You better make up something quick . . .

Last year I couldn’t stand teaching English. It sounds ridiculous. When I came to Moz, my assignment was to be an English teacher. I went through a 10 week training in order to be a good English teacher. And then I arrived in Inhassoro and was told I would be teaching chemistry. Not only would I be teaching chemistry, but I would not be teaching any English classes and would be the only chemistry teacher. This completely freaked me out – but luckily I had almost two whole months to figure out the chemistry thing before school started.

Because I live in Mozambique, the teachers’ extra hours were cut right at the beginning of the school year (teachers here have to teach 24 hours of classes a week to be considered full-time – in the years before if they taught more than 24 hours they would be paid overtime) and, understandably, no one wanted to teach extra hours for free. So I got stuck with a third year English class that hadn’t had any English classes that year since it had taken the school administration about two months to figure out the whole horas extras debacle (two months of twice a week classes, by that point they had missed almost sixteen classes).

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the nine students in my English class. It was the waiting/bartending group, so they really wanted to learn English, never cheated during tests, and were generally good kids. But I had over 300 kids in my chemistry classes . . . and nine kids in my English class, using a curriculum and lesson plans that I had to plan two months into the year. It sucked and I felt awful, but I just couldn’t devote nearly as much time to my English lesson plans as I had to devote to my chemistry plans. With chemistry I was able to get into a rhythm – I taught the same lesson eight times. Boring, but for someone who had never taught (or communicated in Portuguese) it meant that my lessons substantially improved and that I was able to become comfortable with teaching chemistry by the second semester. With English, however, I would give a lesson once, and then write another one. And repeat. All of my English students passed the national test, but I was not satisfied with my lesson planning or engagement with the material until about a month before the end of the year.

This year is different. I fought really hard to only teach chemistry this year – I didn’t want to have that one token English class that I just didn’t have time for (especially since this year I’m also involved in other activities outside of school as well as attempting to get my life together before moving back to the states). But this is Mozambique and despite having the schedule all put together, the Friday before school started I had four of my eight chemistry classes taken away and was given three third-year English classes. And I was not happy about it.

Luckily, teaching English this year has been a pleasant surprise. I expected it to be like last year – dreading to put the lessons together and having to sacrifice English lesson planning in order to put together chem lessons and to grade a fairly large stack of seemingly never ending chemistry assignments. But with half as many chemistry students and an already planned curriculum I am able to devote so much more time to my English students. True, I have under 40 English students and between 150 - 200 chemistry students, but the balance has become much more reasonable and I’m actually happy with how my English classes have gone this year. It’s most definitely not perfect, my lesson plans probably could be much more inspired and innovative, I could spend many more hours giving after school help and correcting endless essays and other homework. But I think I’ve finally made my peace with teaching English and every time I have a student tell me that they are “wonderful” today (instead of the route and oh-so-tiresome, “I am fine and you?”), it makes me feel as though maybe, just maybe, I am actually balancing teaching chemistry and English. Whatever it is, I might actually like teaching English. Maybe even as much as I like teaching chemistry. Basically those last two sentences should make you think the world is one crazy place.

Also, the most important thing happening in my life is that tangerine season has officially begun! Which means that winter is just around the corner and I'm back to sleeping under blankets, eating oatmeal in the mornings, and feeling cold (although those of you in the midwest might disagree, this is truly a wonderful thing). 

Random Note: I have been in an ongoing war with my blog font. But despite my best efforts it keeps changing back to the same font. I give up, the cursive stuff isn't what I want, but I refuse to spend more time fighting it (if you don't see the cursive font, that's a good thing). 

I'm not much into health food, I am into champagne

This past weekend I made the trek (five hours for what in a private car would be a little over an hour . . . apparently I looked like a super-sketchy hitchhiker that day as no one would stop) to Mapinhane for Passover 2.0. This is actually the first holiday I've celebrated twice since site placements (Thanksgiving was in Namaacha year 1 and Inhassoro in year 2), so it was awesome to reflect on how much things had changed in the last year. While Passover was amazing last year, this year it involved eight people and twice as much food/etc as the year before (I'm quite proud to say that I contributed a flourless chocolate cake with a fresh passion fruit syrup - Martha in moz for the win). While last year's Passover seems simultaneously FOREVER ago and like yesterday, the fact that I am able to teach chem in Portuguese without grasping for dear life onto my notebook (and not trembling with fear every time someone has a question) is just one example of how much has changed and how much I have learned.

Rewinding the calendar a bit (to the day before) another example of how much more confident I am about life/Portuguese/chem/school/etc is that I was actually able to respond when my vice-principal started chewing me out. Usually I am so upset/close to tears that the only language I am able to speak is English - which does me absolutely no good as she doesn't speak any English. The Thursday before I headed to Passover I stopped by the school to finish entering my grades in the livros de turma (books containing all of the info for every class). I had a quick question about the format and since I'm trying to have more positive interactions with the vice-principal, I went to ask her about the correct way to fill in the book. Of course, despite the fact that my grades are infinitely better than they were last year (97% pass rate in English!), she started yelling at me for the zeros that I had given my students for cheating and told me that they made the livro look ugly (which obviously should be my chief concern in life). I replied that they had cheated and that's the way I run my classes cheating = zero. The students are informed in advance and if they choose not to study it's their own fault. She told me that, while she understood, there are always two ways of looking at things and that the district office was going to say that I wasn't a good teacher and they may decide not to have Peace Corps Volunteers in the future. Of course this was her oh-so-passive aggressive way of saying (yet again) that I fail as a teacher. But this time I was finally able to confront her about the whole thing and informed her that I'm one of the only teachers that is there every single day and in the classroom for the full 45 minutes and that if she has a problem with my teaching she needs to talk to me about it (plus I know the district won't decide to not have pcvs - they haven't paid teachers on time for the last four months so I'm fairly certain they need all the free help they can get). She got really flustered (victory!) and said that no, I must have misunderstood her, she thinks I am a wonderful teacher (lies, but there is only so much I could address in one conversation). Anyways, the conversation went on and she still probably thinks I'm the worst teacher at the school, but I feel SO much better now that I was finally able to calm down enough to argue the point in Portuguese.

I spent Easter in Inhassoro, in one of my favorite churches in the world (check out the pictures that I posted in an earlier blog post). After spending thirty minutes during mass on Holy Thursday kneeling in prayer on a hard wooden bench (American Catholics are much less intense about this whole kneeling/long mass thing), I was slightly concerned about the rest of Semana Santa. But Easter mass was wonderful (albeit without a live goat being carried to the altar as part of the offering - I was kind of disappointed). And I made a passion fruit cream pie for dessert - another Martha in moz moment. Although I'm looking forward to masses in English instead of Xitswa when I get back to the States, I'm going to miss the enthusiasm and genuine happiness that is present in every mass here (if anyone knows of Catholic Masses in the States that involve clapping during the songs and carrying live goats to the altar, let me know).

And the best news of all - it's almost tangerine season 

No matter what we get out of this, I know I know we'll never forget . . .

I'm still working on finding a balance between sporadic "was she sold in exchange for goats?" and oh too frequent "look at me! I'm a PCV in Moz" blog posts. I'll probably figure this out sometime around October, so bear with me.

Last week I turned 24 (or 51 if one of my students is asking) and celebrated with a spice cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting (I've got the Mozambique baking thing down) on the day of and PCV friends who visited during the weekend. But the most exciting part of February 28th was the fact that I have two brand-new baby cousins (first cousins, once removed to be precise) to share the day with!! Can't believe I won't officially meet them until November-ish . . . we might be spending a lot of time together next year as nanny-ing for them is my current back-up plan for life in the States (at least for the 9 months before law school will theoretically start).

Other tales from Moz . . .

1) One of my English students asked if he could be excused to go to the bathroom in the middle of class. As I said sure, another student stood up and asked, "do you have to go POOP?". Remember that both of these students are in their early 20s and think they are oh-so-cool. I was basically rolling on the floor laughing. Probably need to work on being more mature.

2) We finally started taking attendance this week (sounds much less exciting than it actually is). I was about to mark a girl absent in one of my classes when the rest of the class informed me that she was at the bank. This of course didn't really change my mind about marking her absent . . . until I found out that the teacher before me had sent her to the bank (a ten minute walk at my American-pace) to deposit money for him, so that he wouldn't have to do it in his free time. SERIOUSLY!??!!! She missed about half of my class because the line at the bank is almost always at least 30 minutes long. And I was furious. Not with her (I know it wouldn't have gone well for her had she refused to go to the bank), but at the teacher. Not only did he make her leave his class (no wonder my students don't always value classroom attendance, apparently the teachers don't either) but he did this knowing that she would miss at least part of my class. I'm going to attempt to have an adult conversation with him about this on Monday . . . we'll see how that goes.

3) This week we're singing Party in the USA in my English classes - should be entertaining

4) Also, major life victory. A significant portion of my English students have started saying "bless you" when someone sneezes. This is amazing because they don't usually say anything in Portuguese when someone sneezes and until last week looked at me like I was crazy for saying "bless you"

5) Another exciting moment. They put in new chalkboards in our classrooms (exciting, but not the main point) and the students decided to put the chalk on the ledge on the top of the chalkboard. Which doesn't really work for me. As I was standing on my tiptoes, attempting to reach the chalk, one of my students said (in English) "Teacher Allison, you should play basketball." And then started cracking up because she was so proud of her sarcasm. YAY!! Some of my students might actually understand basic sarcasm by the time I leave :)

6) I'm so over scorpions. I've found three in my house over the last week. Not a fan. 

We're not gonna take it. No, we ain't gonna take it. We're not gonna take it anymore.

I debated whether or not to write this blog . . . but then I went out to dinner with friends for Valentine’s Day and ran into one of my fellow teachers and his valentine’s date, a fifteen year-old female student. So any and all reservations I had over writing about sexual harassment/gender relations here disappeared almost instantly. And I felt fairly nauseated. So here goes my rant . . .

I am completely aware of the fact that I look at sexual harassment through the viewpoint of an American female. Before moving to Moz, I knew that the gender dichotomy here would be very different than it was in the States. While I theoretically understood the differences, I didn’t understand how much they would affect my everyday life.

I don’t walk to the market between noon on Friday and Monday morning because the likelihood that I will be grabbed (anywhere from my arm to my ass) or verbally harassed increases exponentially. I am much less open in Portuguese than in English (which is saying something since I’m definitely not an emotions person in English) – I wish I could be more friendly to people, but I’m quite simply tired of having every male with whom I have an un-hostile conversation assume that it would then be appropriate to ask me; to have sex with them, my age, how many children I have, why I don’t have any children, and what my cell phone number is. I’m tired of the fact that once I answer these questions (no, 23 or 50 depending on how annoyed I already am, 0, because, and I don’t know) a group discussion on which of the lovely gentlemen in the crowd should be the one to impregnate me almost always ensues.  

Despite all these interactions, I’ve never felt physically threatened (although I did yell at a guy in English for about 5 minutes after he grabbed my butt) and Inhassoro is a very safe place. However, on an all too frequent basis I reflect on the fact that Moz has one of the highest percentages of women in elected office and am completely flummoxed as to how this is even possible. It isn’t as though things completely change once you enter the workplace. Recently I went on a teacher’s curriculum-planning trip to a nearby school (nearby meaning 7 hours each way). The car was filled with about 50% male and 50% female teachers all of whom are more educated than the average Mozambican. Despite the fact that we were obviously not in a locker room, the topic of conversation ranged from demonstrations of sex moves that a male teacher would be performing on his wife that night, discussions of the clothing choices of a female walking by and even a brief interlude about who the most attractive female students are. And none of my fellow female teachers did or said anything. Which, after seeing their interactions with the male teachers over the past year, really did not surprise me, but served as an ongoing reminder of how fundamentally unequal men and women are here.  

One of the most difficult parts of this past 17 months has been the ongoing harassment – both directed towards me and even more so in the interactions between my female students and the male teachers. Unfortunately this is all too commonplace and practically embedded in the education system here – many teachers don’t even try to hide the fact that they’re dating students. While I can work with the girls to improve their self-esteem and let them know that they don’t have to date teachers to get good grades, I’m not here to force things to conform with my worldview and know that if I said anything to my school’s directors they’d probably shrug and ask what they’re supposed to do (actually there is a good possibility that my vice-principal would laugh and remind me that this is Mozambique). On each and every national or provincial test my students take (some kids take up to 15 a year) there is a little quote on the top about ending sexual harassment in the school system. A nice touch, but not one of the teachers’ meetings or morning assemblies has ever dealt with the issue – it’s not as though my school (or any school that I know of for that matter) has a counselor to whom female students could talk to about these issues. Plus teachers here are notoriously hard to fire - one of the Portuguese teachers at my school stole thousands of dollars from the primary school when he was the director, if he still works for the school system, how can I expect a teacher who dates minors to be fired?  

And as the last portion of my rant, I am not a menina (girl) but would really prefer to be a mulher (woman). The fact that men over the age of sixteen are “men” but females are still “girls” until they turn thirty is ridiculous. I live by myself, on a different continent than my family and have been fully self-sufficient for over a year (and before that was living over 3000 miles from my family) – I’m fairly certain this qualifies me to not have a debate over whether or not I’m a menina or a mulher every time I tell someone my age. I would also really appreciate it if guys (students, random people on the street, other teachers) would please stop staring at my knees. I know they are somewhat scandalous, but really on a good day they would probably be called knobby and on a bad day they would be called Dobby knees. They aren’t sexy in any sense of the word, and your staring just makes my life more awkward than it already is. 

Here we are now, entertain us . . .

The school year is set to start on Monday (and I get to go back to being the crazy/somewhat entertaining white teacher lady). Zach and I will actually be attending a PC conference filled with yearly doctors appointments (yay!) and won't be back until the second week of school . . . which is actually an okay thing as none of my students will actually be there until week two or three. Win.

In the lead up to the first day of school, we have had several "informational" teachers' meetings. One of which was centered around making sure that the school had the correct education level listed for each teacher. This really has no meaning to me as the only impact education level has is on your salary. When we first arrived at the school a year ago, we were informed that we were on the N2 level (N1 being the highest, N4 being the lowest), but no one really explained the system. Even when we were on the N2 level, Zach and I were two of the ten teachers on the N2 level or higher. Out of almost fifty teachers. There is no doubt that some of the teachers who are technically on a lower pay grade than I would be (if the Moz government actually paid me) have much more teaching experience and are great teachers, but it is still difficult to imagine teaching calculus to 10th graders when you only have a 12th grade education. Coming from a schooling system where all of my teachers (that I know of anyways) had at least four years of college and go through what seem to be fairly thorough certification programs, I have been rather perplexed about the required levels of education for teaching in Mozambique.

As it turns out, due to our four years of college, Zach and I are actually N1s. Which means we are 2 of the 4 teachers at our school who have spent four years at a university (it also means that I could be called Senhora Doctora Allison). Some of the teachers I work with really are quite amazing - teaching in Mozambique is difficult and I can't imagine teaching here without some basic teacher training, so their work is all the more impressive. And while I know that going to college is out of reach for many people here - there aren't enough universities and it represents a very large financial burden with very few opportunities for scholarships or any type of financial aid - I just can't help but wonder how students ever sum up the motivation to attend college. How, in a town where 12th grade isn't even offered, does a student even manage to apply to universities that are located in cities they've never visited? I'm guessing that some small, isolated communities in the United States still face some of the same difficulties, but I can't imagine not knowing anyone with a bachelors degree.

I strongly believe that education is and should be one of Mozambique's highest priorities. But what constitutes a good education? Does your chance at a good education immediately fly out the door when class sizes are between 50 to 90 students? Do you have to have teachers with college degrees? Is an eighth grade education sufficient to teach second grade students? What can a country do to get more teachers when there are very few people with bachelors degrees that are willing to teach/live in the sometimes fairly rural communities with secondary schools?

After a year here I definitely don't have anything close to a coherent opinion on the education system here other than, it's complicated. 

Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone preacher from the east says "dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in its funny bone, that's where they expect it least"

the beach at Inhassoro (that would be five minutes from my house)

In case you haven't heard, I made my way back to Sequim for a Christmas surprise . . . unbeknownst to my family and most friends (besides Aunt Mary who is the best secret keeper in the world) I traveled from Maputo to Johannesburg to Dubai to Seattle (flying over the North Pole) and arrived home on the 19th.

Being home has been wonderful (besides the whole re-introduction to dairy thing . . . it's quite possible that my stomach hates me more here than it did in Mozambique), but I think when I head back I'll definitely be ready for year two and all it holds. While I feel like I have a lot more things going on outside of my PC activities this upcoming year - LSATs, law school applications, figuring out my life, etc - I am very excited to jump into the school year and actually (more or less) know what I'm doing. We got a chance to look at the theoretical school calendar for next year and it even looks like (due to our PC calendar and close-of-service dates) I'll be missing some if not all of the national exams. Which makes me VERY happy as that was the part of the year that created a lot of unnecessary stress and general frustration with the system.

Since I generally fail at uploading pictures, here are some various photos from my year in Inhassoro. My two New Year's Resolutions are to 1) take more pictures  and 2) update my blog more frequently. Since I'll have to use my computer a lot more next year for LSAT/application stuff, I'm hoping that 2013 will be much more blog-filled than 2012.

Happy New Year! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivlgb0z1KcQ

Baby Portuguese Man-o-War

My first Yale shirt sighting in Moz - YAY!

Laurie and I are pretty skilled at Moz cooking

Transportation in Moz is not a walk in the park

Vilankulo is kind of pretty

Some students from chemistry . . . just chilling on my doorstep per usual

We do have animals in Moz!

I made it up to Pemba (northern moz)

Teachers' Day began with a morning exercise walk. Which was simultaneously awkward and hilarious

Preschoolers in my front yard

Helter Skelter in a Summer Swelter

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I think I’ve acclimated to the heat just a little bit. Either that or it’s still much colder than it was in January/February (didn’t have a thermometer at that point, so I can’t really offer any comparisons). The fact that I no longer look like I’m going to pass out every time I step outside is something I’m quite proud of. But of course, once again, I’ve failed at my updates, so here goes nothing (in list form, per usual):

1.     Thanksgiving was a close to America-like as it could have been. I hosted a PC Thanksgiving in Inhassoro and despite the many planning obstacles (turkeys are very hard to buy this time of year due to the fact they all have babies/are sitting on eggs. Not a problem I really dealt with in the States) I think it all ended up going fairly well. We spent the day on Santa Carolina, an island off the coast of Inhassoro that just might be my favorite place in the world, and had a 14-person dinner later that evening at my school’s hotel (I only have two plates in my house . . . and maybe a total of five forks/spoons, tj planning fail). The cook at the hotel had never cooked a turkey, I had most definitely never cooked a turkey, but we still managed to turn the non-genetically engineered (aka: skinniest turkey I’ve ever seen) turkey into a decent main dish. It was accompanied by just about every side dish you’d find at a Sequim Thanksgiving (Laurie even successfully made a sweet potato casserole using cassava). And we had five pumpkin pies – which means I had pumpkin pie for breakfast for the next three days. Just like the US. It was wonderful to be able to spend the holiday with friends, and was a welcome break from the hellish previous weeks.

2.     As those who stayed in my house over Thanksgiving can testify to, I kill one very large cockroach every morning. Why there is only one is a complete mystery to me – why not two one day, one the next? I’m definitely starting to miss the winter and it’s lack of bugs (in other news, dug two incubating sand fleas out of my foot the other day. Ew.).

3.     While the situation is more complicated than I care to write about in my blog, I have been having some difficulties at school throughout our national/provincial exam period. As the only chemistry teacher, I am responsible for everyone’s grades and the process has been a bit disheartening. The whole thing has been a rather depressing way to end the school year; luckily I had two bags of M&M’s to stress-eat my way through.

4.     Mango salsa has pretty much become my food staple. It is so delicious. And doesn’t even taste too much like bleach.

5.     It rained yesterday. Which doesn’t sound too exciting, but when it rains the temperature drops about 20 degrees and the humidity drops below 50%. It’s a beautiful thing. Plus, I was talking to my empregada the other day and apparently Inhassoro hasn’t had a real rainy season in three years and if the rain doesn’t start soon (and rain for more than a 24-hour period) a lot of people are going to lose their gardens (which in many cases are a large source of food for a substantial portion of the year). So my fingers and toes are crossed for a lot of rain (if it doesn’t happen soon I might end up doing Lagaan-style rain dances).

6.     Next week is my last official week of having anything to do at the school, we’re on our professors’ break from December 10th to January 9th. Still unclear as to what I’ll be doing/where I’ll be going . . . maybe Malawi? Anyways, I’m going to have a bit of free time, so any book recommendations would be greatly appreciated!!

7.     My current life plan involves taking the LSAT in June in Johannesburg and applying to law schools in the fall. Which is kind of crazy. But if anyone has any LSAT study suggestions (that are applicable to life in Mozambique with very little internet), I could use all the help I can get.

8.     Homeland is/was an incredibly addictive tv show. I may have finished the first season in 3 days. And officially can’t wait for season two to make it’s way to Mozambique.

And that’s my Mozambican life in a nutshell. Mango season lasts for the next couple of months, so come visit! Also, since it’s the season of Christmas/holiday newsletters, I’d love to hear what’s going on in your life – letters haven’t had the best luck making it to me recently, but send me emails, I’m going to have a bit of time on my hands!!