Plastic Chairs

sitting.

What does it mean to be productive? Why do we feel this need to be actively producing something all the time? Is there something wrong with just sitting and doing nothing? Is sitting really just doing nothing? I came across the following quote which accurately describes an activity that I’ve spent a large chunk of the past year doing: just sitting down, in the company of other people.

The Psychology of Sitting:

“People in Western civilization no longer have time for each other, they have no time together, they do not share the experience of time. This explains why Westerners are incapable of understanding the psychology of sitting. In villages all over the world, sitting is an important social activity. Sitting is not a ‘waste of time,’ nor is it a manifestation of laziness. Sitting is having time together, time to cultivate social relations.” ~Andreas Fuglesang

still sitting.

When I stop by someone’s house, the first thing they do, sometimes before they even ask how I am, is put out a chair or bench for me. Once you’re seated, even if you meant to just pop in for a minute, you may find yourself still in the chair anywhere from ten minutes to three hours later. Some of that time will be spent conversing; some, just sitting. Luckily for a chatty [ahem] person like myself, you’re not expected to talk for the entire time. As Americans we don’t like silence, every gap in the conversation must be quickly filled, or it’s awkward. In Nauela, it's ok to not say something every minute. 

The important part is that you're sitting, together.

. 

Something Different

Lunch on the first day was peppered with awkward silences and shy glances; not one of the twenty attendees had been to a JUNTOS workshop previously. Hungry from crowded, bumpy bus rides, they swallowed their nervousness with heaps of rice and chicken, trying to act nonchalant and cool.

But soon they were discussing puberty and reproductive systems, leadership skills, self-esteem, HIV, and other topics that teenagers need to know about, with no trace of embarrassment and minimal giggles. The students, most of them between 15 and 20 years old, spent three consecutive days in a conference room with four Peace Corps Volunteers and four Mozambican teachers, receiving what I can only describe as D.A.R.E., Growing and Changing, and sex ed all rolled into one extremely educational weekend.

However, it was no ordinary weekend in the classroom. When we all wrote our expectations for the weekend on a giant piece of paper, someone wrote that they hoped for “something different than what we usually experience.” And that, without a doubt, is what they got. Unlike a normal school day, the students did most of the talking. They didn’t stay in their chairs all the time; they got up to act out skits about gender equality, walk around the room writing on the wall all the slang they could think of for female and male genitalia, and, the ultimate challenge, free themselves from the Human Knot. They learned about how HIV works through a game involving throwing wads of paper at each other. At 6:00pm on Saturday, I found myself running through a dark, half-closed-down market, looking for thirty bananas to give my condom demonstration (I found two bunches of the mini kind).

All of the students are part of a youth group called JUNTOS – Jovens Unidos no Trabalho para Oportunidades e Sucesso, or Youth United in Work for Opportunities and Success. I know, I know, Motherp, it should be JUNTPOS. But it rings well in Portuguese without the P; “juntos” means “together” so it’s a good group name. Peace Corps Volunteers run JUNTOS groups all over the country, each with a focus area: theater, dance, journalism, or photography. Each year, a few neighboring groups get together for this workshop, to talk about topics that are not usually talked about. The five students we chose to invite from Nauela are those who were the most involved in the group up until this point.

The kids felt important and responsible more than they ever had in school. With over 1,000 students in the high school, and a grand total of 23 teachers and staff members, it’s hard to reach every kid to let them know they matter. By inviting these five students, giving them the responsibility of transmitting these messages back to their communities, and talking to them openly about relationships, decisions, our bodies, and our self-images, they better understood their individual roles and importance in society. During one activity, the kids were supposed to stick paper to their backs and walk around writing compliments on each other’s papers. One of my shy, self-conscious students actually squealed with joy as I helped her read and understand the words her peers wrote on her paper – “fascinating,” “sensational,” and “beautiful smile,” among other things. It’s not often that they get direct, individual positive feedback.

It was nothing like my kids had been to before. They didn’t have to do any chores – buckets of water magically appeared in the bathroom for our baths, their plates were washed, meals were cooked and served…and complete with snacks and juice every day! For 48 hours they were treated like kings and queens. After that first lunch, there wasn’t a moment of silence, not even at 2am. They were, after all, twenty very riled up teenagers who almost never leave their hometowns.

Lunch on the final day was seasoned with music blaring from three different cell phones, laughing, chatting, hugs goodbye, and signing each other’s workbooks. It truly was “something different,” and I’m certain they’ll never forget it.

My very own JUNTOS group! 

Sam's hands help Clemence make a visual
representation of phase three of AIDS.

Antonio explains why the monster with seven hairs and
one ear slightly larger than the other is happy.

Example of what not to do on the left: use two
condoms at the same time. 

Can I put this on my resume?

30 mini-bananas.

Protein with every meal!

Jennea assigned kids to be the flu, the immune system, AIDs, and
 Antiretroviral drugs, and then let them pelt paper at each other.
Understandably, chaos ensued.

Juvencio explains something to the students

Steph stands in front of the students looking important, feet wide
apart for extra balance. Is that really how I stand?

A dramatization to demonstrate gender inequality.

Dancing never fails to wake up the nodder-offers.

Anabela takes a turn in charades.

Beans, beans, they're good for your heart

Pros

-          You can eat them with either of the two staple starches that accompany every Mozambican meal – rice or cornmeal mush patties

-          Feijoada – bean stew – is delicious. Recipe below.

-          A little goes a long way – they grow and expand as they cook.

-          They’re cheap. One kilo is sold for one dollar, and can feed a lot of people, or will last one person for weeks.

-          Protein!

-          You can eat them for breakfast, lunch, OR dinner. They’re versatile!

Cons

-          They make my stomach go crazy

-          They take 3 hours to cook. You need to be home all morning to make sure they don’t burn (and sometimes I burn them anyway) and it uses a lot of charcoal.

-          You sometimes have to eat them for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner.

Bean Stew

Cook beans until they’re soft, and the broth has thickened – about three hours

Sautee onions and garlic

Pour in beans

Put in cabbage, potatoes, and tomatoes, let cook until potatoes are soft

Add coconut milk

Eat with rice or cornmeal mush patties. Just beware of the effects on the digestive system.

As Lutadoras ("The Warriors")

They approached me on their own, a year ago. I had started running alone, and then a couple of the other teachers came along, and then after a few months, 10 teenage girls had joined us.

I love being with them because each of them has something about her that reminds me of myself as a 15-year-old. And, being with them reminds me that teenagers everywhere go through the same phases and issues. They try to impress each other, don’t want to be left out or left behind, some are leaders and some are followers, they all have different body shapes and abilities, and they push each other to go further without consciously realizing it.

The running group eventually morphed into a soccer team with me as the coach, which is a concept that would make you laugh out loud if you have ever seen me try to play soccer, but alas, none of you has seen this phenomenon, because, alas, I don't play soccer. How did I become a soccer coach if I don't play soccer? Re-read the story above.

Let's just say fighting The Gender Battle in Nauela is indeed a battle, because I don't think it has ever been fought here before. Of the three times I've gotten angry in the past two years, three of them have been on the field. That's right. Three times out of three. The girls have been verbally abused, kicked off the field, taunted, had the ball stolen, and been completely ignored (ie, a group of boys played a game on the whole field while the girls were playing on half the field - so the boys were literally running through the girls' game, and they put their goalkeeper in the soccer net we were using. There were two games going on, in the same space, at the same time).To make a year-long story into one sentence, girls apparently aren't supposed play soccer. But, here we are, having practices (almost) every Tuesday and Thursday. It's a significant accomplishment. And, look! There's my team below, dressed in a variety of things that are not skirts or dresses that they managed to find in their houses or borrow from their friends.

Since there are very few other girls' soccer teams around, we usually play against this menacing-looking team pictured below. But do not fret, we're a more legitimate team than they are, because they only practice in the week preceeding the games, and the only games that they've had have been the two games against my team. They just look scary because the girls have uniforms and are slightly bigger (according to Nauela, this is because these girls live in a school dorm, and eat rice and beans every day, and therefore, have strong bones).

We have played against them twice, and managed to tie each time.

Profeta tries to intimidate the other team from the goalpost.

Flora (in all black minus one white stripe) - by far the best, fastest, strongest, and almost smallest player on my team - runs after the ball.

We don't really know what we're doing soccer-wise, but I know they're exercising, having fun, and demanding women's rights (they don't consciously know they're doing this, either)!

They run so fast they're blurry. And, I haven't quite figured out how to use my camera yet.

That ball was white a few months ago. It means we're getting lots of use out of it. Thank you, Tiffany's class!!!

What’s the difference between a Dictionary and a Thesaurus?

Dedicated to Diana Irwin, who taught me some essential lessons of life, for example, capitalizing the word “I.”

The joke in the title is one that I’m in the process of making up. It doesn’t have a punch line yet. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Another Short Story About My Dictionary: (see blog post “Animal Poop” for the first dictionary story)

Once, I brought my dictionary to class and had students look up vocabulary words as part of the lesson. One of my students wanted to find out how to say a word in English, so he volunteered to search in the dictionary. I handed it to him, glad for his eagerness to participate, although most kids are usually pretty excited to touch the dictionary.

But after about ten minutes, he stood up in exasperation.

“Desconsegui.” I give up.

I tried to point him in the right direction. I asked him which word in Portuguese he was looking for, then glanced at the page he was on. He was looking in the ‘a’ section. Clearly he was not on the right track.

“Ok, does ‘m’ come before or after ‘a’? Good. Find the words that start with ‘m.’ Great job. Now find the words that start with ‘mo.’ You got it.” After these few words of explanation and encouragement, I went back to talking with the rest of my class.

After a couple more minutes, he seemed to have stopped flipping through pages.

“Did you find your word?”

“Yes.”

I felt relieved. I hadn’t realized that students wouldn’t know how to use alphabetical order, never mind look up a word in the dictionary, and I couldn’t find the right words to explain in Portuguese.

He came hesitantly up to the board and wrote with the chalk for a minute, erased a couple letters, peeked in the dictionary, wrote again, thought for a minute, erased again, added on some more letters. Finally he stepped away so I could admire his achievment.

Monkey.

I internally raised one eyebrow, but tried not to let him see it. “Thank you. You may sit down.”

After all that, what was the word he was trying to translate from Portuguese to English?

Mosquito.

It’s the same in both languages.

Teodosio consults the dictionary to look up a mystery word that he 

found in Pippi Longstocking