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

Internet Is Back On -- June 15, 2011

June 15, 2011

Well, so much for the internet coming back on quickly. Finally, over a month and a half later it has started to work again (sporadically). However, as frustrating as it was to be without internet for so long, in some ways it was also kind of nice. Sometimes I feel that when the internet is working, I spend too much time in my room instead of experiencing everything around me. I'm only going to be here in Mozambique for two years and I feel like I need to experience everything I can while I have the time.

Not that I have all that much time. I've already been in Angoche for six months, in Mozambique for almost nine -- that means I have 18 months left, which really isn't that many. Every weekend between now and the end of the second trimester, I have something big happening. This coming weekend we have an experienced artist coming to teach our art group some new techniques and help them paint another part of the wall they painted earlier in the year. The topic this time is gender equality. The pictures the boys drew are really amazing, so I'll be sure to take pictures so you can all see their great work.

The next weekend is Mozambican Independence Day, June 25th. This is a huge holiday and there will be tons of partying and celebrating here in Angoche. A bunch of volunteers from all over the country are coming to experience one of Angoche's famous beach parties. It should be a lot of fun. Again I will try to remember to take lots of pictures so you can all see how people party it up here in Mozambique.

The weekend after that, the first weekend in July, is the Angoche Science Fair, which I am organizing. We have had three meetings already and I've spoken with a few other professors who will help, as well as local scientists who will help judge the projects. The students all seem really excited. I think I will probably end up with about 30 participants. Four will be chosen as winners, two girls and two boys, one each from 8-10th grade and 11-12th grade. Those four winners, a fellow professor, and I will then travel the following weekend to Nampula for a regional science fair. This science fair will include winners from the four northern provinces of Mozambique and will also have regional winners. Maybe some of my kids will be among them. We'll see!

Following the science fairs, the next weekend is the weekend of training for our REDES conference. REDES stands for Raparigas em Desemvolvimento, Educação, e Saude (Girls in Development, Education, and Health). Every year each region in Mozambique (North, South, and Central) have a conference for each REDES group in the region. We will have guest speakers and five full days of activities for the girls to participate in. This year the conference is being held in a place called Naoela in Zambezia province. Each of the 15 REDES groups in the North will bring two girls, one counterpart (a Mozambican woman who helps with the group), and a volunteer to the conference. Our group will actually have two volunteers, my sitemate Margaret and I.

After the weekend of preparation and training for the conference, it is our last week of school for the trimester which means I will be giving a final and finishing up grades. After I turn in my grades, I will be traveling again to Nampula for the weekend. This time I will be attending PDM (project design and management) training from the Peace Corps. This is where we learn how to write all different kinds of grants to fund our secondary projects like our youth center, girl's group, etc. We are taking our counterpart for the youth center, Mussa, who is quite possibly my favorite Mozambican. He is so nice, speaks wonderful English, works very hard, and never tries to hit on or sleep with any of us volunteers which makes him unique of all the Mozambicans I've met so far.

After the PDM conference, I have a week off where I think I will be traveling somewhere (the destination is still TBD). After that week of traveling I will head back to site to pick up the two girls from our REDES group to head to the conference which is the first week of August. After the conference I will head back to site for a few days to wait impatiently for my mom to arrive in Mozambique on the 11th! She will be staying for 11 days and I am SO excited for her to visit. We will visit Mozambique Island, Ribaue, Nampula, and my site of Angoche. Hopefully she will return to the States with plenty of interesting stories and pictures to share with you all.

And now I have to teach at the youth center so that is all I can write today. I hope you are all well. I miss you all so much!

Amo-vos,

Alissa

Happy Friday, May 13th from Mozambique!

May 13, 2011

I can't believe it's already mid-May. This time last year I was graduating from Smith (CONGRATS to all the ladies graduating this weekend!) and other than a 3-month summer internship in DC, my future was more or less a mystery. I don't think I would have ever guessed I would be in sub-Saharan Africa a year after graduating, to be honest. If I were going into Peace Corps, which was my first choice, I thought I would be going to Central or South America (as that was the region from my Peace Corps nomination). However, I could not be happier with how everything turned out

I absolutely love it here in Mozambique, especially in my town of Angoche. Of course things aren't easy, but that makes each little success even sweeter. Between classes at school and the youth center, our girl's empowerment group, our youth art group, and the computer club I started, I am keeping pretty busy. This is definitely my preferred method of operating (if any of you knew my schedule during college, you have an idea). If I have free time now, I usually spend it playing with and training my new puppy, reading a book, or cooking something new.

My roommate and I got a puppy a couple of weeks ago and are currently trying to house break him which is proving rather difficult in our apartment. We named him Pequininho (tiny one in Portuguese) or Nino for short. He was so small when we got him we had to bottle feed him for the first week or so, but he is doing wonderfully now and growing fast.

I'm in the middle of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I am enjoying a lot, but I don't have nearly as much time to read it as I'd like. I took a break from Zen and sped through a quick read called Do Fish Drink Water? which was really interesting. It's a book of random questions and answers, and I recommend it as a highly entertaining collection of fun facts. For example, if you took all the pennies the U.S. Mint has ever produced and lined them up edge-to-edge they would circle the globe 137 times. Or the reason we say 'god bless you' (or the German version, gesundheit) when someone sneezes is that during the Middle Ages when people were suffering from the last stages of the plague, they would have sneezing fits. So if if you heard someone near you sneeze, you knew they were about to die so you asked god to bless their soul. The children's song 'Ring around the Rosey' is about the plague also.

I've had some baking successes recently too, including some great banana bread and delicious peanut butter cookies. The next challenge will be baking a pizza in my dutch oven (aka a large covered pot with rocks and dirt in the bottom to insulate and then the baking dish inside. It's all done over charcoal). My site-mate is heading down South for a couple weeks and on the way back she's going to pick up some mozzarella cheese in the provincial capitol as that is really the one pizza ingredient we can't get here.

Well as I explained I'm really busy lately and I am about to head off to school, but hopefully the internet will come back on long enough for me to send this sometime this weekend. It keeps going on and off and we don't really know what the problem is. It hasn't worked well in over a month. Oh well. So it goes in Mozambique

Love, Alissa

New Puppy - May 4, 2011

May 4, 2011

A few things:
1- Yay for the internet being back on for the first time in two weeks.
2- It's 75 degrees and I am FREEZING. I dug my sweater out of storage this morning.
3- Living in an area that is mostly Muslim made receiving the whole Osama news really interesting.
4- Alex Breedlove (PCV sitemate) and I got a new puppy. Be jealous. Pictures to come.
:-)

[Alissa and her PCV roommate adopt an abandoned puppy, which they had to take turns feeding with infant formula every four hours, as it was not yet weaned. They named him Nino - "little boy"].

April 11, 2011 - List of Firsts in Mozambique

Sorry it's been so long since I've written. The first semester is ending this week and it's been getting pretty chaotic around here. I might be able to skype or call people with better luck this coming Saturday-Wednesday because I will be in the capitol of my province, Nampula, for a PCV conference, so let me know if you'd like to talk and we can find a time that works.

Instead of a journal-esque email today, I have a list of my firsts in Mozambique, as a summary of my now over six months in the Peace Corps.

In Mozambique, I've done these things for the first time:

--killed a chicken
--taught a high school class alone
--received a marriage proposal (the answer was no, as with all the other countless offers of marriage I've now received here)
--lived somewhere where English is not the spoken language
--cooked nearly every meal for myself
--spent Christmas away from home
--cut all my hair off
--washed my laundry by hand (and hung it to dry)
--made cookie dough with the express purpose of eating it raw (no eggs, don't worry)
--lived somewhere where I was such an obvious minority
--been fully appreciative of shade, or a nice breeze
--gone so long without seeing my family
--written a diary regularly
--swam in the Indian Ocean
--had people honestly think I was in my late thirties and tell me so
--bathed at least twice a day every day
--been so happy that a 170 km (or 100 mile) car trip took only 4.5 hours
--been really cold when it's just below 80 degrees outside
--cooked with charcoal on a regular basis
--baked without an oven
--smoked a Cuban cigar
--had clothes tailor-made regularly
--had people be appalled I wasn't married with children at the age of 23
--have seen and swam in bio-luminescent water at night
--have taken a malaria test (which was thankfully negative)
--had people tell me I was looking fat today as a total compliment (it means you have enough money to eat, so it's a good thing here)
--had people tell me I was looking skinny today and mean it negatively
--been so completely refreshed by an ice cold Coke
--lived within walking distance of the beach
--been able to greet someone in three different languages in the same conversation
--felt scandalous in shorts that come nearly to my knee
--painted a mural that a whole town sees everyday...

So that should give you an idea of how life here in Mozambique is different, and how it's changed my perspective on some things already -- and usually always for the positive.

Thanks for taking the time to keep up with my adventures while I serve in the Peace Corps, and please let me know what you're up to as well! I love hearing from my friends and family about what's going on back home.

Love from Africa,
Alissa

March 19, 2011 -- First Illness, First Test & First Student Debate

March 19, 2011

Time sure does fly here in Mozambique. I can't believe it's been so long since I last wrote an update. Sorry about that. I also cannot believe it has been almost 6 months since I left the States. So much is going on both here and at home, and I've been quite busy.

This past week, sadly, I have been been sick, which was no fun at all. I was practically bedridden for five days and couldn't eat more than bread and water. Not a good time, let me say. I was bored and tired and just miserable. I did read Lord of the Flies and started reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as well as watch a few movies, but overall it was a long and terrible week.

Thankfully, I am feeling much better now. I am sitting out here on the back balcony, enjoying the gorgeous view of the Indian Ocean and islands off Angoche, while I read and write and listen to James Taylor. First I was writing in the handsome journal I received as a gift (thank you to the Krauses) before leaving for Peace Corps, and now I am penning this update to let you all know I am still alive and well and doing my best to keep busy.

Teaching is going fairly well. School is difficult but satisfying. I gave my first test at the end of last week and it was quite the episode. I caught around 15 kids cheating (which means they will receive zeroes), and many other students were looking at each other's papers and whatnot during the test as well. It was quite frustrating. However, despite it being stressful to proctor, the students who didn't cheat did quite well, and I was pleased. The test covered school subjects, professions, family members, and the verb 'to be.' I have a few more tests to finish grading but overall the effort was admirable.

Our secondary projects are also going quite well. Last Saturday we went to the beach with our REDES and JOMA groups. It was such a nice day. We brought some snacks and swam and ate, and Audie taught a bunch of the kids how to make friendship bracelets. Quite the successful outing. But even more rewarding to me was the debate we had with them before the trip to the beach.

The previous week we had been talking to the boys after the REDES meeting and one boy said, “Sao poucos mulheres que tem couragem.” (There aren't many women who have courage.) This spurred my colleague Margaret to ask him what he thought courage was. The boys agreed that courage was when someone does something dangerous, like robbing a bank. Then one of the REDES girls who was still in the youth center who had overheard the boys asked, "What about when a girl turns down a teacher who is trying to sleep with her so she can pass to the next grade? Doesn't she have courage?" The boys listened, and although rather taken aback by her viewpoint and willingness to speak up, agreed that this, too, was courageous. Later, while discussing this interaction amongst ourselves, my sitemate, roommate and I agreed that we should host a debate with the girls and boys of our groups to discuss courage and the difference between men and women in Mozambique.

So this past Saturday before our trip to the beach, we had both groups come to the youth center and had two teams (each with girls and boys) debate the truth of a handful of different statements. Some of the statements/questions were:

* There are few women who have courage.
* It is women's job to take care of men.
* A woman can be a soldier.
* Women in Mozambique have a harder life than men.
* If a wife and husband both get home from work at the same time it is the wife's job to cook.
* If you had the strongest man and strongest woman in the world, who could lift more?
And other things of that nature.

The teams took turns arguing the pro and con of the different statements, and it went quite well. I think all of the kids got quite a lot out of it, and it was one of the first times I think they had ever had discussions like that -- especially with the boys and girls participating together equally. It was quite possibly the high point of my month. :-)

Now it is getting dark and I need to go cook dinner (I'm going to make fried rice), but I hope this update finds you all well and enjoying the spring that is coming (I know a few of you have just returned from a week in GA rowing on Lake Lanier, and to you I say I MISS YOU and GOOD LUCK THIS SEASON).


Lots of love to you all!

~Alissa