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tallestguyinmozambique · 7 years

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Sex Ed

If you've been keeping up on your reading, you'll know that I was feeling pretty hopeless with school at the end of the second trimester. Maybe it was a change of approach, maybe a change in expectations, or maybe just a better understanding of the Mozambican student, but something clicked in the third trimester. I imagine if the whole year were a movie montage, the third trimester would be the point where I stop falling on my butt and actually do something right.

The art of rendering biological processes relatable to the youth of rural Mozambique is no easy feat, but by the third trimester, I had it down to a science. In my classroom, kidneys filtered serum exactly how people washed cabbage and the brain and the body communicated just like players on a a soccer team. My grasp on Portuguese was strong enough that I could present the information coherently and keep my students engaged. I could even use my newfound language aptitude to keep the classroom somewhat controlled. The students seemed more receptive to my interactive lessons and some of them were showing real progress. Things were finally looking up, but the standout achievement of the third trimester was definitely the Sex Ed curriculum.

Mozambique is still devastated by HIV, teeming with unplanned teenage pregnancy, and plagued with misinformation and myths. It's truly a disaster. I wondered why Mozambique continues to suffer these consequences when access to Western resources and information is readily available. Is it that they truly don't know how to solve their problems? Do they not care? As I'll explain, ignorance and apathy just scratch the surface. Many other deeply rooted cultural foundations render the population vulnerable to the negative consequences of sex.

The Sex Ed project started off small. My sitemate Jessica came to school with me for the week to teach and answer questions about the female reproductive system while I covered that of the male. After the anatomy lesson, we separated the boys and the girls in case they were embarrassed to ask anything in front of the other gender. The boys and I sat in a circle on the floor, campfire style, and we opened up the discussion to any question they had. The bizarre Q&A that followed made my head spin with the complexity of the situation and the depth of the problem. I walked away with a much better idea of why the problem rages on even while the solution is right before their eyes.

First off, nobody is providing the Sex Ed that Mozambique needs to fix its big issues. My eighth graders had a hard time grasping simple concepts like where babies came from and the difference between the uterus and the stomach. More pressing issues like contraceptives and responsibility for one's actions went right over their heads. This obviously isn't ideal. What I've noticed is that there is no one central figure who is supposed to pass this information on. This dilemma isn't unique to Mozambique; even in America people debate over whether the Sex Ed curriculum should be taught at home or in the schools. The big difference manifests itself at the end of the day when American kids get the information from one source or another while many Mozambicans are left in the dark. In the classroom, the few kids who actually had heard what I was teaching either laughed it off or dismissed it. It seems that in the rare case where the information does make it to a student, it's delivered without the stress necessary to paint the severity of the situation. Just like how a parent telling you not to drink soda is different than parents, teachers, friends, and even media all scaring you out of certain behavior permanently. While we in America use the latter to curb problems like unprotected sex and drinking and driving, the former is the most substance it is given here, if any!

Another factor fueling the problem is a lack of the necessary gender equality that keeps both genders in check. In a culture where all things are run by men, it isn't surprising that men get no resistance to dangerous behavior. Empowering women to have a voice in their sexual partners and to encourage safe sex and fidelity is one of our main objectives here, but we're fighting an extensive labyrinth of social constructs keeping women below men hierarchically. Some traditions here are kept secret from outsiders. One such secret ritual is Rites of Initiation. I don't know the details of the ceremony, and I'll be vague about what I do know out of respect for their culture. What I will say is that both genders are initiated around the age of thirteen. It's a coming of age ceremony, and to keep things simple (and rated PG), both genders are taught that what the guy wants pretty much goes. We need to understand the significance of this situation. The entirety of Mozambique's youth for centuries have learned this as the status quo. They walk out of the ceremony with long-lasting mental and physical tokens reminding them of their place in society and in relationships. It's clear to me now that there is no quick fix to social constructs that history and tradition have inscribed so deeply in a culture.

The next big roadblock is a delicate topic. Let's all put on our 'Peace Corps glasses' and remember that this culture and ours have almost no overlap in the long timeline of human history. With this in mind it's easy to understand how different values are given different importance. At a first glance, Mozambique has similar views on monogamy as we do. But when you look past this thin veneer you'll find that this value is not held with the same importance as it does in America, nor does it bear the same consequence if forsaken. Many people have different partners in different cities, and ex-boyfriends and girlfriends usually stay in the picture to some extent. It's not acceptable to the extent that you can talk about it with your partner, but nobody hesitates to express their complicated situation among friends. Man or woman, married or not, I think it's safe to say that many people here have more than one love interest at a time. This obviously contributes to the spread of disease and complicated pregnancies.

Lastly, I learned that the myths circulating sex that have been passed down from generation to generation are seriously creative. To keep this blog PG, I'll forego the details, but I'd be happy to tell you some crazy stuff one on one. Besides being false, these myths undermine the main points of sexual health and protection, taking us even farther from the solution. Mix together the lack of people addressing the problem seriously, the very real gender inequality allowing men to proceed with risky behavior, the complex nature of Mozambican relationships, and the prevalence of misinformation, and it becomes easy to see why our Western intervention is failing.

With so much to work with, Jessica and I were clearing up misconceptions and correcting malpractices like machines. We were stunned by the success we were seeing. Rarely in Peace Corps do ideas go so smoothly and get received so well. The students were elated to be getting real information that related to their real lives. Some students even started skipping other classes to sneak into ours and get more Q&A time! We ran with everybody's enthusiasm and before we knew it we were ditching the written curriculum for in depth conversations about unplanned pregnancies, HIV education, and even condom demonstrations! Being this direct with them got us some strange looks from the other teachers. Hopefully our success will inspire them and other community members to trade the current 'don't ask don't tell' outlook for our educational approach.

The final offshoot of this project started when a student admitted he wanted to get tested for HIV but was afraid of going alone. After asking around we found about fifteen other students in the same situation. One morning, the group of us marched off to the health center like some sort of terrifying field trip. One by one everybody got tested. Most of the tests turned out negative, but not all of them. Jessica took over from there and got the HIV positive students set up with the hospital's councilors and doctors. I had seen a lot of good qualities in Mozambicans and that day I added bravery to the list. The way they were able to accept their fate and go off laughing with their friends moments later inspired and saddened me at the same time. Inspired by their firm grasp on hope for the future, saddened by the fact that getting HIV here is so common that it can be seen as mundane.

It's easy to blame people for not fixing their own problems. It's even easier to do so when they have the resources and information available to them. It took me over a year to understand how HIV and teenage pregnancy were raging through the country without resistance. Hopefully after reading this you can comprehend the situation a little better too. I'm happy to be part of the solution, even though all my work feels like a drop in a bucket in the face of such a massive problem.

I had been so distracted with my projects that I hardly realized the school year was ending. I won't be modest here, I'll say that I was pretty damn impressed with myself for surviving a full year teaching in Mozambique. One year down and one to go! But not without a much deserved, much anticipated trip to America in between!

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tallestguyinmozambique · 7 years

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After a Year in Mozambique, Nothing Will Shock You, But Everything Will Shock You

This month I crossed my one year mark in Mozambique. Throughout the year I've learned so much about Mozambique; the history, the culture, the language, and how to be a member of a rural community. After a full year of observation, I find there is one truth about Mozambicans that continues to impress me: their positive outlook. Mozambicans have more than their fair share of challenges, but they still laugh easier, sing louder, and party more than most Americans I know.

As we entered October, the 'end of the year' attitude took over at school. As frustrating as it was to get anybody to do anything, it brought with it more singing, dancing, and partying than ever before. The first party to ring in the end of the year was Dia de Professores (Teacher's Day). I was expecting an unenthusiastic "Obrigado" from my students and maybe an orange if I was lucky (apples weren't in season at the time). Unlike America, though, the Mozambican community saw the holiday as a time to genuinely celebrate their educators and to appreciate all their work. At the same time (and this really goes without saying), they saw the holiday as a great outlet for singing, dancing, and partying from sunrise to, well, sunrise on the following day.

We had a busy itinerary, so much so that classes were cancelled. If you haven't picked up on this yet, it really doesn't take much to cancel classes here. The teachers and students gathered at the school first thing in the morning. The celebration started out with speeches, but in the traditional fashion of Mozambican holidays, the speeches seamlessly turned into singing, which then morphed into a lively mob of dancing and cheering. We all got that out of our system (temporarily), and then the students and teachers arranged themselves in two long lines facing one another. The students went down the line and shook hands (if boys) or kissed cheeks (if girls) with every teacher. As touching as it was to be congratulated by every single one of my 500 students, a full hour of shaking hands was way too monotonous for my taste. Luckily, to keep things interesting, the students were encouraged to buy presents for teachers they thought went above and beyond. They would proceed to give the gift to the teacher as they circled around during the hand shaking ceremony. Mozambicans like presents, not unlike Americans, but the difference is that Mozambicans aren't nearly as nonchalant as Americans would be in their anticipation. Every teacher was frantically scanning the crowd, eager to find a favorite student of theirs holding something wrapped up. As the line of students snaked its way along, I was delightfully surprised with presents from students with whom I had developed a strong connection. This is just one of the many examples of the genuine generosity that seems instinctual to Mozambicans. I'm an American, I never have to worry about having enough money for food, and I'm literally writing this blog post on my MacBook right now. They were all aware of my situation, and they still spent their own money to buy me gifts. I happily walked away with a collection of eggs, some cups, a soda, and a big homemade Jack Cake (a story for another post).

Next on the itinerary was a parade to the other side of town led by the teachers and followed by students and members of the community. The end destination was the central plaza where a stage and a sound system were set up. Different groups of performers, ranging from traditional cultural dancers complete with face-paint and drums, all the way to modern style rappers kept the town entertained well into the afternoon. Finally, at night, the teachers all met to eat dinner. Like every other meal I've shared with Mozambicans, I was force fed until I could hardly move. And if this were America, that would be fine, because all we do at dinner parties is talk. But this is Mozambique, and the moment dinner was over, the singing and dancing started back up. The night ended with me being forced to do a solo, two-minute, improvised dance routine in front of all my colleagues, but that's also a story for another post. All in all, Dia de Professores has been one of my top five best days in Mozambique. Rarely in my life have I felt as respected, appreciated, and loved by the people around me as I did that day.

In the days after the party, the energy and enthusiasm in the school changed course for the next end of year event: Prom. Trust me, I was just as shocked as you are that my school had a Prom. But in reality, the event wasn't much like the Prom we're familiar with. The students had been preparing for half a year to learn a variety of dance styles ranging from traditional dances of the Makua culture all the way to Ballroom. Although the students' eclectic set of dances was stunning, it was only a warmup for the main event: the Waltz competition. After a stiff contest (or maybe not, I don't know anything about Waltzing), the winning duo became that year's Prom King and Queen. At that point the dance floor opened to the community and nobody was shy. The party, fueled by a mixture of students, teachers, and parents, raged on well past midnight.

I think it's a commonality across the world to enjoy getting dressed up nice for an event. I noticed at these parties that here in Mozambique, it's what people live for. If you have the means, it's almost expected to buy a new capulana (designed cloth) for events. Tailors around the town work endlessly in the days before holidays turning capulanas into shirts for men and dresses for women. People plan their outfits weeks in advance and often coordinate their design with family members or coworkers. The celebration becomes a sea of vibrant color. To add to the fun, all the women meticulously style their hair and paint their faces with spots and designs. Getting prepared must take hours, but by the time the event starts, everybody looks their absolute best (or as you would say here, xique). Nobody could guess that the party-goers wash their clothes without running water, iron their clothes with hot coals, and walk long distances on dirt roads to arrive. Looking xique despite the difficulties of daily life is one of Mozambique's most astounding skills.

So now I've been here for over a full year. I'm looking forward to another year of laughing with the locals, watching people enthusiastically sing and dance while doing even the most mundane chores, and finding the flimsiest excuses to drop my responsibilities to go enjoy myself on the beach. What does any of this have to do with the title? Let me clarify. After a full year in Mozambique, nothing will take you by surprise, but everything will run an electrical current through your body! Kkkkk, Ate a proxima!

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tallestguyinmozambique · 7 years

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Africa Travels, Part 2

In September I spent some time traveling in Mozambique outside of Moma. I know you're probably thinking 'You seem to vacation a LOT.' Its true. But the Peace Corps higher ups know that it's a tough job with bad pay so they make it up with lots of vacation time. It was my sitemate Jessica's birthday and her sisters had flown all the way here from America. As Peace Corps volunteers, we're encouraged to live more or less by Mozambican means, and we normally do, but this was our chance to ditch our roles and act like Americans on vacation.

We started on Ilha de Moçambique. I had already visited Ilha many times, but this time I was seeing it through the eyes of a touristy westerner. Being the county's capital during the colonial era, Ilha was built up like no other location in the north. It flaunted beautiful churches, schools, hospitals, night clubs, and hotels. Since the colonial era, Ilha (like the rest of Mozambique) has seen a twenty year war and decades of mismanagement and neglect. With little imagination you can superimpose the city's vibrant former glory over the current infrastructure, but when you come back to reality, you're left with the vacant crumbling remains. Besides its creepy and mesmerizing 'ghost town' feel, Ilha is popular among PCVs for its killer seafood restaurants, hostels with AC, and real-life tourist attractions. These tourists attractions are as official as it gets; I'm talking brochures, establishments with working phone numbers, and staff that seems to always show up to work. You really get spoiled here. We took advantage of the aforementioned luxuries and hired a boat for an ocean island tour.

Our guide was a Mozambican man named Harry Potter, or more accurately, a Mozambican man who introduces himself as Harry Potter. We were nervous when he pulled up on what looked like a row-boat from the pre-colonial times, but it turned out to be a renovated fully functional motor-boat. The water in Mozambique from the shore is tropical blue, and as you go further into the ocean you find that it only gets bluer. After an hour into our ride it became unclear on the horizon where the water ended and where the sky began. With such a monochromatic backdrop, it became increasingly easy to spot the dark-colored whales periodically jumping up from the sea. We lazily enjoyed the sun and the salt water as Harry Potter alternated telling stories of Mozambique's history and corny jokes. Later, we retired to a small isolated island. We were pretty far from the mainland, but one infallible truth about Mozambique is that if you're in the water, there will always be a fisherman nearby. Harry Potter scoped out the nearest one and bought some fish that were literally caught moments earlier. We ended our excursion exploring the island and hanging out in the water while he prepared a delicious traditional Mozambican meal. It was a really memorable day, my only regret was not wearing sunscreen and becoming the first sunburned human my village had ever seen. I had to dedicate half of my classroom time to explain that I wasn't dying, I was just temporarily red and flaky because I'm white and that's what white people do.

After spending some time on Ilha we traveled to another must-see spot in Mozambique: Gurué. Gurué is nowhere near the coast, which sets it apart from most other tourist destinations here. The village itself feels very European, but is surrounded by a backdrop that only Africa can boast. While most of the country is left dry, leafless, and brown during the winter, Gurué remains rainy and explodes with verdancy. Mountains roll back in every direction, only ending where their deep green color fades away into the thick, cloudy horizon. Each mountain harbors on its surface thousand of linearly organized tea trees. The tea trees and the natural landscape give Gurué a hypnotically calm ambiance that I haven't experienced anywhere else in the world. When we arrived in town, we didn't hesitate to venture off into the mountains to see the beauty up close. Gurué has no official tour guides, but it is full of bored children who know everything about the mountains and are enthusiastic to show tourists around. Our new friends took us deep into the mountains, making sure to show us highlights like bamboo forests, abandoned houses, locals tending their farms, an array of terrifying spiders (usually picking them up with their bare hands), and finally a quarry to cool off in. After a full day of exploration, we succumbed to our exhaustion and asked the children to take us back into town. They were disappointed. They would have continued all day and night if it were up to them. What happened next is why I love Mozambique so much. The children said tchau and walked away. They showed us the coolest secrets and guided us all day and expected nothing in return. We insisted on buying them sodas and they were very grateful.

We saw two very different, yet very stunning spots in Mozambique, and were disappointed that we didn't have time to see more. This country has so much to offer that I'm starting to fear I won't have time to do it all. I swear I'm not secretly working for Trip Advisor, I'm genuinely saying Mozambique is FILLED with hidden vacation spots. Mozambique! A country that nobody has ever heard of as a tourist destination (or maybe never heard of at all)! I'm starting to come down with what I've coined as the traveler's curse; as you go around and see more, you start to realize exactly how much there is to see. And this is just how I'm feeling about Mozambique. When I broaden the scope to the whole world, it gets overwhelming! I'm starting to see exactly how people get so hopelessly addicted to travel. But it was time to shake the travel bug, wave Jessica's sisters good-bye, and head back to Moma. I was ready to tackle my work head-on and make some real progress in the school. That was when I learned that Moma had much, much different plans in mind...To be continued.

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tallestguyinmozambique · 7 years

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The Peace Corps Roller Coaster

As a PCV, your hear 'Peace Corps is like a roller coaster, you'll experience the highest highs and lowest lows' so much that it becomes a cliché. For me, the month of August exemplified that cliché.

It starts with the lowest lows. I had been teaching the same group of kids for seven months at this point. I could no longer validate their dismal performance in the classroom with excuses like 'They just don't understand my Portuguese' or 'They haven't adjusted to my western style of teaching.' All I had left to say was 'They just have no motivation to learn.' Half of the class had such a weak grasp on Portuguese that they stumbled spelling words as simple as 'this' and 'that.' Another forty-five percent were capable, yet did the bare minimum on the homework and tried to cheat their way through the tests. Only the last five percent showed any shred of initiative.

The students' lack of interest and skill are just a product of the real problem here: corruption. Corruption is deeply embedded and ubiquitous throughout the Mozambican school system. This is how students make it to my eighth grade class who can't read or write, who don't understand the language used by the school, and who expect to pass even as they continually fail exams.

You would expect that corruption only effects the sketchy unjust teachers, but in reality there are many aspects of corruption that accumulate and put a heavy weight on the teacher's shoulders. Just and unjust alike, they all buckle under the heavy weight. First and most benign is the student and his or her family. Generations of students have been paying off their teachers as a valid alternative to getting an education. It works, so can you blame them? The second source is the coworkers. Since communities here are so tight-knit, many times your student is a colleague's third cousin in law, twice removed, or something equivalent. Coworkers will shamelessly and publicly ask teachers to augment the grades of their relatives. It is perceived as very rude to deny this request (trust me, I've tried). The third source, and the most weighty, is the pressure from the bosses. In Mozambique, bad schools don't receive funding. Therefore, whatever the reality of the situation may be, the school needs to look good by the end of the year. My pass rate is about forty percent. Other teachers are generally in the range of thirty to sixty percent. When all is said and done, this number needs to increase to around eighty percent. This dramatic modification is accomplished at the dreaded Conselho de Notas (grade advice).

At this meeting, the teachers all sit together and discuss the grade given to each student, one by one. In Mozambique, a student does not pass or fail depending on an average GPA. Rather, he/she must receive at least fifty percent in each of his/her ten subjects, with a leeway of two subjects as long as they are at or above forty percent. Confusing, right? But the two important take aways are that the bar starts off pretty low, and that a grade of below forty percent by even one teacher means instant failure. When a student does not meet the requirements, the boss will ask specific teachers if they would increase the grade, often significantly. A teacher has the right to refuse, but he'd better be ready to defend his reasoning (usually done by providing proof that the student doesn't show up to class or proving that the student is badly behaved). If he can't defend it, his refusal is often ignored. Most of my colleagues grew up in the environment and change grades with little provocation. Anybody (including myself) who fights grade changing gets hit with a lot pressure and guilt from all angles. I try to hold my ground on the grades I assign, but many times it doesn't last in an argument against the dozen other teachers, each with his own reason why the kid deserves some help. Conselho de Notas has a way of making me feel deflated, and to rub salt in the wound, I found out that even the grades I held my ground on at Conselho were changed secretly without my permission.

The realization of my job here was becoming clearer and clearer: I was powerless to communicate with my students because many of them were strangers to Portuguese; I was powerless to educate them because they lacked the background needed to understand the material; I was powerless to motivate them due to lack of real world relevance; and now I was powerless to even evaluate them on my own terms.

Life was tough for a while after that realization. I dreaded going to school, I brought no energy or creativity to the classroom, and I got frustrated very easily with them. I couldn't find the point, and when your work requires you to live in rural Africa, there really has to be a point.

Luckily, an extra-curricular activity started up and took my attention off the classroom. English Theatre Club, a group of ambitious high-schoolers, turned my low low into a high high.

In a previous post I wrote about my English club. Since many PCVs have English clubs, Peace Corps puts on a province-wide English Theatre Competition! Each team prepares and performs a skit in English about a topic that aims to raise local awareness. This year the topic was 'Empower Women, Empower the World.' The student coordinator and I held tryouts and selected a team of eight intermediate/advanced English speakers.

Right from the very start I was blown away with their level of dedication. Everything I had learned about Mozambican work-ethic was defied by these kids. In one week they wrote the whole script without any help. They wrote a fun story about a girl who wanted to be a mechanic despite her prescribed gender role. She convinced her family that women are capable workers, and exceeded expectations even against her male coworkers. The kids really put a lot of thought into the story and created a cast of fun, memorable characters. Most other groups practiced once a week, but my group insisted on practicing every day except Sunday. I had to teach many times when they scheduled practice, but even without a coach they motivated each other to practice and provided feedback to one another.

After two months of hard practice, we set off to Ilha de Moçambique. Ilha is a big European tourist destination for its stunning beaches and colonial Portuguese architecture. Needless to say, most students in Moma aren't fortunate enough to travel for pleasure. They were very appreciative to be able to see the island. They took some pictures on the beach and mingled with new students from all around the province, but they remained focused on the competition at hand. They put on a really entertaining show and got to experience the adrenaline of competition. Coaching them was a familiar role for me, and a role that I truly love. I'm so grateful to have been able to help them grow as English speakers and to see their motivation manifest itself into a work of art.

Unfortunately, the competition was tough and we ended up in fifth place. Talking people through bitter losses is another role I'm familiar with, only this time it's certainly not one I love. They eventually cheered up though, and they immediately started putting a strategy together for doing better next year.

August for me embodied the classic Peace Corps cliché. I'm starting to figure out that the high highs and the low lows are really just manifestations of being passionate about my job, which I guess is a pretty happy realization (even if it means putting up with a lot).

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tallestguyinmozambique · 8 years

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Community Work

I returned from my South Africa vacation completely revitalized. By this point I had gotten into a routine at school so planning, teaching, and grading no longer took up all of my time. Typically in Peace Corps, the objective is do your primary job (for me that was teaching) and then find some work to do out in the community with any free time. I figured it was as good a time as any to get some of my own secondary project ideas off the ground. I want to take a second to clear up misconceptions about Peace Corps community work (because I get asked a lot). I didn't build any houses, nor any latrines, wells, or schools. It has been seen many times that building in developing countries and hoping the locals will maintain the project doesn't work. Rather, the Peace Corps’ objective is to build human capacity in the developing world, getting community members educated and involved in the projects for an impact that lasts longer than the two years that the PCV stays in the community.

I was very lucky to come into a town with Peace Corps already established and to have followed a line of a few other volunteers. This meant that some projects were already organized and just needed to be maintained. The first of these projects was teaching an English club. Everybody here wants to learn English and they can be relentless about asking for my help. It's not unusual for several eager students to show up at my door in the morning or on a weekend and ask to be tutored. At our weekly English club, any student could show up to learn or improve their English. Teaching this class was refreshingly different than my normal teaching job. Unlike my biology classes, each and every student who showed up actually wanted to participate and learn. The level of students ranged from some who only knew a few words all the way to some who were much more proficient in English than I was in Portuguese. I would normally help the advanced students with a lesson plan and then sit back as they facilitated the session for the beginner students. Just like in my classes throughout the week, it seemed like they really enjoyed the focus on student participation and interactive learning. Like everything Peace Corps, there have been big successes and big failures. One success was bringing in all of my clothes and having them dress up for specific occasions (work, the club, the beach, etc.). Then with the students modeling their outfits, we defined the words of all the clothes in English. One specific failure was trying to make family trees. Considering that the average family here has seven or eight children, many times people don't know all of their siblings, and that the family structures are generally more complicated here, it became too complicated to be successful.

Another project I have been left by volunteers before me was a weekly youth group type meeting. This was an organized group run through Peace Corps called JUNTOS (Jovens Unidos no Trabalho para Desenvolviment e Sucesso, or in English, united youth working towards development and success). Another teacher at the school and I met with some of our more motivated students weekly to get them talking about topics often overlooked here. Our lessons have focused on HIV, malaria, violence, confidence, puberty, gender equality, health, and sex education. I was amazed at the knowledge gaps in these areas. Things that are common sense to Americans were news to even some of my best students. We spent afternoons focusing on how to prevent HIV and malaria, how to empower women, and how to make healthy snacks from the food available in our community. From a selfish standpoint, I was happy that they had so much to learn; we could literally see growth right before our eyes in a 40 minute lesson plan (any PCV's dream realized). Still though, it brought me face to face with the lack of effective early age education here that has so many life-long repercussions. I felt lucky once again for growing up in country where we take for granted being effectively educated with this kind of life-changing knowledge. To put the icing on the JUNTOS cake, the group had the initiative to put together plays about what they had learned and performed them for the community on holidays. This actually turned out to be a pro and con. Taking the 'coach' role for these plays has been one of the hardest hurdles for me to date. Being a coach in the organized first world put expectations in my head that were impossible to match here. You can imagine how hard it was for me to give feedback when they improvised the lines, switched without reason between Portuguese and Makua, and even changed who played which character each time. No two practice runs were alike. All stress aside, it always paid off on performance days to see them educating while entertaining the community.

A perk of doing a group run through Peace Corps like JUNTOS is that they have yearly Workshops. At these events, all the PCVs and their Mozambican counterparts travel with a few members of their group to meet new people, learn together, and share ideas about how to be role models in their respective communities. I was happy to get to give four of the most dedicated participants the opportunity to travel with me across the province of Nampula to a town called Ribaue. Since Moma is so far from the provincial capital, many high-schoolers have never seen the capital or any of the other sights within Nampula. This is sad since (despite what people say about it) Nampula has a lot to see, with huge mountain ranges to the west and touristy beach towns to the east. Ribaue is a village at the base of some of the largest mountains in Mozambique. None of the four students I brought had been to that part of the country or had seen that kind of scenery.

Like I mentioned, these groups were essentially handed to me from past volunteers. The real challenge is starting a group from scratch. The general lack of organization here, mixed with severely limited resources, and topped with flaky commitment within the community can make starting a new project a hair-ripping-out scream-into-a-pillow experience. And that's not meant to antagonize Mozambicans. Flaky commitment to a new project could be because helping the family always comes first, and lack of organization might be because nobody in the family has a phone/watch/clock, so 2:00pm simply means anytime in the afternoon. But excusing the problems doesn't make them easier to avoid. Some attempted projects have been facilitating high schoolers reading children books to primary schoolers, starting a health and nutrition group, creating a group to play games that have themes related to HIV or malaria prevention, and making a study skills group. All of these have fell through for various reasons. Disappointed as I was, I've learned that it’s all part of the Peace Corps experience. Now I realize that the commitment is two years long because that’s how long it will take me to figure out this community and get my ideas to work!

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tallestguyinmozambique · 8 years

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Africa Travels

With all the distracting side-stories going on in my life during March and April, I barely realized that the first trimester of school was coming to an end. It was already time to start preparing for the standardized tests that high-school students have to take after every trimester. I spent countless hours trying to prepare my students for the tests, but what I realize now is that I should have been using that time to prepare myself for the absolute disaster that was to come.

A little background to get you caught up; at this point I was already discouraged by teaching, for none of my students seemed to be absorbing anything. Even the simplest themes of biology were going way over their heads. The students had provincial exams in each of their 10 subjects, and it seemed like each test was harder that the last. The questions were uniform throughout the province, but the textbooks being used to prepare the kids were different, so many times they had a question on a topic they had never seen before. Also, the questions were all open ended, some being very vague and some requiring an expert level of knowledge. Some tests even had glaring mistakes rendering the questions nonsensical.

While I was proctoring, I learned that the majority of students had intentions of cheating. Some thought they could get away with using their notebooks out in the open, others got creative and went as far as to hide their notebooks up their skirts. I thought I did a good job proctoring, but when every student turned in a test with the same exact answers, and when those answers were word for word what I wrote on the board during lecture, it made me seriously double guess myself.

Frustrated and angry, I graded my tests and put together their averages. To my disbelieve, about 70% of my students failed to reach the passing score of 50%. I took into account that they might not have understood my heavily Americanized Portuguese, so I leniently gave the full class a 20% curve to boost a few more students into the passing range. Not what I would call a success story. Put this together with all that was happening outside the classroom and I was just about ready to give up. Luckily I had a lot on the horizon to cheer me up.

First on the list was Reconnect. This is when all the Peace Corps volunteers get together after a few months of service to talk about their experiences and share ideas of what works and what doesn't work. More importantly than the conference itself was being reunited with the other volunteers and spending some time in the city. It’s amazing what a few days in a nice hotel can do to a person after a few months of village life. Feeling refreshed, some friends and I decided to take advantage of the upcoming long weekend and do some traveling. We went down to the province directly below Nampula called Zambezia. We visited other volunteers in a big town called Macuba, which had everything a PCV could want: markets full of vegetables, pizza, coffee, and a chance to see wild hippos (which we missed out on, something I'll be bitter about for a while).

When I finally got back to Moma, I only had to wait a few days before my next excursion began. I had been in Mozambique for about eight months at this time and I was only a few days away from going to both Swaziland (a small country bordering Mozambique) and South Africa for a well-deserved vacation. The vacation started by flying down to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. There, I reconnected from my host family from training in Namaacha. I was welcomed back home as if I were biological family. They prepared a feast, and we ate and drank and talked all night long. Even though I lived with them for two months, it felt as if it were the first real conversation I ever had with them (since when I left their house I couldn't put two words together in Portuguese). Sadly, my homecoming was short lived. The next morning, I met some friends and we crossed the border out of Mozambique and into Swaziland.

It was wild to see how much difference a man-made border made in the case of Mozambique vs Swaziland. For one, they spoke English on the Swaziland side of the border. It took some getting used to, but being able to articulate what I had to say without thinking too hard or making a fool out of myself was a welcomed change. Also, the quality of the roads, the public transport, and the infrastructure was lightyears ahead of Mozambique's. From what I've learned, the English colonizers put a lot of money into their colonies while the Portuguese focused less on development and more on quick profits. We arrived in the the city Manzini and basked in the luxury of malls, grocery stores, KFCs, and everything else we had been sorely missing in Mozambique. Even among all that luxury, though, we anxiously awaited what was up next. Bushfire! One of the best music festivals on the continent of Africa, and definitely one of the most talked about events among PCVs.

We took a taxi to the festival grounds and quickly found the campsites of Peace Corps Swaziland, South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia, and a few other southern African countries. If you truly want to get everything out of a music festival, follow my advice: Move to a quiet, under-stimulating village for eight months, get accustomed to the zen life with no loud sounds or bright lights, and then go straight to an overstimulating festival with dozens of close friends and take it all in. The music festival lived up to its hype and then some. The down side was that the climate was drastically different than what I was used to. My friends told me to pack for winter, but in Nampula, winter means still insanely hot, just not quite as brutal as summer. I learned my lesson when I had to camp in near freezing temperatures in nothing but my t-shirt, pants, and a capulana to use as blanket.

The weekend came to a close, but my travels were far from over. I crossed yet another border with a friend into South Africa. If Swaziland was a solid step above Mozambique developmentally, South Africa was another five steps above Swaziland. Our destination was Pretoria. Pretoria made me feel like I was back home in America for the first time since I had moved to Africa in September. With shopping malls, people rushing around on their phones, and traffic filling the streets, it resembled any American city much more than the villages of Mozambique. We fully enjoyed the hot showers, ice cream, and calm ambiance of South Africa. Before I knew it, it was time for the next leg of my journey. I waved bye to my friend, hopped on a train, and within a few hours was at Kruger National Park.

Kruger Park is one of the biggest and most famous animal reserves in the world. If that's not exciting enough, I was going with my parents. Even after going to college far from home and habitually going months without seeing family, this reunion felt long overdue. Even though South Africa and Mozambique are different as light and day, it was cool to give them at least a little context to my daily life over here. The park itself was a truly unique experience. The safari truck rode up and down the roads as we searched tirelessly for animals. In the one day we spent in the park, we saw elephants, zebra, giraffes, monkeys, baboons, warthogs, and most of the African animals we have ever wanted to see up close and personal. The coolest part was that there was no barrier whatsoever between the safari truck and the animals so we got to see them as they are in the wild. Back at the hotel, impalas would stand right outside our hotel window and monkeys would beg us for some food at dinner. Kruger was a hard destination to top, but our next stop, Cape Town, somehow managed.

I wouldn't have believed how developed certain parts of South Africa were unless I had seen them first hand. Cape Town is nice even to American standards. We only had a few days to see a town that could have easily entertained us for weeks. We chose to take to the top of Table Mountain, see the southernmost tip of Africa, watch warm-weather penguins in their local beach-side habitat, and (of-course) take advantage of all the food while it was available. Before I knew it, it was time to take one last hot shower and head back to Moma. I was reluctant to say goodbye to luxury, but after being gone so long I had started to miss my community and the simplicity of village life. That's a good sign I think.

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tallestguyinmozambique · 8 years

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The Hardest Month of Peace Corps

Life can be exhausting here. At first, the hardest part of living in Mozambique was living a life without American comforts. But over the months, feelings got more complex. Living in isolation, having very little in common with the community around me, and not being taken seriously personally and professionally became some of the new hardships. This second round of adversity was proving much harder to cope with.

In one very unfortunate weekend, both of my American sitemates would leave for a while. One went back to America and the other one went to the hospital in Maputo after being hit by a motorcycle. This left me in town alone for about five weeks, which only intensified my isolated and home-sick feelings, and also made what was about to happen even harder to receive.

I got a message from a friend on a Friday afternoon saying that there had been a car accident involving two volunteers in my training group. One was seriously injured and the other was dead. Most people know signing up for Peace Corps that there will be rough days. I knew that all the problems I was facing were normal, but never in a million years would I expect to have to mourn the loss of a friend on top of it all. I waited in shock until we received an e-mail from our bosses with the details of the accident and the names of the volunteers involved. I was close with the volunteer who passed away. He lived closest to me during training. We would often walk to class together, go to family parties together, or just grab a beer and talk on the weekends. He was a chef before becoming a Peace Corps volunteer, and avid musician, a science enthusiast, and a chill guy who was easy to talk to for hours on end. Although I could call people to talk, I was essentially alone in my village with no other Americans within a reasonable distance. The news hit me like a punch in the chest, but what happened next was strange. I managed to pretended like it didn't happen. I felt nothing...towards anything. Just a vacuum. Maybe this was a coping mechanism, but part of me also thinks that it was a result of trying to deal with it alone. Sitting there in my house I went on to doing whatever I was doing, not even paying attention, not even thinking. Over the course of the weekend I grasped the situation a little better. I spent then next days calling friends, going on walks, watching movies, and distracting myself with anything I could to keep the reality of the situation far from the center-stage of my mind.

Over the next few days I learned how our perception of death differs culturally. Americans hide from the idea of death, so when it happens it is devastating. It seems unreal and makes us think about our own mortality and can send us down a long rabbit hole of emptiness. Mourning for us is a long and emotional time and 'getting back to normal' certainly doesn't happen overnight. In Mozambique, and I am assuming other countries in similar situations, death is much more mundane. With the current level of healthcare and lack of disease education, death of somebody close is something that almost everybody has to face early on in life. While we have a hard time wrapping our heads around death, it seems more tangible to the people here. As sad as it is, I have had students ask to leave class early before because a family member died. When they ask, they have a very matter-of-fact demeanor about them. No tears, no screams, just something that happened.

I'm not saying that they don't have their own way of mourning here in Mozambique. Of the few friends I had told, one invited me over for a beer and one even came to my house to wash my clothes and refused payment. A week later, though, when I still wasn't myself, they had a hard time understanding why it was taking so long to get over it.

Luckily for me, my time of isolation was coming to an end. Later that week I went to Ilha de Mocambique for a conference. As the capital of Mozambique during the colonial period and now run down, Ilha de Mocambique has a lost city feeling about it. It looks like a small European town deserted and left for ruin. Still, it is one of the most touristy destination throughout the country and can feel like an entirely different world from Mozambique when you really need it. There I saw a handful of my friends from training and was able to grieve with people who understood death from an American point of view. I'm not saying that good food, drinks, and diving into tropical blue ocean water quieted all my emotions, but it was a step in the right direction. While we were there, we also learned that our bosses were organizing a ceremony and were planning to fly all of us northerners down three days after our conference ended. If you keep up with this blog, you know that I live in the middle of nowhere, so going home just to leave again three days later pretty much means three consecutive days on a chapa. The obvious solution was stay outside of Moma and take a three day vacation.

Two friends and I went to Pemba, the capital of the north-most province Cabo Delgado. In general, the more north you go in this country, the less developed it gets. That being said, Pemba is a hidden treasure. It is a big expat city with lots of restaurants, touristy excursions, and (like every great city in Mozambique), a breathtakingly blue ocean.

Later that week, everybody from my training group came together in Maputo. In one last attempt to mend our wounds, we went out to the bars in the city and made bad decision after bad decision. Not surprisingly, this only made things worse for my friends and me. Live and learn I guess. Let's skip forward to the next morning, the day of the ceremony. The US Ambassador's house was filled with a mix of PC volunteers and staff. There was a slideshow with pictures of him, a song sung by the Mozambican staff, a performance by the members of his band during training, and an especially tear-jerking letter written by his parents. As sad as the ceremony was, it was cathartic to be in the same room with everybody who he influenced. We cried at his absence, shook in the realization of the fragility of life, and screamed at the lack of justice. But time went on, we all went back to site, and life started moving forward. It was like an earthquake; it shook up our world for some time, but afterwards everything returned to being calm. I felt disgusted at myself for moving on, how could I let life get back to normal when a friend of mine was dead? But it happened, and I eventually stopped fighting it.

I'm writing this five months after it happened. It just wasn't something I wanted to do up until recently and even now I couldn't get through it easily. It still makes no sense to me and part of me expects to catch up with him over a 2M at Midservice. But as impossible as it is to think about forever, all I can do now is wish him a forevers worth of peace. Estamos Juntos.

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tallestguyinmozambique · 8 years

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Things That Happen in Mozambique

Having lived here for a while, some of the day to day ridiculousness doesn't phase me anymore. Only when I try to look at things from an American perspective do I remember how absolutely crazy it is. I've put together a few small stories about things that have happened here that didn't even phase the people but would sending Americans running for cover.

1. I have a few teacher friends out there, maybe you guys can relate to this one. You know that feeling you get when the roof blows off the classroom. It's a bummer, I know, but what can you do? Oh, one more problem. It's rainy season so literally every day the classroom is getting rained on. When you talk to the principal, he calmly gives you a shrug of the shoulders, meaning you're SOL. He let's you know that the roof will be fixed by next week so not to worry too much. Meanwhile, the standardized tests are just a few weeks away, so you hope that your students take on the responsibility of studying at home (just kidding, they would never do that).

2. Work culture is much different here. America is overflowing with qualified professionals so we work hard at our jobs, and if we don't, we know somebody else will. The glaring deficit of professionals here gives those that are qualified a little wiggle room. Okay, maybe I should say a LOT of wiggle room. Every teacher seems to take at least a little advantage of this (not excluding me), but some teachers take it to the next level. At a teacher's conference, the principal called out a few teachers for their bad work habits. One teacher's record showed that he only taught 2 days out of the 13 week trimester, and habitually came to school, chatted with coworkers, skipped his classes, and went home. He still has a job at the school...

3. Speaking of teacher conferences, they happen about every two weeks and are always about the weirdest things. One time the entire conference was about not dating your students. TWO HOURS of lectures about not dating your middle to high school aged students. Other meetings have been as strange as 'How to make sure we're all writing the letters of the alphabet the same.' My favorite by far though is when they pull the teachers out of their classes to have a meeting about why it is important to not miss classes.

4. I live on the beach, but to get to the Indian Ocean you have to cross a bay on a boat. Everyone in Moma said they were too afraid to go over to the ocean. I scoffed at them and said that any strong swimmer shouldn't be afraid of a little open water. One day I bit the bullet with a courageous companion and went to the station where the boats leave. The first problem we encountered was that everybody in charge of the boats only spoke the local language Makua. We found a guy to translate our Portuguese with the boat peoples' Makua. He agreed to take us for the white people price (1.5 times the normal price). One thing people don't understand here is going places and seeing things for leisure. We managed, with much difficulty, to explain that we were not going fishing or crabbing, we were just going to lay down next to the water like all of us weird Americans like to do. When we got in the boat the man handed me a paddle and my friend a bucket. It was one of those 'everybody works' type of boat rides. They thought it was the most ridiculous thing seeing a white guy rowing a boat and will probably tell their kids and their kids' kids of the day. They imagine that all of us are useless when it comes to any kind of physical labor. My job was important, but not nearly as important as my friend's job. Her duty was to collect the constant influx of water and dump it outside the boat. She kept busy and because of that I can live to tell the tale. The water was entering fast, and without a competent water- scooper I don't know it the boat would have stayed afloat for the hour and a half ride. Now I understand why the locals are too afraid to cross the bay to the other side.

5. As an epilogue to that last story, we had to walk on the other side of the bay for another hour before we reached the ocean. Many people lived an isolated life on that island. There was no school, no imported goods, no hospital..nothing. Just what they grew in their gardens, what they caught in the sea, and what they could get from the land to turn into shelter. Their life was so simple that when the tide came in from the ocean the entire town deconstructed their houses, moved the material about a hundred yards inland, and rebuilt. They said to move their entire town was only about a week long project.

6. Chapa is the name of the public transportation here. If you have been reading, or if we've talked on the phone, you probably know by now that chapas are my worst nightmare. They are what I imagine Hell is like. It's just a minivan with 20 people stuffed in along with as many babies, chickens, sacs of flour and miscellaneous crap as possible. They seem to bring out the worst in people. One time I was traveling to a touristy destination for a weekend mini vacation. One guy went to leave the chapa, but paid the amount he thought acceptable instead of the amount expected by the cobrador (I don't know the translation...guy who collects money). The man and the cobrador stood up on the seats and started having a fist fight. Did the driver stop? No, he had places to be. We continued speeding down the road for the next five minutes while the two of them fought it out.

7. Another time I was in a chapa traveling from the city to my village. It's a punishingly long ride. We had left the city at 11:00am, and at 7:00pm we still had a few hours to go. With no warning, the chapa broke down and abandoned us on the side of the road. The driver screamed “Meu Deus!” and reassured us that the van would not get up and running any time soon. One general thing about Mozambique is that there is never a backup plan. This road sees only one car every few hours and there were 15 of us needing to get home. Everybody was on the phone calling their friends and friends' friends to see who had a truck and could rescue us. Finally, a truck agreed to come from a few hours away to pick us up and take us the rest of the way. He said he just had to finish eating dinner. Another thing about Mozambique is that people aren't always honest when talking about time. Him eating dinner could mean him actually eating, or waiting for his wife to cook, or waiting for his wife to get back from the market to cook, or waiting for his wife to take a bath so she can go to the market so she can cook. Two hours passed, and we all learned that this guy still had not finished dinner. Another hour went by, and somehow, somebody recruited a man with a truck to take us back to Moma. The truck was the size of any pick-up you would see in America. We filled the pickup with all the sacs of flour, livestock, and miscellaneous purchases from the city. Then the 15 of us sat in the truck bed and held on to each other for support as we drove down the bumpy dirt road for the next two hours. After 15 hours on the road in total, and some sincere prayers to God to not fall off, we made it back to Moma.

8. I get into some weird conversations here. The people want to know everything about America and will pick my brain as long as I will let them. For this my students know the definition of weird words like spork and crazy fads like the Harlem Shake.The weirdest conversation I have had so far has been with a student of mine on the walk home from school. He told me he wanted to move to America. That's not story worthy, everybody here says that. I gave him my normal speech that it's possible and if he can afford the flight he can crash at my place until he gets his own place figured out. Yeah, I tell that to everybody, so if in the future I have a small army of Mozambicans living with me I'll kick myself for promising that. He responded to that with something along the lines of 'Yeah right, you say that now, but if you were to actually see me in america you would just sell me.' After asking some questions, I found out that he was being serious. He actually thought that! Luckily we cleared that misconception up, but I couldn't believe that he actually thought that! It's kind of interesting, but most people here aren't even aware that African Americans exist. I show them a picture of Obama, but they say he's not dark enough to really be African. Pictures of Beyonce and 50 Cent normally get the message across though.

9. Another pretty weird conversation was when a woman I had never met before asked me to name her baby. I had just moved here and didn't know how to react. I told her that she should name it, being the Mom and all. I though I was being nice, but she took it offensively that I wouldn't name her baby! If it happens again now I won't hesitate, but it caught me off guard and I missed a golden opportunity to get a baby named after me (a goal of all Peace Corps Volunteers).

This is just a short list of all the wild things that happen in Mozambique on a regular basis. It's seriously a different world over here and this stuff that probably seems unreal to any American is the reality of life. Crazy stuff happens here close to every day so you can definitely anticipate a 'Things That Happen in Mozambique, Part 2' pretty soon.

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tallestguyinmozambique · 8 years

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Senhor Professor (Part 1)

At first I was nervous to be a teacher without much experience in this new environment. I quickly realized, though, that any amount of experience in an American classroom wouldn't have prepared me for teaching here. It is a completely different profession. As I'll describe, school here doesn't resemble school in America, the students don't resemble students in the States, and being a teacher definitely doesn't mean what it does back home.

I'll start with what the school looks like here. It isn't one big building with classrooms inside, like in the States. Instead, it is 8 concrete classrooms making a U shape around an open sandy field with one lonely Mozambique flag flying in the middle.

Depending on your age and grade level, you go to school either 7:00am-12:00pm, 12:00pm-5:00pm, or 6:00pm-10:00pm. Luckily, I only teach 8th grade biology, and all the 8th graders meet for the 12:00pm-5:00pm afternoon sessions. The school day starts with a half hour reunion type meeting with hundreds of students lined up facing the teachers and pedagogical directors. Everybody meets outside (rain or shine) to sing the national anthem and then get lectured for a half an hour about how their uniforms are dirty and that they should present themselves better at school...A nice positive way to start the day. Quick note about the uniforms, all the students have to wear a white shirt and black pants (boys) or skirts (girls), and the boys have to keep their heads pretty much shaved. Without the luxury of excess, many students only have one or two white shirts. Now consider that they have to walk through the dirt or mud roads to get to school every day. This means, a lot of the time, that they have to wash their shirt every other day (by hand of course) to meet the standards of the school. Many teachers won't even let a student into the classroom with a dirty uniform.

After hearing about how unpresentable they all are, the students enter the classrooms for their first subject. One major difference here is that the students have their own classroom and it is the teacher who moves from room to room. My dream of having my personal decorated classroom with tons of biology paraphernalia was shattered. When the teacher (or Senhor Professor) enters the room, the students all stand up and greet him by saying “Boa Tarde Senhor Professor” in a very robotic tone. The funny thing is that they will stay standing until the teacher gives them permission to sit down. This brings me to what they sit down on. Logs. That's right, they sit on horizontal tree trunks...If they're lucky. If not, it's just the sandy dirty floor. Each room has a chalkboard of varying quality. The good ones resemble our chalkboards back home, the bad ones make you bleed if you're not careful with your chalk. Other than the logs and the chalkboard, the rooms are pretty barren. About half of them have a light, and only one classroom at the school has a door.

Now it's time to start teaching. Class always start with attendance, but not like American attendance. Since each classroom has 50-60 students, they use numbers to keep track of them. You count 1 to about 60 and mark the numbers that don't call back. It's sad to say, but I don't even know the names of a quarter of my students. In my defense, they all wear the exact same thing and have names that I can barely say. After attendance, it's time for the 45 minute lesson. One big difference about the schools here is that the students have about 10 subjects each year and spread their time thinly across all 10. For example, they start Biology, Chemistry, and Physics in 8th grade and continue with all three sciences until 12th grade (when they graduate, like in the US).

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tallestguyinmozambique · 8 years

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Senhor Professor (Part 2)

So instead of meeting 5 times a week for Biology, each class only meets twice a week for a total of 1.5 hours of Biology. One thing to think about is how these students have to balance 10 subjects, keep their uniform clean, and help the family cook and take care of younger siblings every single day. This doesn't even factor in the time it takes to walk to and from the school. Earlier, I mentioned that I only meet each class 1.5 hours a week. You might be thinking what in the world do I do with the rest of my time. But there are so many kids here that I have 8 different classes of 8th graders, each 50-60 students. These kids come from all over. Some have to walk 3 miles or more every day to get to school and 3 more miles back.

With so much to do at home, and with such a great distance between many families and the school, it's not too surprising that many families don't send their children to school. It's worth considering the demographic that does attend school and thinking about why it is the way it is. My students range in age from 14 to 22. Why so old for 8th graders? There are many reasons. Sometimes they get held back year after year. But more commonly, they don't go to school for a year or several years to help the family out. It could be helping out on the farm, with younger siblings, or caring for somebody who is sick. In Mozambique, there are many times when family life takes the priority over school. Another interesting (and sadly not too shocking) demographic is that only about 30% of my students are girls. To this day, many families don't send their daughters to school. In other cases, girls drop out of school as early as 8th grade to get become a wife, take care of the house, and have children. I was stubborn and didn't believe this until it happened. One girl stopped coming to class because she had a child. She was 16.

With all that happening in the background, it's easy to forgive the students who do make it to school for their sub-par level of dedication to biology. Succeeding in school here isn't directly correlated with success or making money in the future. Normally, the farmer kids will grow up to be farmers and the few children of professionals will grow up to become professionals. There unfortunately isn't a lot of change to the status quo from one generation to the next. This validates the question on many of their minds: “Why do I need to learn biology?” We also need to pause and take into account the level of education of these 8th graders. I have a fairly large sample size of 450 students. Out of them, it seems that about 20% have a strong grasp on reading, writing, and speaking Portuguese. 50% can read basic sentences and try to spell out simple words. Then you have the 30% who can't read a basic question or write a reasonable response. The entire school system is conducted in their secondary language, Portuguese. The language they have a mastery of (Makua) is deemed unfit for school and forbidden to be spoken on the school grounds. Add in to the mix that Portuguese is still a very new language for me and you can imagine all the challenges faced in the classroom on a daily basis.

One thing I've truly found to be grateful for is the focus on critical thinking and problem solving in our early age education. It's so intertwined with our education system that I assumed it was natural for human beings to be able to problem solve. I know now that that is learned and not innate. School here consists of teachers lecturing and writing notes on the chalkboard, followed by the students copying the notes in their notebook verbatim. This has been the routine every single day for the eight years these kids have been in school. And this routine doesn't involve a shred of thought. Just copy the words on the board, memorize them without understanding them, and rewrite them on the exam. This routine has been enough for them to get into the eighth grade. Now I come into the picture rocking the boat with open ended question like “How do you think the study of biology can impact your life.” They will sit back and expect to be spoon-fed the answer, which always leads to long, uncomfortable, silent staring contests between me and them. This has been my main challenge from day one. I want to facilitate critical thinking, but I'm learning how hard it is to change the way one thinks. On top of that, when I ask any task other than directly regurgitating the information, I am met with blank stares. Luckily, there's usually two or three students in each class who understand what I'm trying to do and validate my existence here.

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tallestguyinmozambique · 8 years

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Senhor Professor (Part 3)

Another thing we never think to appreciate in America is the emphasis we put on interactive teaching and learning. As I already mentioned, lecture and note taking is the only teaching style here. Nothing catering to the visual, audio, or kinesthetic learners, and definitely nothing getting the students involved in the learning process. Introducing American teaching styles has become one of my main objectives. In my classes, we make drawings to accompany the notes, do partner and group work, make plays (yes, about biology), play jeopardy, and do demonstrations. For Americans, this is standard teaching. But here, it is brand new for them. Imagine life in their shoes. They have been sitting on these logs and copying the teacher's notes five hours a day for the past 8 years. It's really validating seeing how happy the get to be part of the lesson and move around and have fun in the classroom. Most of the time, actually, they get way too energetic and I completely lose control of them. I can't blame them. I would be the same exact way if the tables were turned.

If I could wrap this up with one blanket statement, I would say appreciate your education. The schools with desks, the captivating teaching style, and even the education we Americans receive out of the classroom. I'm talking about museums, children's shows, zoos, what our parents teach us, etc. I always have to start from scratch here. I've realized that what we think is common sense is really just learned and reinforced from an early age. My job here is very challenging, but very rewarding. Sometimes it's frustrating beyond description. I've had to face the fact that most of them will never learn biology. But introducing an American style classroom, fostering critical thinking, and breaking up the monotony of lecture after lecture has been enough to keep me feeling useful here.

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tallestguyinmozambique · 8 years

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10 Things You Need to Know Before Traveling to Mozambique (Part 1)