Stepping Into the Ring

I walk under the archway built of curved sticks behind a man dressed in a purple, second-hand graduation robe.  There is a worn red sash draped around his neck and the purple robe drags along the dirt ground, kicking up a path of dust as he walks.  Everyone is already there.  We are late.  But we are supposed to be late.  I am inside the ring now with 30 other people.  The ring is roughly circular, 30 feet in diameter, market by vertical sticks around the perimeter that rise up 6 feet and are spaced about 6 feet apart.  Connecting the posts and enclosing the circle are two horizontal rings of curved sticks, secured to the posts with crude knots made of a sinewy vine. 

Outside the circle it is midday, the sun is blazing mercilessly.  Farmers either brave or desperate enough to work in this heat have their shirts wrapped around their heads as if they were trekking through the Arabian Desert.  Sweat glistens on their muscular backs and runs down the trench that follows their spine.  Others, less courageous, sit, drink meijão, and listen to a blaring radio under the protective shade of a giant baobob or acacia.  There is no grandiloquence that can overstate the value of a mammoth and powerful, yet motherly and embracing acacia set in the middle of a homestead, providing shade from the sun, shelter from the rain, and a symbol of endurance.

Inside the circle, we have a tree of our own.  A giant acacia rooted some 30 yards away reaches out its fecund arms and, like a mother shielding her child, casts a cool shadow over our small ring.  I am guided to my seat, a spot directly in the center of the ring, and am instructed to kneel on the meticulously swept dirt.  Everyone is facing East, or is it West, maybe North.  Nobody knows, but they know that this is the direction that the spirits come from.  Maracas behind me lay down a shrill rhythm, hitting every sixteenth note in a frantic sounding shek-a-teck-a, shek-a-teck-a, shek-a-teck-a, shek-a-teck-a.  The maracas are made of rusted tin cans filled with corn kernels loosely hanging from a stick that was driven through it to form a handle.  Underneath the maracas, an ornately dressed man beats the drum to every quarter note, accentuating every fourth shake of the maracas with a deep and sonorous boom, boom, boom, boom.  The explosive drum gives the timbre of the ensemble a tribal, head-spinning quality that propels the rhythm forward and out of control.  It feels like it is speeding up, every beat of the drum anticipating the next beat just slightly so that the energy rises up, up and up, over the fence, through the tree and into the sky, reaching a deafening pinnacle in which I can’t even think.  I begin to hear inhuman, guttural noises emanating from the crowd behind me.  To my right, an important seeming man contorts his body, folding his shoulders inward, and with his eyes rolled back into his head, gives off a strident yelp as he releases the pent up energy in his body and straightens like a spring regaining its form.  Behind me a woman’s voice rises and falls in a falsetto with her lips pressed together giving off a shrill bbbbrrrrrrr.  As the energy of the drum beat seems to take off like a freight train picking up steam, the people follow in stride.  Animal noises rise up from inside their bellies like demons bouncing off the walls looking for a way out.  The energy is captivating and stupefying.  Lost in the rhythm, you float up into the sky with it.  But then, as suddenly as it rose up and captured my consciousness, the entrancing rhythm falls back down through the clouds, through the trees, into the ring and onto the ground with a thud, thump.  Everything is perfectly quiet; serene; tranquil.  I pop back into consciousness, now acutely perceptive of how quiet it is out here.  There are no cars, no factories, just a few birds singing and a quiet buzzing in my ear.  A millipede slithers hurriedly across the dirt in front of me, leaving an S-shaped trail in the dust.  It crawls onto the foot and up the pant let of the person kneeling in front of me.  I don’t say anything. 

The service begins.  That was just the warm-up.  It is Saturday afternoon and I am at the church service of João Baptista (John the Baptist) with my friend and counterpart Alberto.  This is a Christian church, although there is no steeple, no pews, no alter, no communion and no minister.  Inside the ring, everyone is facing the same direction that we began the service facing.  I am in the center of the front row.  All of the women are together, clumped tightly together in the back of the small ring.  The men kneel in rows in front of the women.  The important men, the five or so that have presented themselves to me as “pastors,” are decorated with various motley assemblages of colorful second-hand robes, scarves, and dresses.  They are seated in the first row with me.

As the service goes on, it calms down.  People rest and recover from the outburst of energy that just took place.  The pastor, standing and preaching only a few feet in front of me speaks in a rapid local dialect, his voice rising and falling with the distinct syllables of Ndau that I have learned to recognize.  Every few sentences he will gesture towards me, front and center, and I will hear the words “Yen” and “America” in close proximity which means that he is talking about me (they pronounce Ian as “Yen”).  At first I smile and clasp my hands together in a gesture of acknowledgment and appreciation.  But then he continues to mention my name, over and over. I begin to fear that maybe they have misinterpreted my visit.  I fear the jubilant pastor is making promises about me that I didn’t come here to make.  He switches to Portuguese so that I can understand, even though hardly anyone else in the congregation understands Portuguese.  He says that it is such an honor to have such a special guest in our congregation today; that you should all go back and tell the people that didn’t come today that we had this white person at church today, they will be regretful for missing today’s special occasion; that Mr. Ian brought his machine to record us today so that he can show us later; that white people never forget; that Mr. Ian will be here for two years.  I’m not sure what they think or expect of me. 

In turn, all five pastors stand in front of the congregation to give their sermon, each one of them beginning their talk by approaching me and shaking my hand, right hand outstretched and left hand perched underneath the right elbow in a show of respect.  My name is dropped in all of their sermons.  After they have all spoken, I am asked to get up and say a few words to the congregation.  Expecting this, I stand up with my friend Alberto as a translator and thank them for accepting me into their community, letting my sing, pray and dance with them, and treating me like family when I have come so far from home.  I tell them that I come from America. They have heard the word, but don’t seem to be too familiar with what that actually means.  I tell them that you have to fly on an airplane for 18 hours just to get there, that it’s on the other side of the world.  The pastor, more worldly than most, describes in dialect that an airplane is something that flies high above in the sky and moves very fast.  I thank them again, and assure them that I will make copies of the pictures I take to give back to them as soon as I get a chance. 

We close the service with another session of head-spinning, out-of-control rhythm and dance.  This time the drummer and two maraca players are in the center of the circle.  In this ensemble there are two women each holding three of the crudely crafted maracas and the ornately dressed man has the drum hanging from his neck.  They begin to play a slow methodical rhythm.  The congregation stands outside the circle, bobbing and clapping to the rhythm.  Those who feel the spirit jump into the circle and parade counter-clockwise around the rhythm section which beats in the middle, hopping and stepping to the beat.  More people enter.  The rhythm accelerates, picking up people and energy like an avalanche cascading down a mountain side.  Within seconds the music takes on a life of its own and the dancers feed off of its swelling energy.  The drummers face contorts and his lean muscles strain as he now beats at a frenetic pace.  Beads of sweat run down his arms and soak the animal skin drum that he is now pounding.  The dancers are in perfect sync, stepping, kicking and jumping to the thumping of the drum that is now so loud it is internalized.  Every time they kick dust billows up from the dry ground.  The circle is shrouded in a dusty haze, but the dancers don’t seem to notice, their palpitating is unconscious.  The rhythm seems to be synced directly to their hearts, kicking up dust and pushing blood through their veins simultaneously.  It is time.  I jump into the circle.  I have to time it, like a jump rope, find the opening in the circle as it spins, no longer made up of individuals but now one indistinguishably blurred ring.  1…2…3…go…I’m in.  I follow the steps of the person in front of me, like I imagine a fish would do from the middle of a large school.  Nobody knows who started one move or the next, but we all kick, jump and step simultaneously.  I lose track of time.  I don’t know how long I have been in here dancing.  My head is spinning.  The drum beat climaxes with a deafening finale.  And then.  Silence.  Everyone who had been dancing with me fades instantly back into the crowd, anonymous again.  Now, only I remain in the circle, sheepish and suddenly self-conscious.  I quickly spin out of the circle and fall back into the crowd to a barrage of handshakes and compliments. 

Outside the circle, a man, who I recognize as one of the five pastors, is wearing a poorly fitted and tattered white lace wedding dress.  He looks ridiculous to me.  The stern, muscular, bearded man fills out the wedding dress so that the lace is stretched to its limit.  He wears pants and a shirt underneath the dress.  The dress gives him an air of importance and respect among the capulanas and t-shirts that other members of the congregation are wearing.  The pastor has his hand on a woman’s head as she sits in the dirt.  With one hand remaining on her head he flicks water onto her face and begins to utter shrill cries and yelps that seem to come from someplace outside of his body.  His eyes roll back into his head and his eyebrows strain with deep concentration.  She begins to convulse, first just her head, and then slowly spreading through her whole body, shoulders, chest, arms, hips and then her feet.  Her eyes roll back also.  Her chest heaves uncontrollably and she shrieks out with every exhalation.  The pastor flicks more water onto her and, sensing something big, heightens the intensity of his guttural cries.  They both shake and wail in unison now with an explosive intensity.  Something has to give.  Like pressure building in a volcano; steam screaming out of a boiling pot.  One decisive shriek and she falls to the ground, quiet and shaking, like in the aftermath of an epileptic seizure.  The pastor walks away knowingly, confident.  Someone leans to me and whispers, “she had a demon” as matter-of-factly as if they were telling me what time it is.

Just like that it is over.  We file out of the ring and retreat to the VIP lounge under the tree, where the pastors and I are served meijão, a drink made of corn flour and sugar.  It is not bad, but I can only drink one glass.  I shake everybody’s hand one more time.  Women come up and kneel in front of me, offering their thanks to me.  It is time to leave, they say.  Feeling like a spectator in my own life, I walk away with Alberto, out from under the protective shade of the great tree and into the scorching sunlight, headed for home. 

Mangunde Shorts, Part One

Good morning!  Here in Mozambique, it is a cool and refreshingly calm, relaxing Saturday morning.  This quality of inertia has been increasingly more difficult to come by as the weeks and months have barreled on.  I slept in until 8, and then lazily sunk into a book for the morning, unaffected by the sounds of an already bustling Mangunde that were filtering through my window – hoes cracking through dry and desiccated dirt, babies crying for their mothers, and the omnipresent background noise of Angolan pop music.  With my door closed, I was in my fortress, safe from the constant barrage of students’ pleas and requests.  With the door open, you are vulnerable, a boxer with his gloves down, a sailboat caught in a windstorm. You are forced to heed the requests of a desperate mob – they want the ball for soccer, to charge their cell phone, help with physics homework, to learn guitar, to use the computer lab, to play chess, to ask for a loan…the list goes on.  No, this morning, my door was closed; I was impervious and cracked a sinister smile whenever I would hear the unanswered pleas of “Excuse me, Teacher” float into the house from behind the closed door.  No, this morning is mine. 

There are few things in life more enjoyable than a lazy Saturday morning, in my opinion.  As you may have guessed, it has been awhile since I have had this unique pleasure to sit and decompress; enjoy a cup of coffee, albeit instant coffee, with a piece of toast in my hand, my feet up and my book open.  The last month for me has been a whirlwind of school responsibilities, figuring out how to get things done in a vastly different culture, and finding time to escape and enjoy life.  It has been an exercise in treading water.  With my tippy toes barely touching ground beneath, and my neck arched back, lips skimming the surface of the water and sucking in one breathe at a time, I felt like I was always fighting to stay on top.  But, day by day, I have managed to survive.  When it’s all over I collapse into bed and, with my body at the finish line, ready to click the off button, my brain holds outs for a few more desperate minutes, planning what tomorrow holds in store.  But when sleep comes, and a glorious sleep it is, I fall hard and deep, dreaming of worlds near and far, and a home that is both here in Mangunde and one which lingers in America.  When I am pulled out of that dreamy trance, I am sucked back into the world of things undone.  But not today.  Today is Saturday.  There is no done and undone.  There is only breakfast, my feet on the chair in front of me and my book in my hand.

As you may be able to predict, my current state of Saturday-morning-decompression will be fleeting and short-lived.  Soon it will be replaced with a swift and crippling compression.  My door will open, and like the rush of a tsunami wave crashing over the protective levees, life with all of its responsibilities will sweep under my feet and drag me into its tempestuous current.  It is, however, a current that I submit to willingly and one that you shouldn’t try to fight against.  Let it sweep you away; let it disarm you; and trust that you will end up in a new and exciting place.    

Snakes on a Plane…or on a Fan…

Matakatira! It’s a hot and tired afternoon here in the sweltering doldrums of Mozambique.  My fan is oscillating its head back and forth in my room like a prison guard sweeping the grounds from high up in his tower.  Every time it turns towards me a flush of hot air pushes the old stagnant air out of my face and dries the sweat that collected since its last rotation.  Outside, my zucchini plant, which managed to pool all of its collective resources and moisture to push out one modestly sized zucchini, is now yellow, as are the two tomato plants that stopped growing about two months ago and never quite had the courage to bloom a flower or a fruit.

No, it’s now March, and it’s been awhile since the last rain.  The rows of maize, squash, and watermelon that are ubiquitous in the fields surrounding the school are drying but still managing to hold onto life and a semblance of fertility.  Despite the relative drought that we have been experiencing, the effects of a pretty good wet season can still be seen in the very modest market that is just down the road from my house.  On a good day, the local market here on the school grounds is replete with little fat cucumbers that are chocked full of seeds, watermelons that are white on the inside (also full of seeds – I guess the seedless watermelon hybrid hasn’t made it to this part of Africa yet), squash, and on one special day last week that made my heart skip a beat: tomatoes, okra, bananas and garlic.  I don’t know whether that was just an anomaly or whether the tomatoes will keep coming, but I was pretty excited to see some variety so close to home!

But yes, the heat is relentless, and the rain has reportedly left for good.  People talk of month in August and September when the desiccated soil won’t have felt the replenishment of water for 6 months and the landscape has turned a monochromatic brown.  It makes me appreciate these months during which rain is hard to come by but at least the plants are still clutching to their greenness.  The silver lining of these arid months that lie ahead in the calendar, however, is that they promise to be cool.  People talk of June and July as if it is the stuff of myth and legends.  I hear fantastical stories of whole months in which fans can be put into storage and sheets, blankets and even jackets can be taken out of the closet.  I have a sweatshirt and a fleece that have been resting on a nail on my door for 3 months collecting dust so I am anxious to see whether these cool-weather fantasies will ever come to fruition.

With all this talk of heat and deserts I feel like it’s only appropriate to tell you about my encounter with a sinister little creature that embodies the spirit of the desert.  Yesterday, I was reading in my bed on a warm afternoon with the fan sitting idle just a couple of yards from my face when Anita, Gracinda’s niece who lives in the house with us was passing by my open door and said somewhat non-chalantly, “Teacher Ian, há uma cobra no ventilador.”  At first I didn’t understand what she was saying.  It seemed out of context and I often don’t understand what people say anyways so I just smiled and went back to reading my book.  Then Gracinda came to my door, seeming a little more alarmed and repeated what Anita had said, “tem uma cobra no ventilador!”  Again, I didn’t understand her well because of music in the background and people talking.  She seemed to be pointing to the window with a worried look on her face though, so this time I perked up a bit.  I finally pieced together that she was talking about a “cobra” or snake but I looked at the window and didn’t see anything anywhere.  My next thought was that this was some kind of prank.  This has happened before.  People will come up to you alarmed and point to your feet “Cuidado Teacher, tem uma cobra!!”  You jump away and look down only to find a stick on the ground and a group of little brats laughing in your face.  So I was skeptical on this particular encounter.  As a precaution though, I stood up and started to walk out of the room, right past the fan.  Anita, Gracinda, and Tim, who were now all standing outside my door looking in at the spectacle all yelped and frantically gestured for me to stop moving!  They pointed to the fan, now just a couple of feet away from me and there it was, a snake resting right there on top of the floor fan in the doorway!  “Ah, the ventilador!!”  His tail was wrapped around the wires of the fanguard and his head and neck where poised perfectly still and erect surveying the area and tasting the air no more than 3 or 4 feet away from me.  He was a perfect statue and it actually took a couple of moments for me to believe that it was real.  It could have been a rubber snake toy with its fluorescent green back and the way it posed so perfectly and motionlessly on top of the fan.  Full of trepidation, I stealthily slid past the snake and out the door of the room into safety while the snake turned his head apprehensively and watched me slip by.  Now that I was safely out of the death-room, it was time for this snake to die. 

If you have ever spent time in Africa, or Mozambique at least, you know that they have a somewhat mythical relationship with snakes here.  Snakes are the embodiment of evil.  They are sinister, insidious creatures that sneak up on their prey and bite innocent unsuspecting victims.  Regardless of what species a snake may actually be, if you ask someone here, any particular snake has the most potent and deadly venom and is probably a black mamba.  To put it simply, snakes are not a pest taken light here in Mozambique.  A few weeks ago we found a snake lurking in the hedges in front of our veranda.  The high alarm went out, and within seconds there were hoards of boys and men toting machetes, hoes, sticks or anything they could get their hands on in order to get a crack at the snake.  Let’s just say that the snake didn’t have much of a shot, they beat it to a pulp.  A similar fate was about to befall my fan-dwelling friend, so we thought.  Word started to spread about the snake in Teacher Ian’s room and soon enough we had a small gathering of boys wanting to get a look at this spectacle.  One of our good friends, Nelito, came in and Tim and Nelito pulled out two bows meant for hunting gazelles and bush-rats that, up until that point, had been purely ornamental, hanging from a hook on our door.  We came up with a plan:  I would throw a towel over the snake, still resting attentively on the fan, and Nelito and Tim would start swinging their bows to beat the snake dead.  Step 1: I tossed the towel on the fan.  Bulls-eye.  Unfortunately, however, when the snake was under the towel, Tim and Nelito were swinging their bows blind and couldn’t hit a damn thing.  I guess that wasn’t the brightest plan.  The snaked flipped out and slithered out from under the towel, starting a flight for his life that took him behind my bookshelf and eventually behind some boxes that were under my bed.  During this high-energy pursuit, Nelito went crazy.  I was filming, Tim was yelling, and Nelito was swinging the bow around the room like he was Neo in the Matrix trying to fight off 25 agents at once.  Nobody actually connected with the snake in round 1, but in his frenzy, Nelito did manage to nail the bottle of Gold Bond powder on my shelf with such force that it popped the cap off and coated the room in baby powder, he then took another swing that connected with and tore the plastic apart on my power converter.  It was anarchy.  Once the snake was out of site, though, we all calmed down and try to formulate plan B.  We knew it was behind the bed, so Nelito decided it would be best to empty my room out and leave that little bastard no where to hide.  There goes the bookshelf, the mattress, guitar, one by one, we disassembled my entire room until we had the snake cornered and hiding in my big duffle bag which had previously been under my bed.  The new plan, we decided, would be to beat the duffle bag until the snake either died or tried to escape.  Thus, round two commenced and they started swinging away again.  Nelito seemed to have his eyes closed the whole time and wasn’t hitting anywhere close, but Tim managed to get a few good shots in on the snake and the wounded and desperate snake made one last dash across the room and over the bed frame that was now pushed into the middle of the room.  He was headed right for us and we were jumping up and down frantically in the doorway.  Unlucky for him, trying to slither across the bare bed spring turned him into a sitting duck that even Nelito couldn’t misfire on.  Both of our sharpshooters got a couple good blows to the head in and our sinister friend writhed in one final exasperated show of life before being beaten to a pulp on the floor of my room.  It was dead, the deed had been done.  Danger averted.  Nelito, for whatever reason though, didn’t seemed to be convinced.  He dragged the poor mutilated creature outside and with a genuine look of concern on his face showed us that the tail was still moving.  He proceeded to take about 10 more swings with the bow to the snakes head and then chucked it into the brush across the road.  If this wasn’t enough, Nelito then grabbed some large rocks, located the snake in the brush and began slinging rocks at the snake lying lifeless in the grass.  “To teach a lesson to his friends” he said.

Besides snake encounters and the relentless heat, I have been having a rather satisfying, but very busy couple of weeks here at Mangunde.  This week marks the completion of my third month at Mangunde.  It seems like a long time, and one would think that I would have gotten the hang of things after only a couple of weeks here, but it has definitely taken all three of my months here to really start to figure out what is going on, how things work. what I want my role to be here and what the students and school need my role to be here.  I thought I was going to be able to walk in here and within the first week have friends, counterparts for projects, and a clear idea of what kind of difference I can make here.  I now realize that I was a bit naïve.  I heard somewhere that the first 3 months of one’s Peace Corps service are the hardest 3 months that you’ll have.  I don’t know how they settled on 3 months as the magic number of months for things to start turning around, but as I sit here typing almost exactly 3 months since I pulled into Mangunde with a truck full of boxes and a head torn between naïve optimism and fear, that number seems to be just about right.  It took all 90 days of those three months to inch my way into a tenuous integration, but I’m finally feeling like I have the lay of the land here at Mangunde.  While I have yet to start all of the projects and goals I’ve laid out for myself, I am at least at the point where I know what I want to do and have an idea, more or less, of how to take the first of many eventual steps to do that.  It sounds like a minor accomplishment, but believe me, it’s a better feeling that being lost in a foreign world without friends, support or any idea of what’s what and who’s who.

One thing that I had been thinking about for awhile and wanting to get underway in order to get my foot in the door and start interacting with students more was a volleyball tournament.  We have a volleyball net on the recreation grounds and I had brought a ball from America, so all I needed was students to begin my campeonato.  I put some fliers up in the internato asking for teams of 5 players and promising a prize of sodas and biscuits to the winners and was happy to see that people were very interested.  Last Saturday, we had the first round of the tournament which was an overwhelming success.  We brought speaker out and played music while I stood on a chair by the net with a whistle and called the first two games.  The students all had team names, and with the official-ness of a referee with a whistle and a chair being present, got really into the game.  The tournament is set to continue next Saturday with the finals already scheduled for April.  If the volleyball tournament goes well, I am planning on starting a chess tournament in the upcoming month, and, as soon as we get a rim for our now rim-less basketball court, a basketball tournament!

Ok, that should just about do it for this blog post!  If you see Jean Claude van Dam or Jet Li over there in America, let me know.  My students have been asking me whether I’ve seen them recently and I want to keep them up to date on what my buddies are up to.  For some reason, Jean Claude van Dam is probably the most popular movie star in Mozambique.  I don’t know if Jean Claude has ever thought about going on tour to Africa, but I think it could be huge.  I try to tell people that Jean Claude van Dam is not popular at all in America, but people here can’t seem to wrap their head around a whole in which Jean Claude van Dam isn’t the end all and be all of stardom.  I usually succeed in convincing at least one or two students a day that Jean Claude is my brother and that I know him well.  It’s always good for a laugh if you’re feeling down and want to put one over on a gullible student.  If you ask a few of my students, they will also be able to tell you that I killed Jet Li with my bare hands.  I used the double eye poke followed by the upper cut to the nose.  Instant kill.  So anyway, yeah, let me know what they’re up to, and what you are up to as well.  I hope that all is well on the home front and you’re getting ready for the snow to start melting and the college basketball to get crazy!

Take care!

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!!