Happiness

Nacucha has been crazy this last week so I’m sorry for how long it’s taken me to write another post. There were some sleepless nights this week after we got Watson, our puppy. After a few days of him whining literally all night long and Pepa, his mom, trying to break down our door to steal him back we decided it would be best for everyone if he spent more time with his mom and the other puppies. He’s back with the other puppies for now and when he gets a bit bigger we’ll readopt him and hopefully the nights won’t be so hard when he’s older.

Life has been busy and hectic but it’s finally starting to feel like I’m integrated and am making Nacucha my home away from home. When I walk to the market all the crianças that I’ve seen at the school scream Maggie instead of white person so that’s progress. :) Some of my students (and other students I’ve never met before) say hello teacher Maggie and ask to speak in English. I still need to work on finding Mozambican friends outside of the school but I’m working on it.

I love my English classes at the primary school. I only have around 10-20 students every class but they all are very motivated and well behaved. Since only 5 kids showed up yesterday I gave them all a grape scented sticker for speaking so well in English. They were amazed that the sticker really smelled good and kept yelling uva! uva!  :) I’m not sure when I’ll be able to teach at the primary school after this week because we’re starting new modules and getting a new schedule. Hopefully, with the new schedule I’ll have Fridays off and won’t be teaching 8^th grade informatica! I’m pretty excited for next week to start new classes.

We had our first official REDES meeting this Wednesday after classes and it went way better than we expected. We had 26 girls show up—which is awesome for a REDES group. We played a game to introduce everyone and discussed some rules and topic ideas for the meetings. I’m still not confident speaking Portuguese in front of a big group of people outside of class so Anna did most of the talking at the meeting, which was really nice. However, the girls wanted one of the rules to be that I need to speak more Portuguese and at the next meeting only I will talk. It won’t be too hard now to speak Portuguese at the meetings because they asked Anna and I not to speak English to each other during meetings because they wouldn’t be able to understand. I completely agree with that rule but it cane be difficult when I have literally no idea what someone just said. For example, when we were talking about ideas for what they want to do at meetings they said things like dance, cook, learn English, workout, etc. They already decided that at the next meeting I’m teaching them how to make capulana flowers. I’m pretty excited for that! As we were talking about topics to do one girl said “Maggie, você precisa diminuir e se parecem mais com Anna”…I swear I thought I heard her say amendoim so I was quite confused. Of course Anna couldn’t tell me that no she wasn’t talking about peanuts she was saying you need to diminish…as in lose weight and be skinner. So I stood there staring as she got up and used her hands to show me how I need to slim down. Oh Mozambique…honestly it wasn’t even surprising to hear it—one of the professors keeps telling me I need to run more so I can look more like Anna and not engordar or get fat. The students here don’t find any topic awkward or weird to talk about which is really different from what I’m used to. I’m finally getting used to telling people—yes I want to lose weight, no I don’t want to get fat, yes I will work out and thanks for telling me. (I feel like after reading this you probably think I've gained 50 lbs...that's not the case. However, I'll be the first to admit my diet in Nacucha is not well balanced. It's mostly bread, peanut butter, eggs and yogurt...Mozambique just gets on my case since Anna and I are clearly not the same size and they think we should be. After these care packages it might be a different story though.) :) If only they could see me doing a Jillian Michael workout video in my house—they would think I went crazy and laugh at me for doing weird things.

After that talk yesterday I had every intention of working out this afternoon after classes finished…but that didn’t happen. Padre Eugenio drove up to my house and he had remembered (without me asking) to get my packages at the Peace Corps office. I thought I only had 1 and was shocked when more were in the car. Instead of working out I unpacked and organized but I haven’t eaten any junk food yet so that’s a positive, right? I’m excited to start my English club and have students read the magazines and books in English that my dad sent. And of course I’m very excited to be able to bake chocolate chip muffins and pancakes thanks to my wonderful family for the care packages :) I’m sharing so hopefully I don’t engordar too much. 

Life is still full of surprises and lots of miscommunications but I feel like I’m finally making this my home. I’m doing projects outside of school that I enjoy and that is making me much happier. 90 days until I’ll be home!

Anna and I are off to Monapo this weekend to visit some other PCVs who live there (one of them, Leah, is from Nebraska too!) and get a dress made out of a capulana. I’m really excited to visit other PCVs and get out of site for the weekend. Plus we’ll be able to go shopping for fruit and veggies—I might buy a bagful of bananas since I haven’t had them in months! So excited :)

Watson

Welcome to our family, Watson! :) 

More blog posts to come this week....

Surprises in Nacucha

Life in Nacucha is always full of surprises. For example, I usually find out about meetings a few days after the fact. I’m sure the other professors must wonder why I don’t come to half the meetings…oops. I need to figure out how to be more in the loop with meetings and my school administration. I’m not sure how I’ll do that but I better figure it out soon.

I went over to the primary school again this week to talk with my friend Cristina, one of the 3^rd grade teachers. While I was waiting for her I found Irma Rita and was talking to her about the English classes. She asked if I would be interested in helping out—I of course said yes. So starting this week I’ll be teaching English to the 6^th and 7^th grade classes Mondays-Wednesday for an hour each day. I’m so excited to be teaching at a primary school again—and I don’t have to give any tests so it’ll be a fun hour of English classes each week :) I’m hoping the students understand my Portuguese and don’t speak just Makua. I guess we’ll see how it goes on Monday afternoon.

Friday we had no classes because the amendoim (peanuts) were ready to be picked out of the farms. Of course farming comes first at the agriculture school so even though we only have a week left to get grades down we didn’t have class on Friday. I think Irma Tassy wanted me to go to the farm with the students and pick peanuts. I ended up doing work and didn’t get out to the machamba. I did get a lot done on Friday though! I planned almost all my lessons for next week, organized my binders with all the students’ tests and worked on my application for the community library project. I still have a lot to do for the application that’s due Friday but I’ve made quite a bit of progress talking to people getting the information I need. And I think I made a nice Mozambican friend at site finally so I’m happy about that :)

 This week I’ll be busy doing my application, grading all the tests for the end of the semester, teaching at the primary school, having a REDES meeting and dreaming about being home in August! It’s almost in the single digits—so, so excited for my Kristina’s wedding and to see everyone!

A visit to the primary school

Today I visited the primary school to watch a class and to talk to Irma Rita about a new program PC is starting this year.  The program is about engaging communities to improve early grade reading by having after school tutoring sessions as well as a community library. The application is due this May and 25 PCVs will be able to participate in the program starting in July. I even found a counterpart today who will help me start the program (if selected) and would continue it after I left. Tomorrow I’m going to talk with the 3^rd grade teacher, Cristina, about her students’ reading levels so I can get more information before filling out the application. The school has no library or any other resources for that matter and I think it would be a great help to the students to have some books to read. 

My visit to the school went really well—I sat in on a 3^rd grade class in the morning and was able to see what a typical school day looks like. Boy oh boy was it different from elementary schools in the U.S. The younger grades go to school from 7am until noon and the older students have classes from 1pm until 5pm. I thought this was pretty different than in the States when elementary students have classes from 8am until 3 or 4pm. But there just are not enough classrooms or teachers to have the students go all day. While I was observing the students were learning math and then did a quick review of the Alphabet. A few of the students did not know the correct order of the letters and they are in 3^rd grade! 

3rd grade classroom where I student taught in Liberty, MO

Just sitting in the classroom I noticed so many differences about primary school in Mozambique and the United States. As you can tell from the pictures the classrooms themselves look like night and day. Back home a typical elementary classroom has bulletin boards, books, colorful posters, lots of resources for the kids, desks and chairs for all the students, technology and has a homey look. The primary school classrooms in Mozambique are quite different—many of the desks and chairs are broken, or there aren’t enough chairs so some students have to sit on the floor. The classrooms have no colorful posters or anything on the walls, no resources or books for the kids to use, and if they students don’t have a pen to bring to school they are out of luck and can’t take the notes. Many times other students let them borrow pens but it shocks me that the simple things we take for granted in the states are not a given here. I knew school here would be different and look different but it hit me today just how different life is for the kids in Mozambique. Despite all these hardships they have and the lack of resources they are always smiling and happy and taking care of their younger siblings as they carry water from the well and do their chores. Being a kid in Mozambique is a lot more challenging than in the United States…there is no comparison.

  

3rd grade classroom in Nacuxa

I have never worried about not having a pen or pencil, books, technology or other resources to learn from when I was a child. After seeing both the primary and secondary schools in Nacuxa it makes me wonder about things. I wonder why I was always so picky with my food and wouldn’t eat things because I didn’t like them…while children here don’t get the option and at times are looking around in the school’s trash pit for items to take home or want the scraps we would normally throw away. I wonder why I was blessed with a family that read to me every day and a school environment where I learned so much and had so many things/resources; whereas the students here only have classes half a day and do not have books at home for their parents to read them a bedtime story. I wonder why I complained ever about anything when these children who are just 6 or 7 are walking very long distances carting water on their heads while carrying their baby brother or sister on their backs. And yet I never hear them complain—they just smile and keep working so hard. I wonder why I can’t seem to motivate myself to get up early when the secondary school students get up at 4:30 every morning to do their chores at the school. Can you imagine high school students in the United States getting up at 4:30am every morning and not complaining? I don’t think I would be able to do that as a teenager…heck even now I don’t know if I could do that.

I feel so lucky to have been brought up with so much stuff. I just want to try and have a little bit of that stuff brought here. I don’t know how I’ll accomplish that but I know one thing…these children deserve books! I can’t imagine my life without books and I want to give them that option of reading for enjoyment. I’m really hoping the new PC program works out to start a community library. Honestly, even if it doesn’t I’m still going to try and write some grants to get a library started for the primary school students. I feel blessed to be who I am and have what I have but at the same time feel so guilty for having all that I do. I know it’s a pretty common feeling among PCVs but it’s not a good one. I know I can’t change what I have but I can try and make a difference and give these students and my community some things that can improve their education and their lives. I hope I can walk the walk and actually do something about the lack of library and resources at the primary school. Wish me luck!

On a very different side note—my roommate and I finally found the puppies that Pepa had in a tree at the primary school. They are only about a week old and didn’t even have their eyes open. Anna and I decided we are going to get one of the white spotted ones to have as a pet. We’re not quite sure logistically how we’re going to make that happen but hopefully in a few weeks we’ll have a cute little puppy! We’re definitely getting a boy puppy because we don’t want to have to deal with our dog having puppies. Now to think of good boy dog names :) 

Finally found Pepa's puppies hiding in a tree at the Primary School

BAMM

Today is World Malaria Day and in honor of that, PCVs all over Africa are blogging about malaria (BAMM...blog about malaria month). I don’t have much experience with malaria myself but have had a lot of students that have gotten malaria as well as my supervisor. One of my best friends in PC actually got malaria last month and from her experience it is NOT a fun thing to go through. She was lucky because we talk daily or weekly prophylaxis and have treated mosquito nets to use in order to reduce our risk of getting malaria. However, many Mozambican children and adults are not as lucky. They don’t have the means to get these medicines or bed nets and therefore their chances of getting malaria are very likely.

Some quick facts about Malaria:

• Malaria is a life threatening disease transmitted caused by parasites that are transmitted through bites of infected mosquitoes
• Malaria is the leading cause of death in Mozambique—it accounts for 29% of all deaths and 42% of deaths among children under five years old.
• Malaria is preventable and curable
• People who are at a greater risk of malaria are young children, pregnant women and people who HIV/AIDS
• Diagnosing and treating malaria at an early stage helps in reducing the disease, preventing deaths as well as reducing malaria transmission.
• Malaria is the #1 killer in Africa
  (Statistics from stompoutmalaria.org and WHO)

I haven’t been affected by malaria in the sense that I have had the disease but have seen the side effects in Nacucha. Many of my students have had to miss multiple weeks of school to recover from malaria; children of our neighbors and friends have died due to malaria and many students and professors still don’t know the causes or prevention methods of malaria.

This week in my Informatica class I asked my students to write about a problem in Mozambique. Among the many different topics quite a few students wrote about malaria. It was really great to see all their knowledge of the disease and to get to talk with them about this. I was also very impressed with the other topics my 11^th graders wrote about: the water crisis in Nacala, HIV/AIDS, other diseases in Mozambique and domestic violence. I’m looking forward to reading all of their papers about these topics. I’m hoping to have more conversations about malaria and HIV/AIDS with my students to spread awareness and discuss ways to prevent these diseases.

Last week I had a PC conference in Nampula to talk about sites, get new ideas and see other Moz 19 PCVs that I hadn’t seen since December. It was so nice to get out of site and talk with my friends about classroom ideas and secondary projects. After being gone for over a week it felt nice to come back to site. The guard at the school was so excited to see me Tuesday night that he greeted me with a hug. My students seemed really happy to have me back as well—I forgot to mention to one of my classes that I was going to be gone for a week so they were apparently worried I wasn’t coming back. Oops :) It was really nice and rejuvenating—I feel ready to start some new projects and get teaching again!

My plans for the coming weeks:

• My roommate and I are starting a REDES group (girls group to promote sexual health and awareness, empowerment of women as well as other important life skills) and holding an informational meeting this weekend. I hope some girls show up!
• I decided even though I’m not a huge fan of Informatica class my students really enjoy that time on the computer. Therefore, I’m going to start a computer club so they have more time with the computers and can practice their typing skills (which really need some work). 
• Next Monday I’m going to visit the primary school with Irma Rita and talk to her about a new program PC has called EGRA, which works to improve early grade reading. I’m really excited to hopefully get more involved with the primary school and do some work there.

Hope you learned some new facts today during World Malaria Day!  

                                      How will you Stomp Out Malaria in 2013?

Women’s Day

Today, April 7^th is Dia de Mulher in Mozambique or Women’s Day. I’m not quite sure how they celebrate this National Holiday besides getting school off on Monday. I saw lots of capulanas just for women’s day so I’m sure all the women in Nacucha will be wearing those today in the market and at mass. I’m not celebrating too much…one of my friends, Anna, gave me the idea of making capulana flowers to give to the women at school—since I’ve had some free time I decided to make some and give them to the nuns today. It’s pretty cool that Mozambique has a day to celebrate all women!

This weekend my roommate left to go on a trip and then two Peace Corps conferences and will be gone 10 days. It’s only day 2 and I’m already feeling lonely. I’m really glad I have a roommate at site—I don’t know how I’d do it if I was by myself…guess I’d make some Mozambican friends very fast. I’m hoping I don’t see any big spiders or scorpions because we normally attack those together with the bug spray…not quite sure how that would work with just one person.  We’ll see how it goes :) At least in 8 days I get to go to Nampula for my own Peace Corps conference and see all the other North Moz 19 PCVs! I’m really excited to get out of site and see my other 19ers that I haven’t seen since December. I better talk to my supervisor about missing class…I talked to her a month ago but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t remember.

Next week we are starting a new schedule for the trimester (no week long break like I thought though)…I’m excited for the new schedule because I’m supposedly not teaching computers anymore. When I got my schedule last week can you guess what I was teaching? The same amount of computer classes and two less English classes! Oh Nacucha. The schedule is supposed to change again since Peace Corps talked to my supervisor. We’ll see if that happens on Tuesday when classes start.

Nothing else too exciting or new going on…I need to organize all the tests and evaluation sheets the students use into a binder for my 11^th grade classes. In Nacucha after every module is completed they have someone at the school verify the grades and work and also someone outside of the school to verify it. I’m sure my binders will be missing some important documentation and/or probably won’t be done right...guess I’ll find out Monday.

Trying to keep myself busy by lesson planning, reading and watching tv shows while my roommate is gone. I spent an hour Friday night talking to some of my students in English. They are great and they really want to learn English! They got a good laugh at me because it started to get dark and since my porch light was on all the bugs started swarming and the lizards starting eating them. I really don’t like bugs and they know that. Of course then they start to tell me that those bugs flying are actually very tasty and they eat them. I tried not to look too grossed out because that probably would have been culturally inappropriate. One student even told me he was going to prepare the dish one day and bring it over for me to eat. I’m really hoping he doesn’t follow through with that! I do really enjoying speaking English with them and learning about their lives. They are really great students and are very respectful.

Off to go do some laundry before mass, not quite sure exactly what time mass starts…knowing my luck I’ll probably miss it like last week. Then I better lesson plan for the new classes. 255 days until I’m home for Christmas!!!!! :)

P.S. If you have any ideas on how to keep busy and not get lonely let me know :)

Peace and perfect timing

God and Peace Corps have perfect timing....

Lately, I have been struggling with homesickness and missing important events going on in America. I’ve missed quite a few life-changing events in my family and friends’ life…and recently one of my best friends got engaged and is planning her wedding. I was having a really hard time knowing that I was going to miss all the planning by being in Mozambique. I was really having doubts about whether or not I could stay in Mozambique for the 2 years knowing I was going to miss all of these big events. Thankfully, I have really great friends/family both at home and in Moz who put up with me during my craziness.

Someone gave me good advice last week when I was having trouble thinking about being gone for so long and whether or not I could do it. They told me that whatever I feel peace about (whether that be staying in Moz or going home early) I should follow that peace and trust in God. I have been thinking about that and praying lots these past few weeks about this and I think I finally know what I feel peace about. I know I’m missing events in America but I truly feel peace about staying in Mozambique. I was struggling with feeling like I’m not doing much at site and didn’t know how I would change things in the future. After some time….and lots of phone calls with my PCV friends I realized I need to give myself more time. I have been at site for 3 months now and I still feel like I’m just getting used to Nacucha and trying to start secondary projects—I need to give myself more time to accomplish these groups. When I am having hard days I like to read this quote to help me remember to give myself time and the courage to keep going.

“There will be good days. And there will be bad days.
There will be times when—
you want to turn around, pack it up, and call it quits.

Don’t give up at that time. Don’t quit.
Its an opportunity to prove your worth.”

Life in Mozambique gets easier when I have plans to travel home and see family and friends. Now that one of my best friends is getting married I’ll be home twice—in October (yay for fall weddings!) and in December for Christmas—it’s given me lots of things to get excited about. I’m still trying to figure out how to make all the arrangements work out with my classes and supervisor but I’ll get it done. Better talk to my nun supervisor and ask for more time off…hopefully she understands me and my Portuguese this time :) 

So all that rambling was basically just to say that I’m sorry for all my craziness lately but I’m really determined and staying these 2 years. I really want to start secondary projects and help my students learn English. I need to start these projects so I have things to look forward to outside of classes!

Anna and I have found a counterpart to start our REDES group in April. REDES is a national organization that promotes the future of women in Mozambique. The group talks about sexual health, the prevention of HIV, equality between genders, the importance of education, self-esteem, and other important themes that promote independence. I also want to start a project at the primary school or start helping out there. We have a break during the second week of April so I’m going to visit the primary school and get acquainted with the teachers and students. I miss teaching elementary aged students so I’m really anxious to get started with a project there. As far as I can tell they have no resources besides chalkboards, desks and chairs. They need lots of things and I’m hoping I can help them out with that.

Today after sitting at home grading all day and cleaning around the house, Alfredo, our Safety and Security officer from Peace Corps made a surprise visit to our house. He looked around our house, took us to Nacala to look for a hotel for him and went out for dinner to catch up. We had chicken burgers (first real meal I’ve had in a long time!) and got to update him on our site—the challenges and positives of Nacucha.

We haven’t been to Nacala in a few weeks so it was really nice to get out of Nacucha, speak English and enjoy good food. Alfredo is so nice and told us that he thought we should leave site every 2 weeks for a break. It was really nice to have a Peace Corps staff member tell us that since we don’t leave much because of transportation difficulties. Nacucha is out of the way for PC visitors so it was a really great surprise to have Alfredo show up and take us out to eat! Peace Corps really does have good timing….Anna and I were both wanting to go to Nacala and eat food besides just bread and peanut butter for a change and then out of the blue a Peace Corps car shows up outside our door. Little surprises like that show me Peace Corps really cares about their volunteers and gives us a nice change to our boring life in Nacucha.

One more week of classes and then (hopefully) a week off of school! Let’s hope I can get all my grades finished and turned in on time (whenever that is…I’m hoping the other professors can fill me in on those little details). Happy Easter! :) 

Next month is World Malaria Day so PCVs all over will be blogging about Malaria—get ready to learn some facts and stories of Malaria!