambique. Or, you can find a teacher who will be
grading the tests and pay him to pass you.
You can pay him with money, chickens, phone credit, sex, and any number
of other benefits that he will have few qualms in accepting, because teachers
don’t get paid enough and their salaries never come in time. That’s the sad reality of the education
system in Mozambique. The official end of
the 2012 school year was last week and exams begin next week, so we’ll see how
the process plays out this year.
In 8th grade biology I finished my final exams and the school
year last week. This year we covered all
of the systems of the human body and I ended the year talking about the Reproductive
System, always a highlight. Talking
about penises, vaginas and masturbation with 13-15 year olds is pure
entertainment. They all rolled over
laughing when I tried to pronounce the words for penis and vagina in the local
language (if you’re ever in the area…mbolo
and mbetche) and I had to stifle
my laughter at some of the questions they asked: “So is this ‘egg’ in the woman
like the type of egg we eat from a chicken?”
“What is a clitoris?” “Can girls masturbate too?” “How?”
“Is it possible for a woman to give birth to a tea cup?” So I spent my last few weeks in the biology
classroom explaining the basics of sex and reproduction, and, of course,
masturbation (munhara in local
language if you were wondering), to a group of giggly adolescents, a fitting
end to my Peace Corps service.
Outside of the classroom there has been plenty to do here in Mangunde
over the course of the last few months.
In August the provincial Science Fair was held in Beira. This was an event initiated many years ago by
Peace Corps volunteers and is now run jointly every year by PCVs and the
Ministry of Science of Mozambique. It’s
a wonderful event that invites the winners of smaller local fairs to Beira to present
the science experiments that they have developed and compete for a chance to
win cool prizes and, for one lucky winner, for a chance to participate in the
National Science Fair. From Mangunde,
there were six students who won the opportunity to compete in the provincial
fair in Beira. Their experiments, by
rule, were supposed to use the scientific method and be relevant to problems faced
by their local communities.
Before the Science Fair in August we had what I can now call our annual
Mangunde Roast to celebrate my birthday here at site. There were 10 or so PCVs who braved the
journey out to rural Mangunde and were treated with an old-fashioned
Brazilian-style churrasco. As part of the festivities we made our way to
the pens where they keep the pigs and were told to pick out the pig that we
wanted to eat later that afternoon. Then
the guy asked me if we had brought a knife and a wheelbarrow and who was going
to kill the pig. I’m a softy; I freaked
out when I tried to kill a chicken last year and it ended up with the chicken
running around spurting blood out of a half-severed neck. I didn’t want to repeat that on a larger scale
this year with a pig. Actually, none of
us wanted to have the burden of killing the pig; we just wanted to eat some
pork chops that night. Luckily for us,
Mozambicans tend to be chillingly unfazed about slaughtering animals, and
actually often excited about the prospect.
Thus, we had a line of students who had followed us to the pen in
anticipation of getting a poke at the poor swine we chose. Picking which pig would meet its maker that
day, however, was the hardest part.
Word to the wise, don’t google “are pigs intelligent animals” on your
phone right before you’re about to kill one, because you’ll read that they’re the
fourth most intelligent non-human animal in the world. Apparently they are surprisingly self-aware
and have been shown to understand when theire pen-mates are taken away to be
killed. In a completely unrelated google
search, pigs have also been observed to have orgasms of up to 30 minutes. None of this stimulates one’s appetite for
bacon.
We decided, thus, that the only fair way to choose between the four
adolescent pig brothers in front of us was based on looks. We put on the pig masks we had torn out of a
book to make the pigs feel more comfortable around us, approached the pigs and
made our selection. We pointed to the
ugliest pig with the most black spots and then covered our ears as my eager
students jumped into the pen and cornered it.
The shrieks of his brethren as he was being carried away were
blood-curdling. Did you know that the
way you’re supposed to kill a pig in Mozambique is by stabbing it in the
heart? Yeah. Stabbing it in the heart. So my students stepped on its mouth so it
wouldn’t scream, held him down and cradled him in their chest like a newborn
baby and then with one slow motion sunk an eight inch knife into the pig’s
chest. It took 10 or 15 seconds of poking
around while the pig was still alive until he hit the heart and finally killed
the poor thing. I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t watch, just listened to the pig’s
muffled shrieks.
When I opened my eyes the pig was dead.
His eyes were glazed over and his legs were motionless. It’s funny, though, how this happens. Each step in the process of turning the once
live pig into dinner the pig looks less and less like a pig to me and more and
more like a pork chop, and despite my previous horror, the afternoon wore on and
I found my appetite tapping me on the shoulder and asking me when dinner would
be served. The pig had to be shaved with
boiling water, then eviscerated, decapitated, then cut into small edible
pieces. The students who had killed the
pig expected some share of the meat, and were beyond excited when we offered the
head, hooves, testicles and intestines to them.
We marinated the pig in a garlic tomato sauce and threw it on the
charcoal grill. As the scent of sizzling
pork emanated through the yard and into our nostrils we all forgot about the
atrocity that we had witnessed earlier that morning and got ready to feast. I don’t know if it was because of the garlic
and tomato marinade we put on it, or the charcoal fire that cooked it to
perfection, or the fact that we had been there for every step of the
preparation process, but that was the most delicious pork I had ever eaten.
After the pig roast and Science Fair, there were a still a few events left
before the end of the trimester for me.
In the first week of September I worked with the local health center to
carry out an HIV/AIDS and leadership training for 40 of the brightest 12th
grade students here in Mangunde. I can
say with confidence that it was one of the most positive experiences throughout
my Peace Corps service. The head nurse
at the health center, a wonderful man name José, co-coordinated the workshop
with me and was instrumental in making it run as smoothly as it did. It was only one day, but included sessions
given by different nurses, religious leaders, professors, and myself about all
kinds of important issues that adolescents in Mozambique face – HIV/AIDS and
pregnancy prevention, self-esteem, gender issues, character development,
religious perspectives and many more.
As Peace Corps volunteers one of the biggest challenges we face is finding
real local support for our projects in the form of committed and effective
counterparts. At this point in my
service I’ve run so many HIV/AIDS workshops that I could practically run one by
myself with my eyes closed. What’s so difficult
and so easily forgotten by many PCVs, however, is including local leaders in
your projects as well. I can organize
all the students, funding, food, lodging, certificates and transport for an
event and then get up and preach to them about the importance of self-esteem,
condom use and gender equality until the cows come home, but it’s only going to
go so far. I’m a rich, foreign, white
male. How much is a poor 15 year old
Mozambican girl really going to listen to my messages?
Not all PCVs like to work with Mozambicans on their projects. This isn’t because we don’t like them, or get
along with them. They’re our friends and
neighbors, of course we do. It’s because
working with Mozambicans is often messy and unorganized. We’re afraid of money being mishandled,
people showing up late, and things not being taken care of until the last
minute. It’s much easier to just take
care of everything yourself and not have to trust others with difficult jobs. This is what I’ve done on almost all of my
projects throughout my PC service. “I’ll
handle it; you just show up and do what you’re supposed to do…” I would tell my
Mozambican counterparts.
That’s not how I ran this last workshop, and that is why it was so
rewarding. José took on the bulk of the
planning responsibilities. I gave him
the form and he wrote the grant, I mentioned a few important themes and he wrote
the curriculum, and I gave him the money and he organized all of the
meals. On the day of the event there
were a few last minute delays that you can count on in any Mozambican-run
event, but all in all it was a huge success.
The students were able to learn from their peers and fellow Mozambicans
throughout the sessions and José gained valuable experience in planning a
workshop. I learned that all it takes is
a little bit of trust and detachment and you can stand back and see your local
projects carried out.
After the training in September, there were two more events that
consumed the bulk of my time over the last couple of months. They were the annual Regional English Theater
Competition which I organized and took place in Chimoio on September 22nd,
and an end of the year field trip with the 12th graders to see
famous pre-historic rock paintings in October.
I’m reaching my word limit here for this blog, however, and I want to
devote a full post to these dramatic events, so I’m going to end here and pick
up where I left off another day.
Thanks for sticking with me, and I hope to see you all in a few short
months. I forgot to mention that after I
COS on November 30th, I’m planning on going on a three-week trip
with Hannah that will take us to India and Thailand before arriving back to the
States on December 23rd. Just
one more thing to look forward to! Until
next time…
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