A Collection of Visual Stimulation

Some of my kids, standing outside my house. Here, photos are not a very silly matter.

I don't even know how this happened. One minute I was sitting on the beach by myself, making a drip castle, and the next minute I was suddenly surrounded and having a sand-meatball toss contest with a bunch of 12-year-old boys.

For my birthday, the 4 volunteers closest to me came to visit and made delicious food (ie kept me from starving).

Funfact: mountains of used bags of sugar that you're supposed to be sorting through are actually more useful for having races to the top and getting really dirty.

Usually when I ask for help with something, someone just takes over completely. So I just stand around and take pictures and make comments, and in the end I help eat the product.

Déjà vu

I
teach 9 classes of 8^th grade English, which means I teach the same
lesson 9 times. Each time is a little bit different, because I learn from my
mistakes (I actually spelled ‘correct’ incorrectly in one class) and
misunderstandings (I was trying to ask the kids how many people are in the
world, and they kept saying, “two - man and woman”), but all the classrooms
look so similar that I could accidentally walk in the wrong classroom and teach
a lesson I had already taught them and probably no one would say anything. Who
knows, I may have done that already and I’ll never even know.

But
the personality of each class is beginning to develop. Classroom A always has
way too much energy, and when I ask them to repeat words back to me, their goal
is to shout as loud as possible (they loved when we sang Anything You Can Sing
I Can Sing Louder). Classroom I has the oldest students, some my age or older,
so they are more contemplative. Classroom E likes to laugh and is very sassy
and starting to test my limits. Classroom F asks questions. Classroom B loves
songs.

My
goal is to learn the names of all 438 of them. Currently, at the end of the
first trimester, I know about 3.7 in each class. Moving right along!

Déjà vu

I
teach 9 classes of 8^th grade English, which means I teach the same
lesson 9 times. Each time is a little bit different, because I learn from my
mistakes (I actually spelled ‘correct’ incorrectly in one class) and
misunderstandings (I was trying to ask the kids how many people are in the
world, and they kept saying, “two - man and woman”), but all the classrooms
look so similar that I could accidentally walk in the wrong classroom and teach
a lesson I had already taught them and probably no one would say anything. Who
knows, I may have done that already and I’ll never even know.

But
the personality of each class is beginning to develop. Classroom A always has
way too much energy, and when I ask them to repeat words back to me, their goal
is to shout as loud as possible (they loved when we sang Anything You Can Sing
I Can Sing Louder). Classroom I has the oldest students, some my age or older,
so they are more contemplative. Classroom E likes to laugh and is very sassy
and starting to test my limits. Classroom F asks questions. Classroom B loves
songs.

My
goal is to learn the names of all 438 of them. Currently, at the end of the
first trimester, I know about 3.7 in each class. Moving right along!

Activity: Spot the Differences

Steph, before training

Steph, after training, before service – bigger butt and rounder stomach (from too much xima, not
because I decided to start a family in Mozambique), muscles weak and succumbing
to gravity’s relentless tug

Steph, after service (prediction) – now able to lift a 20-liter bucket of water onto head, but
consequently spinal cord is slightly compressed

My eighth-graders

Most of them failed my mostly multiple-choice test, while cheating. But I still look at them and can't help but smile.

I think that means it's true love.

The Journey Home

The road to Nauela is not a long one (cue that song from The Russians Are Coming “it’s a long road to…” when they’ve just gotten off the submarine and are walking along the beach) by Mozambican standards, but when it poured the night before and left mud pits, and a particularly pointy piece of charcoal from the sack you’re sitting on is digging into your right buttcheek, and that sack of flour that appears to have a hole in it is starting to slide on top of your foot, you feel every bump in the dirt road. And just when you thought they couldn’t possibly fit another person, here they are slowing down so someone else can squeeze in among the tangle of limbs and babies and chattering and chickens.

I don’t mind these cramped hour and forty minute rides (or much much longer, if you’re going any further. Be warned, there are no facilities on this vehicle). When I can stop paying attention to the corner of that wooden table - which is also hitching a ride, along with a stack of plastic chairs, buckets of various shapes and sizes, a broom and 2 pots (they’re with me) and 9 boxes of gin - to make sure it doesn’t gouge my eye out, there is a breathtaking (or maybe that was that last bump, which almost made you bite your tongue off) 294˚ view of mountains and valleys and mango trees.

I yell for the driver to let me off outside my house (door to door service – what more could I ask?); he doesn’t hear me because he’s in the part of the truck that is actually made for human beings, and I’m out in the wind in back, so someone reaches around and bangs on the side of his door. My neighbor calls my name and comes running, and takes my broom and pots for me as I try to get off the truck without landing on the ground in a horizontal position (usually by this time my feet and a good part of my legs are numb). I walk around to the back of my house to greet my family and receive comments about how dirty I am. I climb the stairs to my porch, wondering what someone dropped at some point to cause half of the second stair to be missing. The metal grate that serves as a screen door makes a familiar scraping sound as I pull it open. I kick aside the crunchy cockroach corpses that accumulated in my absence, and I’m home.

Animal poop

During training, we designed mini-lessons and presented them to each other for teaching practice. During one person’s lesson, a volunteer was teaching about the environment, and asked us to write on a small piece of paper examples of sources of contaminants of local water. So I wrote down “animal poop.” After the activity, I stuck the paper into my Portuguese-English dictionary, thinking (and I specifically remember thinking this), “Maybe I’ll look fondly back on this piece of paper in 40 years. Might as well save it.” Fast forward 3 months, one of my students stops by my house to return my Portuguese-English dictionary that I had lent to him, and he says inquisitively, “I found of piece of paper inside that said ‘animal poop.’ So I left it where it was.” I have no doubt that he looked up ‘poop’ in the dictionary, but I didn’t attempt to explain the story behind the 2x2” piece of paper, which is still in the dictionary and just as I am typing this I remembered that the dictionary is currently with my colleague who also teaches English. But this time when the dictionary is returned to me, I will be prepared to tell the story.

Please, sir, I want some more…water

A day in the life of my water bucket:

5:00am – wake up, stretch, dust off my…my lid (Jiminy Cricket)

5:02 – journey across the street to water pump, put in 20 liters of water (around 5:08, when the sun comes up, it’s too late. There’s suddenly a huge line at the pump)

5:14 – venture back across the street, balanced precariously on owner’s head. Slosh a little bit of water on her clothes just for fun.

5:17 – dump approximately 14 liters of water into the toilet to flush it. Think for a second about how if the toilet were a latrine, you would only need to carry half as much water. Then remember that latrines have cockroaches in them and walking outside in the dark in the rain to pee is not fun, and be thankful it’s an indoor toilet.

5:45 – bucket bath! With a little practice and the right pouring technique, you’ll almost feel like you’re standing under the Niagra setting in the shower. Not really.

6:04 – donate 3 liters to water filter for drinking water

6:47 – brush teeth

11:00 – boil some water to start cooking lunch (and dinner too, if you anticipate not feeling like lighting the charcoal 2 times in one day)

12:00 – get more water now if needed. Hardly anyone will be at the pump because it’s the hottest part of the day

5:55 – wash dishes before it gets dark

8:22 – if particularly dirty, another bucket bath. cold water, as usual (during training, my host family spoiled me by heating my water for me. None of that here! I always feel more alive, alert, awake and enthusiastic (thanks Mike) after a cold shower anyway). Get lots of rest for another busy day - if you're a water bucket, it's a rough life!

How to…Go Grocery Shopping in Mozambique for Dummies (or non-Mozambicans)

1. Weeks before: horde coins and small bills.
Whenever you have the chance to get change or break a big bill, do it.

2. Don’t keep a list of what you want. Chances are,
it won’t be there.

3. Hide money in various places on body, such as:
stuffed into shoes, sewn into waistband, concealed in bra, slid between toes,
wrapped around ear, jammed up left nostril, packed into bellybutton

4. Walk to market (like a farmer’s market but more
crowded) when you have 4-hour chunk of time. You’ll probably get held up to
chat with people along the way, and maybe even to eat a meal or two.

5. Once at the market: see something you want, ask
how much it costs per kilo/mound/chunk/bottle/item, in the local language if
you know how (they will be impressed, and also probably laugh - in a friendly
way)

6. Ask them to repeat themselves in Portuguese, if
you asked in the local language but didn’t understand the answer because “how
much is this?” was actually the only thing you knew how to say in the local
language

7. Amicably but persuasively suggest another price
that, if averaged with their projected price, would equal the price that you
actually want to pay

8. Repeat step 7 until an agreement is reached. If
you can’t reach one, start to walk away, and they may call you back and bring
the price down more

9. Receive your purchases, wait 10 minutes for them
to ask all their friends for change, and then proceed to the next booth

10. Walk
home with your purchases, and be prepared for people to ask you for the food
you’re carrying

(Steph’s
General Warning: markets get really slippery and muddy after it rains. Watch
where you step)

I can’t live without you…

...cookbooks. I never realized how
amazing recipes are until now. And limiting, sometimes. But overall, huge
time-savers. I thought I knew how to cook, but then I realized that I’m just
good at following directions.

I do some things backwards here - relative to the way I did
them in the US, at least. Like thinking, for example. And running. I always run
forwards here. Although if I ran backwards down a hill (like I do in the US
sometimes) the looks people give me probably wouldn’t be any stranger than the
ones I get now (“where are you running to?” not as in, “how many kilometers are
you attempting today?” more like, “where the heck could you be going that you
need to rush to and why would you be running if there’s no soccer ball in front
of you or rabid dog behind you?”

Anyway, back to backwardsness. I was actually referring to
cooking. In the US, here’s what would happen: 1) decision: what do I want to eat? 2) recipe: find one for the food I want to eat, and 3) shopping: buy the ingredients for it.

Here, the process looks more like this: 1) shopping: buy whatever food is in the
market that day, 2) recipe: look
through some recipes (we received a “You Can Make it in Mozambique” cookbook,
compiled by Peace Corps volunteers, which is amazing but slightly better suited
for sites where the people don’t grow everything they eat in their backyards.
Which is also amazing! Just takes some getting used to) then realize that there
is no recipe that combines crackers, hard boiled eggs, and bananas, and for the
recipes with at least one of those things, I’m missing at least 2/3 of the
ingredients. The cookbook helpfully suggests substitutions, but it’s like that
philosophical dilemma: if everything except for one thing is substituted, is the
product still the same thing? and 3) decision:
mix everything together and think, do I really want to eat this?

I always eat it.