Divas, Headscarves, and Pumpkins

Last week a Big Important Event took place in Nauela. Believe it or not, this does happen once in a while. For example, one day someone sold cucumbers in the market, and another day a student raised a question during class, and one day I used only 1 match and less than 10 minutes to light my charcoal stove, and yet another day my girls’ soccer team scored a goal during a real game.  Ok, so Big Important Events happen a lot.

But this time people came from all over Zambezia (the province I live in, basically like a state of Mozambique) and even a few from the other end of the country to celebrate the 100^th birthday of the Evangelical Church of Mihecane, located in Nauela.

The celebration lasted 2 days, and luckily in the middle of this rainy season it did not rain a single drop. At least, not one fell on my head. On Fridays, dozens of cars and pick-up trucks drove by bringing hundreds of singing people five miles down the road and into the bush where the church is located. Each group brought everything needed to prepare their own meals (kilos of beans and rice, along with cauldron-sized pots to prepare them in) and to sleep outside or in various abandoned buildings (tents, straw mats, blankets).

On Saturday I arrived in Mihecane perched on the back of a bike (someone else was pedaling). I had friends coming from other cities so I found them and then milled about marveling at the crowds that I don’t think Nauela had ever seen before. The main event of the day - a competition between 29 choral groups - began around 11, so I found a nice naturally well-lit spot to take pictures, and promptly got a sunburn.

At 5:30pm, when it was about to start getting dark and there were still 12 groups left to sing, I decided to start walking the 5-ish miles back home with 2 friends who were staying at my house. We had excellent luck and within 3 minutes of leaving, a pick-up truck pulled up to let us on. I settled onto the floor for a bumpy ride, listening to the people around me singing for all Nauela to hear.

We were welcomed home by poop splotches everywhere, left by a chicken that I accidentally named Gabriela. She and I had bonded during lunch the previous day after I bought her; she pecked her raw rice and I chewed my peanut butter sandwich, but I didn’t meant to name her since she would be my dinner for Saturday. But, all turned out well, and we had grilled chicken and good conversations that night.

I went back to Mihecane the next day on foot, arriving in time to see everyone packing up to go home. I caught another pick-up truck ride on the way back, and had another bout of excellent luck – just 2 minutes after I mentioned that I had been awaiting the return of pumpkin season since last March, I came across a woman selling a bucket of pumpkins, for 20 cents each.

So I bought all seven of them.

It was a good weekend.

I didn't know this many people knew that Nauela exists

Choral group with matching outfits

Animated choral group and Diva

The women stood in front and the men stood in back, so
the microphones only picked up the women's voices...

Crowds and headscarves.
This country is quite colorful.

Sitting in the back of a pick-up truck on the way home from the church.
Bumpy road, hence bumpy photo.

Singing in the pick-up truck!

Students Handling Chalk Caught White-Handed

I am pleased to announce the release of our first school newspaper, “Jornal Makarena: O Saber Ler” (“The Daily Macarena: Knowing How to Read”).

Before

After

In Edition 1, published just this morning, you will find a suspenseful rendition of the wall of a house falling down because of the rain, an exciting premonition of which school’s soccer team will have the most screaming fans this year (Headline: “Nearing the Days of Truth”) and even a poem in English (“Part I: When I Was Baby”).

Eighth, ninth and tenth grade journalist apprentices could be found copying their articles by hand onto blank paper in an empty classroom last Wednesday.

Allegedly, the press was then pressed eye-catchingly onto a blackboard using duct tape, and is now standing proudly in front of the school for all to appreciate.

During the Monday and Friday bi-weekly all-school meetings, select students read aloud, reporter-style, a summary of this week’s hottest news topics: the weather, a donation of 2 markers to the school newspaper, and an eraser thief on the loose.

Next week’s update - Edition 2 of the Daily Macarena - is not to be missed. It will include a color-coded level super-easy Sudoku, and the poem “Part II: When I Was Child.”

If Nauela wasn’t making it into the press, it is now making its own press!

If You Give a Mouse a Potato

The true story of the mischievous rat that lives in my couch

Based on the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff

If you give a mouse a potato (by accident)

He’s not going to ask for another one.

He’ll just take it, without permission.

When you buy more potatoes,

You’ll probably hide them inside a bucket so he can’t get at them.

When you want to cook them

You’ll discover they got all moldy

And realize you’ve been tricked

By a small fur-ball

With a brain the size of an almond.

When the potatoes are polished off,

He’ll probably start in on the eggs

Which will make you really mad…

So mad, you’ll probably bait a mouse trap with a dollop of your precious peanut butter

And hide it behind his favorite hideout:

The living room couch

Which will lead you to discover

That he is actually not a mouse at all, but a rat

No wonder he didn’t eat the peanut butter;

He is too big to fit through the mousetrap door.

You know this because you saw him poke his head out of the chair in the living room.

But that’s ok, you didn’t like that chair anyway.

It looks squashy but it’s not.

Since he couldn’t reach the peanut butter

And you hid the potatoes

And Nauela hasn’t sold eggs in 8 months

And raw onions probably make rats cry too

He’ll might chew all the labels off your containers

And then start in on the containers themselves.

Even if there’s nothing in them.

He won’t realize until it’s too late

That he’s chewed through the bottom of a bottle of bleach

And spilled it everywhere.

But he won’t learn from his mistake.

He’ll also chew through a bottle of oil.

But after letting the oil loose

He’ll feel a rumble in his stomach.

So he’ll decide to try the onions after all.

He may hide a bunch of them behind your charcoal sack in the corner.

The charcoal will make him think that

Maybe he wants a potato.

And chances are, if he eats one potato,

He’s going to take another without asking.

Left: mousetrap. Right: Stuffing that he pulled
out of the couch and left in a pile. Bed? Soft landing?
 Playground? You'll have to ask him yourself.

This liter of oil was full when I left my house
one week before. Now most of it is on the kitchen
floor and sunken into the wooden table.

He keeps a collection of onions behind the charcoal. Sneaky.

50 First Days of School

When I was in high school, the first day of school was always full of excitement, nervousness, and kids trying to arrive to class on time, thinking “this year I’ll be organized and do this the whole year.” In the high school I’m in now, it’s basically the opposite. It is decidedly not cool, and also pointless, to show up on time (or at all) on the first day. Let me give you a sample of something I wrote last January, to illustrate what the [official] first day of school was like.

I was told that school was supposed to start at 6:30. At 6:51, it’s still just me and an empty schoolyard. 

 At 7:09, kids in uniforms start showing up. I ask someone when school starts. Them: “7:00.” Me: “oh…right.” Silly me. 

 7:37, secretary arrives, opens the school building, still no sign of other teachers or director. 

 8:39, I have no idea what is going on, besides nothing. Is there no such thing as wasting time here? What the heck am I supposed to be doing right now? Did I misunderstand something? Do they know something I don’t? How did they all know not to get here when the director said to get here? 

 9:24, enough of this crap. I’m going home. 

5 weeks later: I’m on my way to school to see if they need help with anything, and I run into my director who’s on his way out. “Actually, we do have a problem that maybe you can help us with. Let’s go sit down and talk about it.” He turns around and I follow him back towards his office. “The 8th graders are without an English teacher, because he left.” 

 So I am now teaching English instead of physics.

I felt like I had mentally prepared for so many first days of school. I was prepared for the official first day of school; it didn’t happen. Then we made a schedule and I thought to myself “now school will really start,” and hardly any kids showed up. Then kids and teachers showed up, and I thought, “this is how it will be for the rest of the year.” Then a month after school started, I switched subjects. Then in March, we made the official roster and re-assigned kids their students ID numbers.

The point of the story is, I’ve learned from last year. I know that there will be no teachers, students, classes, or schedule the first official week of classes. That week, I determined which teacher would teach which subject (often, there is no teacher for a certain subject, such as Agriculture or Design, so a Biology or Math teacher must take over a subject they didn’t study) organized the schedule with my director (which is still being re-organized as of now, 3 weeks into the year) and read a lot.

This year, instead of preparing for a first day of school, I try to prepare for anything.

But it turns out, there’s always something you didn’t imagine happening, and consequently, are not prepared for it. How do you prepare for that?

I saw this sign on a plane and thought it was funny.
It describes perfectly the first day of school.

School uniform: white on top and black on
 the bottom. Minus the sunglasses.

Malaria...use your net or you'll regret!

(title taken from the Malaria Rap we wrote during a conference today. Yes, we sometimes do work, too.)

Work out in the field is occasionally interrupted by a Peace Corps conference, which means a few important things:

-         Seeing other volunteers

-         Paid transportation to a city

-         Staying in a hotel with running water and electricity

-         And, most importantly of course, meetings about projects, teaching, safety, and health

Don't be deceived, conferences are not boring. On the last day,
we sang a song about malaria prevention,
barbershop-quartet-morphed-into-rap style.

We had meetings in the mornings and medical check-ups in the afternoons. I am pleased to announce that I am healthy and cavity-less. Apparently tomatoes, onions, and side-feti (see future blog post about food) don’t bore dark holes in your teeth as much as junk food does.

On Monday we held a year-anniversary memorial service for Lena and Alden. I’ll include some pictures because it was a touching service that wasn’t actually a service. Instead of sitting and listening to people talk, there were interactive stations set up at the Peace Corps office. At one station, there were markers and crayons, and we wrote letters to their families. At another station, we could visit a small orchard, where saplings were being planted. Lena loved mangos and Alden loved coconuts, so each type of tree was planted, among others. At a third station, we could paint a flat rock to be put in an area under a tree where people were planting seedlings in a garden (which got trampled with all the activity, but hopefully they’ll spring back to life). 

Painting stones. I don't know who made the one to the right,
but I love it! It's a woman carrying a baby on her back.

Sean plants some grass around the stones.

At the last station, a few volunteers had painted a mural and prepared one white block for each volunteer in our group, Moz 17, to paint. At the end, Carl (the director of Peace Corps Mozambique) revealed a plaque that will live in the garden. The result was beautiful.

Last night we had a pool party with the entire group, and we voted on some awards to give out. A group of us arrived at the party a little late, so most of Moz 17 was already there. I should have known what was going to happen when another volunteer so kindly took my bag off my shoulder, and I saw people doggy paddling with their shirts on. But before I could process the scene, my feet were off the ground and chlorinated water was accelerating towards me at 9.8 meters/second/second. It was actually always a secret wish of mine to be thrown into a pool with all my clothes on, so, thanks Nate.

Leah hangs out in wet jeans, plotting revenge on an unsuspecting Nate.

Laurie reads out the awards, from the safety of her chair.
She eventually did get thrown in.
There was no escaping.

My colleagues voted for me for this superlative!

And, this is what we are doing right now: celebrating our last night together for 7 more months (we all go back to our sites tomorrow), eating ice cream and pie, celebrating Hoang's birthday, pretending to be carrots.

America, where the streets are paved in...pavement!

This summer break (mid-December to mid-January) I was so lucky to be able to visit with a very friendly, welcoming family in America! I experienced firsthand the customs and daily life of Americans. It truly is a land full of wonders and technological ways of preserving meat and shredding papers.

When I first arrived at the airport, I was greeted by a large group of people holding buckets, but strangely, the buckets were empty, and everyone was carrying them with their hands instead of on their heads.

I just noticed that this picture is beautifully bordered by restroom signs.

The family has a big house with handy amenities. They wash their clothes without even getting their hands wet! You put your dirty clothes in a big white box, then it gurgles and splashes and shakes the house for an hour, and your clothes come out clean!

I didn't ask the subject of this highly flattering candid for permission
to put it online, but it's my only picture of a washing machine.

With my newly de-dirtied clothes, I attended a wedding. Everyone dressed themselves in traditional American garb. We attended the ceremony and then danced the night away to live music!

I also went to a dentist. Can you believe there’s a doctor just for teeth? People go one or two times a year, even if their teeth don’t hurt. The dentist poked a sharp thing into my gums. Then she took pictures of my mouth that only showed my bones, which were very flattering, but I wouldn’t choose them for the yearbook.

Not only did I go see a movie, I actually sat inside a movie. I swear an arrow whizzed by my shoulder at one point – but I think it was meant for Gandalf or Bilbo, not me. We had to wear dark glasses to see the movie, probably to protect our eyes for when the characters started fighting.

One day there was cold cotton floating down from the sky. We strategically formed an army of small men made out of packed balls of white, in case the owner came to claim his cotton, since we didn’t want to give it back. We also made one very large white-balled figure, who stood silently and forebodingly outside the living room window.

Lastly, someone who dares to call herself my friend wrapped me in a plastic blanket and took a buzzing robot to my scalp, and when she freed me, all my hair was gone! Oh wait, we have buzzers in Mozambique, too. Whenever the electricity is turned on (once every two months) everyone suddenly is nearly bald the following day.

"Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Thanks for the Grub"

This Thanksgiving season, I have much to be thankful for.

Hugs

The occasional protein (above: meet our Thanksgiving dinner)

Fellow volunteers

A roof over my head

My guitar

The ability to laugh at myself

Students who make an effort

And, most of all:

Fresh pao (bread) and peanut butter for breakfast

How to...eat a coconut!

1.      Choose your coconuts wisely. If you shake it and don’t hear anything, it might not have any water in it. If you hear too much sloshing, it has a big air bubble and therefore only has a little bit of water.

2.      Smash it on a rock or use a machete to crack it open. 

Stay far away when Steph wields the machete

3.      Drink the water. Slurp as noisily as possible, otherwise it will dribble down your chin.

The water doesn't taste as good
if you pour it into a cup. Drink
it straight from the coconut.

4.      Consumption Option 1: Use a pocket knife to slice out pieces of the inside. Eat until your jaw gets tired of chewing. Consumption Option 2: grate the coconut to make coconut milk, and prepare coconut rice or cookies or bean stew.

A "ralador" is a little bench with a grater on the end, used to
shred the coconut. When it's sufficiently mutilated, you can
strain water through the pieces to extract the coconut milk.

My dear friend Lona, ralaring coconut

My dear friend Leah, ralaring coconut.

Feel free to compare Lona and Leah's techniques, and constructively criticize.

5.      Save the shell to store garlic, borrow lit charcoal from your neighbors to start your stove, or make a coconut bra.

A kitten fiercely defends the
saved coconut shells.

To Whom it May Concern,

Don’t get me wrong. I will happily stuff my face with granola bars. I downed an entire bag of jelly beans in one day. I have no self control when it comes to peanut butter M&Ms.

But when I reached the bottom of a package I received in the mail and found more than a baker’s dozen of envelopes, each containing a letter from someone I love, I swept all the wrappers aside, stopped looking for another Dove chocolate hidden among the Sudoku puzzles and smiley face stickers, and started reading.

Given my slight aversion to facebook and irrational dread of talking on the phone, I’m a big fan of letters. That pile of paper and words and thoughts was the best box stuffer I have ever encountered. 

Here on this cyber communication forum, which is uncomfortably public but the best way I’ve found to give general updates and display pictures, I write about what I see and learn and do. And yes, it’s all very new and exciting, but truthfully, it can be lonely. It’s comforting to know that the people I think about are also thinking about me.

Peanut butter M&Ms will last for about 8 minutes; letters I will save indefinitely.

Rooster Rears and Bicycle Spokes

Last Friday was what I would describe as a very Peace Corps Day.

I was risen from my slumber sometime in the 6^th hour of the morning by the sound of students’ voices on the front porch, calling “excuse me!” so I went outside in my PJs to greet my eager learners. They took my two empty red buckets and went chattering to the water pump to fetch water for me.

I had decided to visit the family of one of those students, Rassul, who was currently pumping water. He lives way out in the mato (the bush). But my bike had a lot of broken spokes, so the first task was to find someone who could fix my unreliable 1.5-wheeled transport. My neighbor, who is capable of doing the job, was out of town, and it’s a mystery as to when he will be back. So we walked to the market to find another handyman, but his house was empty. He had traveled just the previous day. We went to the third guy and last option…success! If I went to buy the new spokes, he would install them for me. This whole process, summarized down to 7 sentences, actually took about 5 hours.

The bike-fixer was next to the house of two of my other students (see the post “The Things I Carried” for pictures of these two hilarious brothers in nose glasses) so they brought us chairs and water and we sat waiting for my bike to be fixed. After a test run on the new spokes and a fee of 15 mets (60 cents) Rassul and I were on our way.

He assured me that it only takes 30 minutes to get from the school to his house by bike, but let’s remember that he makes this trip every day, twice or sometimes four times a day. So imagine a small hiking trail through the woods that goes up and down over hills and across rivers (I rode across two log bridges, with no railings. I didn’t fall off.), and me trying to navigate this pathway on my rickety bike with no gears and 30% brakes. I am certain that Rassul made me go in front just so he could watch me struggle. On some of the uphills, I had to get off my bike and walk because my legs are simply not that powerful. On some of the downhills, I had to get off my bike and walk because my brakes are simply not that powerful. I was afraid of losing control and plunging into the forest. And my wise sister once taught me from firsthand experience that even grabbing onto a tree would not have given me safety.

I finally made it huffing and puffing to his house. I was offered a straw mat to sit on, and Rassul brought me a glass of water, which I gratefully gulped down in one breath, because my throat was so dry (I think it was the water that made my stomach hurt for the following 5 days...but I'm all better, mother, don't worry!). I wondered to myself how he makes that trip every day for school. School starts at 7, what time must he have to leave his house? Suddenly all my complaints of living “far” away from my high school seemed ridiculous.

I sat on my mat, admiring the quantity of chickens and pilaos (a giant mortar and pestle to grind corn to make cornmeal mush patties) that his family owns. On his family compound, there was the main house, made of mud-bricks like most of the houses in Nauela. There was also a round structure with a straw roof that serves as the kitchen, a chicken coop, and a number of other small box-shaped buildings that I couldn’t identify. I sat amidst the chickens, which wandered around me and sometimes hopped on top of my bag or pooped on the ground near my feet, for about 45 minutes. A giant rooster strutted around with his tail feathers high in the air. Then he settled down outside the kitchen with his rear end facing me. It looked like he had buttcheeks, but it was just bunches of feathers. Of course it struck me as hilarious, but there was no one around who I felt comfortable sharing this with.

My stomach rumbled. Rassul brought out a plate with some mini bananas. I ate 3 of them. Being hungry, I’ve learned, makes everything taste good. After another 45 more minutes, his mother brought out a plate with 3 hard-boiled eggs, 4 cornmeal mush patties, and some cooked tomatoes. Lunch! I was overjoyed. Rassul and I each helped ourselves to one cornmeal mush patty and one egg, and some tomatoes. We ate with our hands, as is the custom for most of Nauela. Plus, food tastes better when you eat it with your hands. 

After lunch, I talked to my Rassul’s mother about the possibility of him applying to an international high school. He’s one of the most motivated students in the school, and I want him to know what kinds of opportunities exist for his future, besides his grandmother’s field (see the last paragraph of blog post “It’s Not Ee-gor, it’s Igor”) where the bananas came from.

And then we sat around for awhile longer. I watched his siblings catch a chicken – a very entertaining spectacle. The chicken squawked and tried to find sneaky hiding places to escape from the gaggle of kids chasing it around the yard, but after a few minutes, it was dragged out from under the chicken coop by a triumphant little girl. I imagined the family would eat well tonight; chicken is a rare treat.

As we were getting ready to go, we noticed that my bicycle tire, the very same that had been fixed that morning, was once again flat. Rassul found some makeshift tools in his house and took the tube out of the tire. He put it in a bowl of water until he spotted the culprit, a hole in the tube, easily located in the water by a small stream of bubbles. I sat to watch him and learn – now I was the student and he was the teacher. As we were sitting there operating on my bike, I heard his little sisters chatting “My name is….” They were speaking in English.

“I teach them English,” Rassul said. “At school, I am student; at home, I am teacher.” Are we sensing a theme here?

As the bike recuperated from surgery, I got ready to leave, and his family brought me a kilo of beautifully bug-free dried beans. I poured them into my bag. Then they brought the unlucky chicken over to me. I didn’t take it right away, because I couldn’t think of a way to say, without being rude, that they should keep it for themselves.

“Are you scared of the chicken?” they said.

“No I’m not scared of it!”…I just don’t know how to explain that I’m shocked that you’re offering me a chicken! That’s what I was saying in my head. It was very generous of them to give me that gift. I tried to say thank you in their local language. I think I said it correctly, but they just laughed.

It would have been impossible to get lost on the return trip, because there weren’t many turns, but Rassul accompanied me almost the entire hour to my house, before turning around and making the trip for the 4^th time that day. He carried the chicken for me on his handlebars, because I was afraid of crashing my bike and prematurely ending its life. On one of the uphills, when I had to walk my bike, the book The Little Engine That Could popped into my head, so I told Rassul the story, in a mix of English and Portuguese.

I would not be killing a chicken that day. My colleague had invited me over for dinner, and we were going to eat rice with dried fish, but now we had a chicken! So I dropped it off at his house on the way back. I went home to shower, and he called me when he was almost finished preparing the chicken. Once at his house, I sat on another straw mat in another yard waiting for a delicious dinner, also to be eaten with our hands.

Colleagues and straw mats...

...and food, eaten with the fingers. This is not finger food. This
is rice and beans and salad. I love eating with my hands.
Don't tell my parents.

I had to share this picture with you.
You can just see the evil emanating from my eyes.