Hello! I’m sorry it has been so long since I’ve updated this thing but honestly it’s been difficult finding things to write about. My hours recently got cut at school, so I am now just working 2 afternoons a week and it’s a serious bummer. The district essentially made a new rule that all teachers needed to teach a total of 24 hours, well because I am not a paid employee (I’m just a volunteer) every teacher was assigned 24 hours and I got the leftover, measly 9 hours a week. It stinks, it really does. But after talking to some colleagues I realized that most of them wanted to work even more than 24 (some had been working 30+ hours before) and because everyone gets paid based on the amount of hours they work, if I request more hours it takes away from another person’s salary---clearly not something I am trying to do. So this means that I have just been incredibly bored. And when I say bored I mean I’ve actually started watching TV episodes on my computer and re-reading old magazines I collected when I was in Maputo last January-it's that bad.
Initially I thought all this free time wouldn’t be that terrible because it would give me more time to work on secondary projects (any type of project outside of professional teaching). Well, starting secondary projects is not an easy task-especially when you live in a village that has never had another volunteer. People are justconfused when I try to offer tutoring or any sort of extra volunteering activity. So far my attempts at secondary projects have included:
-Helping organize our school library; re-arranging an old textbooks by subject (and grade) and then cataloging every book in the library so that when students borrow them we can trace where they’ve gone. This was a fun little project but I finished in about 3 days.
-Helping out at a colleague’s orphanage. Now this was a very exciting potential project for me. Another teacher at school mentioned that he helps out at an orphanage and after expressing interest in going he took me one morning. When I expected to walk to an orphanage in town, I was wrong. He led me on a 20-minute walk into the matu (farmland area) until we got to a very large field. He explained to me that the government of Mozambique donated 10 hectares of land to his organization, but gave them no funding to actually build an orphanage-all that has to come out of pocket. Some women met us at this field and he passed out some cove (kale/collard greens) for the women to plant in there homes. The plan is for these women to start their own small farm at home and use the cove when they cook to add more nutrients to their meals and thus help fight malnutrition (a huge problem here because everyone just eats carbs!) So that little piece was cool but overall I was kind of bummed out. I thought there was an established orphanage where he was helping teach/take care of kids but the fact is it hasn’t been built yet. The children are living with foster families. He was hoping I could help him get a grant or some type of funding to start building. That sucked. This teacher is a really genuinely great guy, and luckily he speaks some English so when I explained that I can’t just donate money to him because I have none he was just curious to learn more about what I can do, which is basically volunteer when the orphanage is going, and I also offered to help clean up some of the land but I don’t think he took me seriously at that offer.
-Finally, I found out another colleague at school wants to start a pre-school. Apparently there used to be a pre-school in Vanduzi that was volunteer run by some NGO but it stopped a few years ago and now there is no pre-school. Arguably worse, there is only one primary school in town, so children that aren’t fortunate enough to go to this school go to your stereotypical, African children sitting under a tree, drawing in the dirt trying to learn kind of school. So basically there is no preschool and limited primary school education available, which helps to explain why when students get to the secondary school (where I teach) they’re abilities are all over the place. I told this colleague if she starts a pre-school I will happily teach there in the mornings. I love kids and seriously need to find something to do to fill up all this free time! But things move SO SLOWLY here and I would be shocked if the pre-school starts up by the end of the year…
-I am also really going to start an English club. I’ve been talking to some other volunteers for advice on how to get it started and plan to really jump in with it in the next week or two so hopefully that will fill up some time and branch into other new projects!
That’s really it for now, I will say that even though I am just teaching 9 hours a week I really value my teaching time and think I spend a lot more time lesson planning, giving assignments (and grading them) and essentially just give my students more attention because I have less of them now, so that could be a good thing!
I’ll try to post again in the next week or two if there’s any new news, but hey, in my case I think no news is always good news :)
And here are some pictures:
Last weekend I went to Chimoio and hiked Cabesa de Velho with another volunteer. The “mountain” is maybe 3k outside of town and the hike to the top isn’t too tough. It’s really neat though, from the top you can see the entire town of Chimoio on one side, and then on the other side its just open fields/trees, a pretty cool contrast! Here’s a picture of me from the top of the mountain.
Two weekends ago a bunch of the PCVs that live in the central region of the country traveled to Vanduzi for a get together. It was a ton of fun, even though it rained all day for the one full day that volunteers were there we still had a great time cooking good food, telling stories and festajaring. Some wonderful person in America sent a box with peach rings in it to another volunteer so we ate those, along with some other great care package food! Here’s a funny shot of mostly everyone crammed into my kitchen posing with their peach rings:)
And I still can’t decide who had more fun that weekend, the volunteers or the kids that live in my bairro (neighborhood). They stood outside my porch watching us all weekend, even when it was pouring. They danced and sang outside, occasionally asked for food, but for the most part were just happy to watch us (and talk to whoever came out to say hello to them)
About a month and a half ago the country director came to visit me at site in Vanduzi. He took me, and two other volunteers out for lunch to talk about teaching/site...etc. Here's a picture of us in front of another PCVs house in Messica.
And I will add another quick story. I wait to bolea (hitch hike) out of site from the same spot everytime I leave. There is this house right on the outskirts of town that has a big tree in front that offers great shade to wait in while I try to flag down cars, and the family that lives there is really friendly too, which is always a bonus. Well today when I got to my spot, the teenage girl who lives at the house waved me over and said she wanted me to come into her house to meet someone. I followed her inside her incredibly small one room hut (which had a straw mat on the floor and then stacks of corn filled the rest of the house) anyway she had just had a baby boy, he was just TWO DAYS OLD. She insisted I pick him up and meet him but he was sleeping so I told her next time I visit I will hold him but he was so tiny! She also asked me to give him a name, at this point I told her I don't know any Mozambican names and that she should name him but she said she wanted to give him an America name...so i gotta start thinking. She invited me back for dinner next week and I think she is hoping that I will have a great name by then-any ideas?
The end.
