On the road again . . .

After conselho de notas I escaped with some Italian friends to Gorongosa National Park – one of the only places in Mozambique where you can still see the wildlife that Africa is famous for. After years of war and mismanagement, Mozambique is working to restore the parks and hopefully rebuild the wildlife population. So, early in the morning I woke up ready to go camping for a few days in the park before beginning my trek to the northern part of Moz. Since it’s winter here the days are relatively short and I woke up before sunrise to get things ready. (Backstory: I have a bees’ nest close to my house that has become increasingly active) As I was getting ready a couple of bees were buzzing around the lights, coming in through the gap in my roof (see rat story). It wasn’t that big of a deal until all of a sudden my house was full of hundreds of bees, all swarming around the lights. So I ran outside, awkwardly standing in the doorway to my house as a couple of Mozambican women who were getting water stared at me. I got the guard to help me spray Baygon (a crazy toxic bug spray that will probably eventually give me cancer) and cart all of my stuff outside. Luckily no one was stung and as of today the gap in my roof is partially filled in, which is cause to celebrate since I've been trying to get it closed for 6 months.

Day #1: Gorongosa

We all headed to Gorongosa – about an 8-hour drive from Inhassoro – and set up our tents only to find that the only food source (a restaurant) inside the park (the nearest town was 3 hours away) only has buffets on the weekend. And the buffet was 700 mets a person . . . which is approximately 10% of my monthly income. For one meal. Needless to say I had a momentary freak-out, after which we convinced them to make us sandwiches for lunch and dinner. Drove around a bit and saw the ruins of an old Portuguese cotton factory, warthogs, various types of antelope, and baboons. Next week I'll post pictures

Day #2: Gorongosa

We left in the morning for a drive to the town of Gorongosa (to get real food) and a drive up Mt. Gorongosa to hike to the waterfalls. The drive was super bumpy, but we made it up the mountain (oh how I dream of the US’s paved roads) and the walk and waterfalls were gorgeous. Plus we saw pineapple fields – though I’ve known for a while that pineapples grow on bushes, I still find the plants hilariously awkward. Plus, they wrap the pineapples in hay as they grow so that they don’t get sunburned. I don’t see many other non-Peace Corps Americans in Mozambique so was surprised to learn that the other guy on our tour was from Maryland . . . apparently NASA just installed some kind of equipment in the park. Unclear. We made it back to the camp and made s’mores with the rest of the marshmallows that had been sent from the states (you can’t get marshmallows in Moz). They were awesome. If you have any desire at all to send a care package, please include s'more supplies. You'll be my favorite person.

Day #3: Gorongosa and Chimoio (Mozambique’s Independence Day)

On our last day in the park we went on a game drive, not really expecting to see much since the park is definitely still in the rebuilding phase. BUT WE SAW LIONS!!! There were either 2 or 3 female lions and a male lion. It was very exciting. We also saw a ton of monkeys, warthogs, impalas, and baboons. But weirdly no elephants (that is one of animals that most everyone says they see in Gorongosa). Even if we hadn't seen any animals, just driving around that area of Mozambique was awesome as the plants and terrain are completely different than what we have here in Inhassoro. After the game drive we headed out and the Italians dropped me off at the crossroads for Chimoio where I stayed with a PCV and celebrated Mozambique’s Independence Day with spaghetti, cake and pumpkin pudding. I caught a bus at 4 am the next morning . . .

Conselho de Notas

As an industrial and commercial school, my school has different breaks than the secondary schools where most PCVs work. This is both a benefit and a detriment – conferences aren’t scheduled during our breaks (because no one else has them) which gives us more time to travel. However this also means we have to miss school for PC conferences. We aren’t usually able to travel with other volunteers, but this almost always guarantees that the volunteers will be at site when I pass through. Over the last month, Estrela do Mar hasn’t had classes and after making through the much dreaded conselho de notas, I fled Inhassoro to visit some friends up North – spreading New Girl episodes and the Hunger Games movie as I went. But that’ll be the subject of the next blog – this one is dedicated to the joy that is conselho de notas.

Conselho de notas is something I had been dreading for a while. Most of the secondary school PCVs miss the first couple of conselhos due to the PC conference schedule. Since we’re on a semester system instead of trimesters, I am not so lucky. There was a mid-semester conselho in April . . . but the school forgot to tell Zach and I about it, so we missed it (and thanks to Aunt Mary’s visit in August, I’ll miss it again. Halleluiah!) But there was no missing this end of the semester conselho. In the US computers take over most of the functions of a conselho de notas, which is to verify that the grades have been recorded correctly in about 4 different places – namely by reading aloud columns of numbers while the teachers attempt to check that all the grades are correct (with between 20-50 students in each of my turmas, each of which have three different grades to be verified, I will probably have nightmares about numbers being shouted at me in Portuguese until I am old and gray). Anyways, the first part of conselho is just making sure that everyone calculated their averages correctly and properly copied them in the various books. Then we get to the fun part – reading each student’s grades, assigning them a behavior grade and, if needed, discussing whether or not any of their grades should be changed. This time the discussion wasn’t too heated because students can only fail at the end of the year. I imagine that the end of the year conselho will be pure hell . . . I really don’t want to change my grades as I feel that if you put forth pretty much any effort in my class (and don’t cheat) you’ll pass. If I can understand chemistry in Portuguese, my students should be able to as well J

Basically it was three days of this craziness after which everyone led me to believe that I was done for the semester. Luckily I didn’t escape right away, since when I went back to the school at the end of the next week (to check for the tenth time that I did not have to do anything else before traveling), I found out that I had to sign all of the grade sheets and that a number of my grades had been changed by the directors to improve the school’s pass average. Actually, I feel kind of bad for the directors of my school. They talked about how they weren’t going to change grades, but the reality is that if they don’t achieve a certain percentage (which is almost impossible with the insane curriculum we are given) the district will say that the teachers have stopped teaching and close the school down. So, while I know this is not a battle I can or want to fight, I’m worried about how it’ll affect my students’ ongoing lack of motivation – if they can fail the assignments and still pass the class are they going to make any effort at all?

Prayers

This past week has been the final exams for most subjects (I did them the week before so that I could proctor all of the chemistry tests), meaning that I’ve been spending my days walking up and down rows of students making sure they aren’t talking or cheating. Which is somewhat entertaining for the first day or so. And then it sucks. Because I actually watch the students to make sure they aren’t cheating, the turmas all freak out when they find out I will be proctoring their tests. Which is amusing and then just annoying. But here is an entertaining conversation that I’ve had with pretty much every turma:

(Backstory: I have just taken away someone’s test and given them a zero for cheating. Also, I go to mass every Thursday with the kids who live in the dorms)

Student: Senhora Professora, você não reza? (Senhora Professora, don’t you pray?)

Me: Silence (attempt not to have this conversation for the twentieth time)

Student: Senhora Professora, você não reza?

Me: Rezo para as almas dos alunos que estão a cabular. (I pray for the souls of the students who are cheating).

Silence.

The cheating continues, so their Catholic guilt apparently isn’t as strong as I had hoped. And one girl tried to convince me that taking away her test was a sin.

A Tale of Potholes

This Friday I was lucky enough to get a ride to and from Vilankulos with a local restaurant owner. I had been debating whether or not to go to Vilankulos this Friday – I really didn’t need to buy anything, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to go next weekend. Plus I had at least one care package at the post office (turns out I had two, thanks Aunt Arlene and Uncle Arnie and the Hall Family!). My mind was fighting a war between the cost of an up to eight-hour round-trip chapa experience (last week I was in an 18-person chapa with 19 other people and over 20 cases of tomatoes. For four hours) and the potential benefit of care package chocolate (I obviously have too many econ major friends). But when I found a ride, the debate obviously was weighed heavily in favor of chocolate J Unlike a chapa, which rides a bit higher off the group (one of the only benefits of this mode of transportation), this car was rather similar to a Subaru-y car – aka it sits very close to the road. On a normal road (in the states anyways), this isn’t really a problem – but on the EN-1 between Vulanjane and Pambarra and the road from Inhassoro to Vulanjane are both filled with potholes. Actually I’m not even sure if the word pothole adequately describes the holes that line the EN-1, I swear there are a couple that I could take a bath in. Anyways, for the 45-minute drive to Vilankulos, I feel like I’m living in some sort of video game or obstacle course.

Recently I had reason to hope that road repairs were underway – rumor has it that a natural gas company is coming to Inhassoro and that they are helping to enlarge our one lane road to the EN-1. This past month a construction project sign appeared as well as mounds of sand along the road. While I know next to nothing about road construction, sand did not seem to be the wisest choice – but I was still hopeful that the road would be expanded and that the game of vehicular chicken would finally be over. As it turns out, this sand is simply being used to smooth out the sides of the road to make it pretty for the president’s visit to Inhassoro next week. A couple million mets are being spent to line a 15km stretch of road that the president will probably never see (he will be traveling by helicopter). As a point of comparison, I’m pretty sure most Mozambican teachers make about 5,000 mets a month. The sand will last until our next rainstorm (which hopefully won’t occur before the president’s visit).

In other news, I’m only a couple of weeks away from finishing my first semester of teaching – only three more semesters to go! Also, Inhassoro now has an airport, so it has become even easier to visit me – I’ll be the girl taking a bubble bath in a pothole :)

             

Pictures!!

Vilankulos, Inhambane

Bus broke down on the way to a conference . . . 2 hours later we boleia-ed with a lovely Zimbabwean family

I finally found a Mozambican wearing a Yale shirt!!!

Students . . . please note the Yale shirt :)

Need to step up the blogging . . .

So, as some people love to remind me, I’m a bit behind on my blogging – my apologies.

This last month or so has been a bit interesting – my students have taken two tests each of which involves a process that is equally amusing and exasperating. The tests start with me instructing all students to put all of their belongings in the front of the classroom, they can have one pen and a piece of paper, this reorganization of the classroom takes approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Then, once everyone has stopped talking, I put up the “papel gigante” on which I have written the test, and then begin to walk up and down every aisle trying to stop people from cheating and talking – most of the time this does very little good. Despite my repeated warnings that cheating will result in a zero, I find students sitting on top of their notebooks, with notebooks stuffed down their shirts, and blatantly looking over the shoulder of the person in front of them. While these efforts to cheat are rather disheartening (especially when they result about 4 people per class receiving zeros), I really can’t say I blame them for trying. A good number of the other teachers either leave the classroom during tests or sit in front of the class working on corrections. I’m not saying I manage to catch all the cheaters, but I really do hope that my students are perhaps starting to learn some study skills instead of spending most of their time writing tiny sheets of paper with what they think will be on the test.

My school is on the semester system, so we have a long break in June/July, but we also had the week before Easter off. I got a lot of correcting and lesson planning done during that time, but I also travelled down to Mapinhane where Chris and Laurie are teaching to celebrate Passover. While the hard-boiled eggs used during the Seder may have been decorated Easter eggs (dyeing brown eggs is much more difficult than I expected), it was a great first Passover – complete with a care package matzo ball soup mix and the lucky discovery of walnuts in a grocery store in Vilankulos.

Also, last week was the “Reconnect” for my PC group, Moz-17. All of us in the Central and Southern regions of Mozambique met up in Chimoio for a week to discuss our lives at site, secondary projects, and how integration into both our community and the school was going. It was great to see everyone again, and the food was pretty good too (there were doughnuts!!). On our way to Chimoio we caught a bus at the crossroads to Inhassoro that was headed to Beira – we would get off at Inchope and then catch a chapa the rest of the way to Chimoio. As luck would have in, the bus broke down about two-ish hours away from Inchope, fortunately it ended up breaking down at a gas station. We waited for about two hours for the bus to get going again . . . Some of us even joined in the efforts to push the bus in order to give it a rolling start, all to no avail. So I went and spoke with a lovely Zimbabwean family that stopped at the gas station on their way back home. Not only did they give all five of us a ride, but the car didn’t actually have seats for all of us, so the mom held one of the kids on her lap and three of us crammed into the back (let’s be real, it was still much more comfortable than a chapa). It was so nice of them to give us a ride all the way to Chimoio – I might actually be sad not to be able to give rides to hitchhikers back in the States.  

Life has surprisingly become rather routine here – bugs no longer really bother me (although the large number of ants might eventually drive me crazy) and I’m back to taking bucket baths (it’s cold!!). I love the fact that I don’t have to wash my clothes anymore (yay Rosa!) and am currently putting together plans for an epic Moz/Johannesburg/Kruger trip in June. Miss you all (and I’ll try to be better with the updates)!

Photos - Church and School

The Catholic Church

Estrela do Mar - My school