Graduation Day

It’s been about a month since I last posted and boy has it been busy! School started two weeks ago and my new schedule has me teaching every day—22 hours each week. Thankfully, I have Tuesdays and Thursdays free in the afternoons so I can go to the primary school and start the library/keep it open then. I’m no longer teaching my favorite English turma and miss those students. This semester I’m teaching the English classes for the new Lab Tech program that just started in Nacuxa. All the students seem to really be interested in learning English—it’s been fun being able to get to know all the new students in that program.

Last Saturday was Graduation day here in Nacuxa. Classes were cancelled Thursday afternoon and Friday so the students could clean up the school for all the visitors. The graduation started in the morning and last all afternoon. The graduates all got sashes and diplomas. I was surprised by how many people were at the ceremony—it wasn’t just students but a lot of families came for their children. There were also a lot of chefes present—the ministry of education was there as well as important people representing the diocese of Nacala and TV1 (the Mozambican news channel) all came to the graduation.

Most of the ceremony reminded me of a graduation from high school in the States. The students received their diploma and a sash, student speakers and they had some cultural activities—two student groups performed a theater piece and they had a few groups perform dances. After the ceremony there was a lunch for the students, their parents, professors and the important visitors. Anna, the 7 Boy Scouts from Portugal and I helped serve the students and visitors. It was a mad house trying to serve everyone platters of chicken, goat, salads, rice and cake! The day ended with Anna and I hanging out with Irma Sandra eating chicken and cake in the kitchen and drinking a beer together.  It was a really fun day!

Some of the graduating students and the graduation banner

Just one of the cakes Irma Sandra made for the party 

One of the cultural dances performed by my students

Padre Eugenio giving out the diplomas 

Just some of the family, friends and students present for the graduation

This Thursday we had some visitors come to Nacuxa. Our Country Director and the Program Coordinator for EGRA came to visit to talk about the project and make a site visit. They brought Anna and I packages from America and cheese and chocolate! They took us out to dinner in Nacala and we talked a lot about the EGRA program and about life in Nacuxa. It was really nice to have visitors! 

We had another visitor on Friday…

The biggest spider I think I have ever seen--it was bigger than our hands! 

I really had thought I was getting over my fear/dislike of bugs and spiders until I saw that on our door Friday morning. Thank goodness my roommate is very kind of didn’t make fun of me. I did not want to go into our house afraid that if I walked past it the spider would jump on me. After 5 minutes standing outside the house looking like a fool I ran in while Anna stood in front of the spider. I have such a nice roommate! After class I asked my students if they could help me get the spider off the door since I was scared of it. They got a good laugh about that but they were so nice and moved it very far away. So thankfully I have such nice students and a wonderful roommate that puts up with my weirdness.

Here’s a story that will make you smile—Yesterday Anna got a visitor who asked if he could talk to her. She went outside to see what he wanted and he handed her a letter. It was a love letter he had written to her asking if she would marry him. We had no idea who this guy was and didn’t even know his name. Turns out he’s a worker at the school and comes in everyday from Nacala. I think she was pretty shocked this guy who neither of us knew was asking her to marry him in a love letter! We’ve had people propose before but never like that. Poor guy got turned down—which shouldn’t have been a surprise but I think he was hoping for a better turn out. It sure has been an interesting week! 

America bound in 2 days!! See you soon Omaha :)

Semester break!!

Let me start off by saying it’s almost school break and 33 days until America!

The past few weeks I’ve been having problems with my eyes…after talking to PCMO last week I was able to go to an optometrist in Nampula. Last Friday was my first appointment and thankfully the PC doctor was able to go with me to the appointment. It ended up being at the big hospital—which was very overwhelming. We didn’t have to wait long because they ushered me in and ahead of many other patients. I felt really bad because my problem was not as bad as some of the other men and women waiting to be seen by the doctor.

After the female optometrist examined my eyes she told me it was a bacterial infection and gave me eye drops and cream to use. And of course she wanted to see me again in a week. I was not excited to have to travel out of site again but guess it was necessary. I’m really hoping after tomorrow’s eye appointment she gives me the ok to wear my contacts again! I left site again today to make it to Monapo (to get my new working computer charger—thanks mom!) and am now in Nampula. There are a lot of nice things about Nampula that make me love coming here :) It has real stores and supermarkets where you can buy anything and everything you could want. Restaurants and take away food places that are yummy and free wifi at the Peace Corps office!

It’s been a nice break to come here now two weeks in a row. The timing was not the greatest with it being the last week of grading before the break but I got all my binders finished and turned in! I just hope they are correct and don’t need to be corrected. I felt like an idiot because one of the English teachers, Diamantino, told me that we had break this week…So of course on Monday I slept in, hung out around the house and then went to the market. Tuesday morning, Diamantino came to my door to give me work and inform me that all the professors were working this week and had break the following week. I feel like I’m always behind with the information and I’m pretty sure the other professors think I’m crazy and stupid since I miss meetings and workdays. Thankfully, I still managed to get everything done and even showed up to a meeting this week :) I’m pretty sure next Tuesday our break officially starts. I think we only have one week off and then have to come back and work/supervise the students working in the farms for another week. Then classes start again on August 1^st, hoping my 8^th graders come back more well-behaved :) 

I’m so ready for break! Next week I’m leaving to go to Gurue to celebrate my birthday with my Peace Corps besties! After that we are traveling back up to Nampula to go to our PDM/EGRA conference for a week. Then back to site to set up the library and afterschool tutoring program then HOME for my best friend’s wedding! Counting down the days until I’m reunited with my family and friends in America :) 33 to be exact!

Some pictures from these past few months: 

Bryson :)

Elsa showing her Dora picture

Our REDES girls preparing for their talent show

Sexual Health session at the REDES conferenee

Last day of the REDES conference 

Our man-made pond in Nacuxa

Our site visitors, Julia & Marieka, shelling peanuts with the crianças

Junait & I dancing during our dance party :)

Anna & some crianças dancing 

One of our favorite crianças, Lulu

More of our lovely crianças

Anna getting a back massage :)

Redes Conference

Last weekend was our REDES conference in Monapo. There were several other groups from around Nampula and Cabo Delgado that were able to attend the conference. Traveling to Monapo went much better than Anna and I had expected. We met up with the 4 girls from our REDES group on the highway outside of Nacucha and then traveled together to Monapo. We ended up getting a very nice boleia and he took all six of us all the way to the door of our destination—it was a free, and air-conditioned ride…boleias don’t get much better than that. :)

The weekend went by in a blur and we were crazy busy the whole time but it was great! Anna and I were in charge of buying food for the first day—thankfully we were able to take one of the cooks from our pensão with us to help carry stuff back. Buying food for 55 people in Mozambique is a bit difficult. On one of our trips to the market we bought 15 live chickens for dinner, 10kilos of xima flour and 55 bananas. I’m proud to say I looked like a Mozambican woman because I carried the xima flour on my head! :) Thankfully the cook tied all the chickens together and put them in an empty rice bag to carry them back to the kitchen. (I only had to hold one chicken for 5 minutes but it really was not a pleasant experience. I don’t know what my problem is but I realized I have a thing with live chickens; I just don’t like to touch them or hold them.) I didn’t drop the flour off my head once—I was pretty impressed but I definitely didn’t look as experienced as the other women.

The conference sessions went really well and our girls learned a lot of information about women’s health, puberty, reproduction, self-esteem and income generation. It was eye opening to me that many of the girls had no background knowledge of reproductive health or puberty. That session took a good three hours instead of the one it was scheduled for because the girls had so many questions. I was really pleased that all the participants felt open enough to ask those questions. I think that everyone went back to site with a lot of new knowledge and will hopefully pass that on to other members of their REDES groups. And of course there was a lot of dancing and singing! The last night we had a talent show that our girls had been preparing for and even made pompoms! The volunteers even did a dance, which made all the girls laugh, overall it was a very fun-filled weekend! Our girls from Nacucha really surprised us at how much they knew and we learned a lot more about them. I’m really excited for them to come back to school after break in August and teach the rest of the group everything they learned.

After a tiring long weekend we made it back to site and slept practically the whole day away. This week has been busy doing tests, grading, sleeping off a cold and trying to get caught up from being away. My 8^th graders are done with classes for their winter break and have to work in the farm the next two weeks then have break until August. However, my 11^th graders still have classes until July 12^th and then I’m on break until August 1^st! At least I’m pretty sure that’s my break…Nacucha loves to change things at the last minute so we’ll see. This week I’m working on getting tutors and bookcases for the library and trying to finish all my binders of tests from this semester.

This weekend we have site visitors coming to Nacucha! We have a lot planned to get ready for them (like cleaning, making sure we have enough beds and buying food in Nacala so we can feed them). I’m excited to meet the two trainees from the Moz 20 health group and hope they enjoy their visit here—maybe we’ll even get to take a beach trip with them :)

Just a few more weeks until break and then a few more until I’m reunited with two of my best friends in Peace Corps in Gurue for a fun weekend! And in 52 days AMERICA!! :)

“Just remember there is someone out there that is more than happy than you with less than what you have.” – Unknown

Busy life in Nacucha

The month of June has flown by—I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post. This is the first weekend during the month where we have been at site and it’s been a very relaxing but somewhat boring. We visited the PCVs in Monapo a few weekends, Carapeira and went to Ilha de Mozambique for Ocean Fest—it was a beautiful island and so much fun! Anna and I walked around the whole island one afternoon so I saw all the nice spots but we also got terrible blisters from walking in bad flip flops…not one of my smartest ideas.

Church in Ilha that reminded me of the chapel at Jewell 

Jill, PCV from Carapeira, had her Juntos group come and perform at Ocean Fest

Old, deserted church on Ilha

Random criança followed us around and wanted to take pictures with us (this is the old church looking over the ocean) 

Jamie and I at the food festival--with my new capulana dress! :) 

Last week I found out my application was accepted to start the community library and afterschool tutoring program at the primary school in Nacucha. After the training with my counterpart, Irma Rita, in late July we will get all the books and start the tutoring program. I’m really excited about starting this and hope the students can learn that reading is fun! The school has no children’s books for the students or professors to use and I’m hoping that having these books will make people more interested in reading for enjoyment. I have a lot to do this next month before the program can start and am a little nervous about getting it all completed. I need to find tutors from the secondary school or other members from the community, a library facilitator and create a training for the tutors. I sure have my work cut out for me but I’m so excited that I get to bring a library and over 150 books to Nacucha!

The classes at the primary school are slowly getting more and more students and they all really love learning English. I have given out some stickers at the end of class and they get crazy! They all want to put it on the notebook and especially loved the smelly stickers J

This next week I’m finally starting to practice Portuguese with Cristina, a primary school teacher. I definitely should not have waited so long to practice with another person but I have been speaking with students and the nuns a lot. I’m hoping meeting with her a few times a week and getting back into my grammar activity books will help me improve. I’m supposed to be leading the training and explaining the tutoring program to the community members and want to be able to speak more fluently. Hopefully it helps but we’ll see :)

Next week we are going to Monapo with 4 of our REDES girls for a meeting with other groups around Nampula. We’ve only had 3 meetings so far but the girls really seem to like all the activities. Last week I even taught them how to make capulana flowers and they really had fun!

Things are really starting to pick up in Nacucha and it feels like I’m busy everyday but that’s good. It’s making time go by really fast. Only 66 days until I’m home in August for one of my best friend’s wedding! Need to go to church and get all my lesson planning done for the week today—enjoy the quote :)  I’ll  try and post again sooner than next month!

“It’s better to try and fail than to never know and always wonder.”

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!