Alissa's Science Fair Students Go To Regional Competition in Nampula

After competing in their school's local science fair, Alissa and her students at Escola de Secundaria de Angoche took a trip last weekend to the regional science fair in Nampula, the province capital located several hours' away via bus. One of her students also won at the regional competition in Nampula -- he created a kind of universal cell phone charger that can be used with batteries in places where no electricity is available. Alissa and her students stayed in a modern hotel in Nampula, where she had internet access and was able to skype with us back in states. :-)

July 6, 2011 - A Day In My Life As A PCV

July 6, 2011

A belated Happy Independence Day to all of you Stateside. My sitemate, roommate and I celebrated together by making pizza and singing ridiculously loudly to all the cliched America songs you typically hear around the 4th. It was quite a night. Then both of them got sick to their stomachs from eating so much cheese (we rarely have dairy here). I was fine but they both missed a day of work. Oops. It was quite the experience overall.

A few of you have requested a kind of 'day in the life' type of update, and I think that's a great idea, so here is a 'typical' day for me in Mozambique (although I've found no day is really typical --haha).

5:15: Wake up with the sun

5:20: Take the puppy outside and then cook breakfast for him and myself

5:30: Eat breakfast, usually an egg and some vegetables

5:40: Heat up water to take my morning bucket bath

5:45: Take my bucket bath and do my hair/brush my teeth

6:00 Decide what to wear for the day and get ready for school

6:30 Make sure I have everything together and ready or school

6:40: Leave for school

6:45: Arrive at school in time for concentração (singing of the national anthem, announcements, etc).

12:10: Finish teaching for the day and head home

12:30: Cook lunch, usually something simple like some sauteed vegetables or a veggie sandwich or maybe a peanut butter and honey sandwich, it depends how much time I have

12:50: Eat lunch

1:00: Gather everything needed to teach at the Youth Center

1:30: Head down to the Youth Center with my roommate to set up for class

2:30-4: Intense English Class for 12th grade students at the Youth Center (Tuesday-Friday)

4:00-5:00: Answer any lingering questions from students and 'office hours' for students from school to come use books from the library or ask questions

5:00: Head home

5:15: Relax! Read & watch the sunset, write letters, type an email update, or play with the puppy. ☺

6:00 Cook dinner for myself and the puppy. This also varies quite a bit, but is often pasta and rarely includes meat. The only time I usually eat meat here is when we go to the restaurant in town and get chicken. (This happens once a week or less).

6:45: Eat dinner

7:25: Heat water for my second bucket bath

7:30: Take my second bucket bath

7:45: Prepare lessons, grade papers, etc.

8:45: Check that everything is ready for school the next day.

9:00: BEDTIME

So while they do vary, that's a general outline of my days here. On the weekends I have REDES and JOMA meetings as well as meetings with my computer club at school. Those usually take all of Saturday morning. Sunday is day to relax, go to the beach, and lesson plan for school. Monday I don't have school (lucky!) so the morning is spent cleaning the house and doing laundry and the afternoon is spent with my sitemate and roommate planning the youth center lessons for the week. We usually go out to dinner on Monday evenings to celebrate finishing our planning for the week and also because we usually finish kind of late and it takes awhile to cook things here.

Well that should give you a good idea of a typical day/week in my life in the Peace Corps in Mozambique. I am really excited for this coming weekend because my counterpart and I are taking four students to the regional science fair which should be really exciting. I organized (with my counterpart) a science fair for my town that happened last week, and the students with the best scores are going to represent Angoche this weekend in Nampula. It should be a lot of fun. We had 14 kids participate this year and I hope next year I can up that to closer to 25.

Well I'm off to cook dinner. I hope all is well with you and hope to hear from all of you about how your life is going!

So much love,
Alissa

Jan. 29, 2011 -- Getting In Touch With My Artistic Side

Feb. 1, 2011: First, I want to say a big HAPPY 12th BIRTHDAY to my amazing niece Madison Mackenzie Kulow!! I can't believe you are already 12 years old, and I cannot wait to see you again and see how much you've grown. I love you Madi, and I miss you SO much.

January 29th, 2011

Today I got in touch with my artistic side, and it was fabulous. Usually Peace Corps volunteers don't start working on our secondary projects (things like REDES, a girl's empowerment group; JOMA, a youth art and journalism group, etc.) until after the first trimester of school. ThF way you can settle in and determine what the community's needs are and how to best suit their needs. However, as there have been previous volunteers in Angoche, including the amazing Margaret who started here last year and is therefore still here, we have already started ours. Our REDES girls are starting meetings next weekend but this weekend we got started with the JOMA boys.

The main road coming into our town is quite a site to see. Despite the fact that 80% of the road leading to Angoche from the capitol city of Nampula is nothing more than packed dirt, the road leading into our town is a massive divided street that could easily fit six cars across its wide berth. The main area of the city looks more like a ruin than a town packed with people. It is full of concrete buildings in various states of disrepair, some to the point that they look near collapse. You get the distinct feeling that this town has long since seen its hayday and has fallen into shambles, forgotten by its previous inhabitants.

And in some ways, this is exactly the case. Angoche was once a thriving Muslim trading post, founded in the 1490s, (one of the reasons the local dialect is a mixture of Arabic and Swahili). The town was a huge metropolis filled with impressive buildings, gorgeous houses, and rich foreigners who ran everything. However, since Mozambique gained independence in the 1970s, much has changed. Nearly all of the foreigners have long since gone, and while others have come in (many "lojas," or stores, are owned by Chinese or Indian families, for example), the town is more or less in the hands of the native Mozambicans.

This means, since the government of Mozambique is already extremely poor and also fraught with corrupt officials who embezzle what little money there is, that most everything here is run down and poorly cared for. There are a few exceptions of course, but the point is the main area of town has the feeling of lost grandiosity and is now falls far short of that former beauty.

As a good project for our JOMA group, some of the previous volunteers had the boys paint a mural on a concrete wall on the main road leading into town. Since then the mural has since been ruined by Frelimo, the only real political party active in Mozambique currently, when they put up a bunch of campaign posters before the elections in November. So today we began redoing the mural. It has about 16 panels in total and the boys decided they wanted to focus on two topics important here in Angoche and all of Mozambique: malaria and domestic violence (the last mural was about HIV/AIDS). The boys spent the last two weeks drawing up their ideas for the mural, which include a couple panels each about the causes, problems, and solutions for each of these problems.

Today we finished scraping off the old paint and primed, drew, and painted the first half of the mural. Between my roommate, site-mate, the 5 boys, and me, it took from 6 a.m.-6 p.m., 12 full hours. It was quite a job. We haven't completely finished the first half of the mural and that is the goal for tomorrow. Then next weekend we'll do the second set of panels, about domestic violence.

Overall the day was a success. However, despite the complete overcast (and therefore bearable temperatures) and my sunscreen, I got completely fried. Figures. But the day overall was a much needed break. While we were working all day, it was a soothing and very concrete job with very visible results. Being here has really made me appreciate how nice it is to be able to see the results of the work you're doing. It was backbreaking and I'm sure I will be sore everywhere tomorrow, but it was almost relaxing to be soothed by the scraping of the metal on concrete and calmed by the rub of the paint brush over the wall, bringing with it new color and purpose.

Overall, a successful day if there ever was one in Mozambique.
:-)
And now, for a little dinner and some well-earned rest.

Miss you all!

Slideshow of Alissa's Photos from Mozambique