Mozambique is awesome! Here's what I've been doing/thinking about
the past week or so.
:-)
October 13, 2010
Time is flying by here. I can't believe I've been in Mozambique for
two weeks already! I'm learning so much, about the culture,
Portuguese, and teaching/planning lessons. It sounds like if I'm lucky,
I'll only have 50 kids per class! Some teachers in the northern
regions or more populous cities can have over 100. So that'll be fun.
Trying to manage that many kids will be quite a challenge, but
teachers here have way more control than in the States, which should
help.
I can't wait to find out where I'll be living for my service,
post-training. We apparently find out right before Thanksgiving. I'll
be sure to let you all know once I do :-) The Northern areas are a
little less developed and more conservative, so from what I've heard
most volunteers don't really want to go there, but since I'm not too
picky I have a feeling that's where I'll be. But who knows.
I have a cell phone!! To call/text me from the States dial 011-258-
820653332. I know all of you don't need this info, but feel free to use
it if you want. I hear from other volunteers calling from Google Voice
is cheapest at 13 cents a minute (I only pay to dial out, not receive
calls, but its really expensive for me to call the US). I can get
texts as well, and while it doesn't cost me to receive them, it costs a
bit to send them so I might not be able to reply every time. My phone
does have internet so I can check my email semi-regularly, so that is
probably the easiest way to contact me and the cheapest for all
involved. So feel free to respond to this or email about things that
might come up!
Okay, I have homework to do now (and man, I thought I was done with
homework... lol), and then a bucket bath, dinner, and then bed, so I'll
just say I hope all is well with you guys, and I miss you!!
October 16, 2010
So Smith Crew can officially do Mozambique. I found peanut butter
today. :-) It's rare and they have to ship it in from South Africa,
but it does exist here. On that note, we eat ALL THE TIME... like,
5 or 6 times a day. It's crazy. We have breakfast, lunch, and dinner
but also two different snack/tea times in between as well. And I'm not
eating much at every meal because we eat so often and my host mom keeps
telling me I'm not eating anything, lol. We do walk everywhere, so I
am hungrier than usual, but apparently my appetite just can't keep up
with the Mozambicans. But they do so much manual labor for their daily
lives it's no wonder they are always hungry. Everyone here is in
pretty good shape, but it's apparently good for them to be a little
overweight because it shows they have enough to eat. So my host mom (who is
bigger than me and super strong, too) keeps telling me I should eat
more and get bigger. Haha. I tried to explain that I wanted to lose
weight, but she totally didn't understand why I would want to. She went
on some tangent about needing to be bigger to have kids or something,
but I just laughed and let it go.
I am pretty sure in the next week or so I will finally be getting
a 'Smith' haircut (albeit a little late... lol). I might even just borrow
clippers from a guy and just buzz it all off. It's SO annoying to wash
my hair when I just have a bucket of water and a cup. And while it's
not actually very hot here in our training city of Namaacha, it's
going to be REALLY hot almost everywhere else we will be, and it's
just not worth the hassle. Plus shampoo here is over $10 for a small
bottle.
However, our PC leader said if women from America cut their hair too
short, we'll draw too much attention to ourselves. I feel like that is
kind of crap because a lot of the native women here have super short
hair, but she said they aren't used to seeing American women with
short hair. I think she said that to our group because a bunch of the
female trainees last year all buzzed their hair the night before they
left to go to their sites, and she was not happy. So we'll see what
happens. I'm definitely going to cut it, just not sure how much.
I watched my first chicken get killed last night, so that was
interesting and really kind of painful. I have a feeling I'll pretty
much be a vegetarian once I get to my site, because there is no way
I'm killing the chickens myself very often. And I guess if I can't
kill them, I shouldn't be eating them, huh? But it's as
sustainable as you could hope. The chickens roam the yard and it's not
like they buy more; they just keep having baby chicks and the cycle
continues. There were new baby chicks born just the other day. Ten of them.
And I imagine they'll live a nice life wandering the yard and eating
our leftovers, etc. until they, too, become dinner. I imagine that's a
much better life than a lot of chickens in the US stuck in cages all
the time and what-not. They don't even have a coop. The chickens and
roosters just wander around as they wish... lol. The ultimate example of
free-range, I guess!
October 23, 2010
So I guess I'm really getting into the Portuguese, because it just took
me three tries to spell October without using a 'u' (it's Outubro in
Portuguese). We're just finishing up our 3rd week of training and it's
going great. I had a long conversation with my host mom last night
about materialism, the beauty of Mozambique, and other awesome stuff.
All in Portuguese! It was great. She's really nice. I think it was
frustrating for her at first (and for me, too) when I couldn't say much and
wasn't comfortable speaking much, but our relationship is really
blossoming.
On a different note, we're learning a lot about the Mozambican school
system as well. The kids here (in middle and high school) take 11
different subjects at once (assuming they have teachers for all of
them, which they certainly don't always). This includes Biology,
Chemistry, Physics, Math, English, French, Portuguese, History,
Computers and a couple other things I can't remember. They take these
subjects every year, concurrently. SO MUCH information. And since most of the teachers
here focus entirely on rote memorization, it's way too much
information for them. Needless to say, cheating is rampant. Kids (even
the good students) don't think they can do well without cheating, and
most of the volunteers we've met have said it's the hardest part of
being a teacher here -- trying to control the cheating. For example, how
do you control over 70 kids in a room sitting three to a desk cheating
on a test? It's pretty difficult.
The food here is really good. I (knock on wood) haven't gotten sick
yet. There are A LOT of carbs: rice, potatoes, bread, and lots of new
kinds too. It's not uncommon to have three different carbs in the same
meal, along with a little protein and some veggies if you're lucky.
But it tastes really good most of the time and I'm really enjoying it.
They give me Coca-Cola all the time... lol. And since the water is pretty
gross (even after being boiled and filtered), I've been drinking a lot
of the soda. Especially because its made with real cane sugar here
(not high fructose corn syrup), and it actually tastes better than in
the States.
Next weekend we're going to cook American food in our language groups
with our families, so that should be fun. We're also having a huge
Halloween party. I think I might go as Adam Lambert (LOL) since I'm
cutting my hair kind of like his (from Idol) tomorrow. YAY for short
hair!! Any other good costume ideas?? (Keep in mind I have limited
resources to make things/buy things.)
Okay, language class is about to start and this is a super long email
already, so I'll just say I MISS YOU ALL and I am loving it here in
Mozambique!
:-)
~Alissa
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