PHASE 2, HERE WE GO

It's now Phase 2 of my training process, after 6 weeks together in one village, all Moz 27s were sent out visit our future sites. The reality of what life as a Peace Corps volunteer will really be like has set in, and it truly has been (and will be) a completely different experience for everyone.

On the Wednesday before we left for Phase 2, we had site placement announcements. The Peace Corps staff members drew a huge map of Mozambique on the local basketball court, divided into its 10 provinces. They handed each trainee a sealed envelope, and at the same time, 65 of us tore open our envelopes to find out where we would be living for the next 2 years. As we walked to our spot on the giant map, there were squeals of joy from those who got placed exactly where they wanted, cries of distain from best friends who were placed on opposite sides of the country, and silent looks of shock from those who received utterly unexpected placements. I think I experienced all of those emotions at once when I read about my placement.

I have been placed as a math teacher at a complete secondary school (grades 8-12), which is exactly what I had hoped for. The school is located on the outskirts of the municipality of Boane, Maputo province, not far from where we had Phase 1 training. If you google Boane, you'll find that it's just 40 km away from Maputo City, the capitol city of Mozambique. (Maputo City borders, but is not party of Maputo province, the same way Washington D.C. borders, but is not part of Virginia or Maryland).

Fellow Maputo province teachers

With just one stuffy chapa ride, I can travel from my site to the capitol city and have access to almost anything that I could possibly need. Chapas, or small buses crammed full with too many people, are the main form of public transport here in Mozambique if you are going somewhere that is too far to walk (think NYC subway at rush hour... Except it's always rush hour). The second most common form of probably boleia, or hitchhiking. Boleias can be given by someone you know who just happens to be driving down the road, or a stranger who just happens to be traveling the same direction as you. This is something I probably would not do in the United States, but I have found that most people here are kind and willing to help out a foreign stranger.

From my future home to my school, it is about a 1km walk, so I will probably walk along the road hoping a fellow teacher will give me a boleia to save me from walking in the heat. There are 2 secondary schools in my community, and I will have a site mate who will be teaching at the other school. We will be living as neighbors on his school compound in the teacher housing units (my school does not have teacher housing). I am also extremely fortunate because many houses in our community have electricity (including mine) and spigots which spout running water each day for a few hours in the morning (or sometimes a little more or less time depending on how recently it has rained / how full the water reserves are).

Teacher housing: One of these units will soon be mine!

When I first received my placement, I was honestly a little disappointed that I would not have the opportunity to get to know a new part of the country. Mozambique is divided into 3 general regions: Northern, Central, and Southern, each with their own local languages and cultural traditions. I was sad to see many of my friends placed in the far North or Central part of the country, because I will probably only see them on rare occasions (like mandatory Peace Corps conferences). My site is about an hour away from our Phase 1 training village. However I am excited that my site mate and I going to be opening our site, which means we will be the first Peace Corps teachers to teach at our respective schools.
22 members of our Moz 27 group were placed in the Southern part of the country and we have already started to make plans to see each other as much as possible. For the first part of Phase 2, the Southern trainees had a conference at a hotel in Maputo City with our future supervisors. For a few days, we got to enjoy city life, and most importantly, take hot showers with running water!

At this conference we discussed logistics for the next few weeks, and I met my school director (or school principal), who is also my host dad during Phase 2. He and his wife and 3 children welcomed me into their beautiful home as soon as I arrived into their community.

My room at my new host family's house.
The fan in the corner has been the best part.

They have the cutest quintal, or yard, filled with green plants and gardens of fruit/vegetables. There are 2 dogs, one cat, and about  a dozen ducks who also live here. There is also an empregada, or a housekeeper, who comes everyday during the week. She takes care of the children while my host mom and dad are at work, does a lot of the housework, and most importantly has taught me necessary lessons about life here in my community ("You can go buy bread at that stand over there", "You need to put more soap in that water if you want your clothes to be clean", and "You cannot go to school with your bag that dirty, teachers should always appear clean!")

 

My school director's / host family's house for Phase 2.

I have now been here for over a week, and have had the opportunity to observe many classes taught by my future colleagues at school. The students of course, have been extremely curious about the new foreign professora wandering around their school. About a decade ago, Peace Corps Mozambique had PST trainings here in this community, but for most of my high school students who were young children back then, they do not remember this. My school has over 1,000 students, 9 classrooms, and about 30 teachers. There are 3 sessions: morning, afternoon, and night. Here in Mozambique, teachers do not have their own classroom. Each turma, or group of students, is assigned a classroom and the teachers rotate between the classroom. Turmas at my school are divided by grade level (i.e. all 8th graders in one turma, 9th, 10th etc), and usually have about 50 students.

Students lined up to sing the National Anthem before school begins

In addition to observing classes, a few of my colleagues have let me teach class for them! I gave 5 math lessons (the same topic) to 5 different 8th grade turmas, and each time the class reacted differently. Some turmas were loud and obnoxious, but full of brilliant students who loved to volunteer to solve problems on the board. Others more quiet and reserved, and my questions were often met by an awkward silence. The only thing they all had in common was that they giggled at my horrible pronunciation of math terms in Portuguese. If you ever took a math class in college and had an Asian TA with an impossible accent who tried to explain math to you, you know exactly how this group of 8th graders felt. (If you thought parallel was a hard word to say in English, imagine saying "paralelas" over and over infront of a room full of 8th graders). I have found that I can hold basic conversations in Portuguese, but I need a lot of practice with math terms.

I also had the opportunity to take over a few English classes, which were a lot of fun for both me and the kids. Most of them do not have the opportunity to practice speaking English, and have never heard a native English speaker speak English before. In each class I introduced myself in English, and told them I came from the United States of America. The confused looks that followed usually prompted me to say "My parents were born in China, but I was born and raised in America, therefore I am American". It's a difficult concept to explain to a group of high schoolers, even if our language barrier did not exist. America is full of people who may look different, with ancestors that come from different places, practice all sorts of different religions, but still call themselves Americans. Here in my community, everyone looks the same, speak the same languages, and families stay in the same area for generations. I anticipated more questions about what makes an "American an American", but kids are kids, and accepted what I said in order to move onto the questions that were of more interest to them. Here is what they usually ask:
"Teacher, how old are you?" 26.
"Teacher, how many kids do you have?" None.
"Teacher, you are married?" No.
"You have a boyfriend?" No.
"Are you looking for a boyfriend?".... This question is usually asked by a smartass male student with a devious grin, and prompts so much hollaring and laughter from the whole class that supervising teacher has to step in to help me bring them back to attention.

Regardless, the students are interested in learning more about me, and I am looking forward to learning more about them too. When I do, I'll be sure to share it here. But that's all for now.
Thanks for reading.

JUST A FEW TRAINING UPDATES

My weeks as a trainee have flown by.  

I am now entering week 6.  I have a lot to share, but for starters, here are a few of my favorite parts of Peace Corps Training thus far:

Pounding peanuts into peanut dust

FOOD DAY

A few weeks ago, we had a cross-cultural cooking day with our host families.  For this day, each language groups and respective host families were instructed to create traditional dishes from our countries, and teach each other how to make them.  In my group, our Maes (mothers), taught us how to make to a traditional Mozambican dish – couve.  Couve, a green leafy plant from which the dish gets its name – is one of my favorite dishes to eat, but it is one of the most difficult dishes to make.  In addition to the plant itself, the primary ingredients to the dish are peanut dust and coconut milk. 

Making coconut milk by hand

To prepare this dish, first we chopped the couve leaves into small bits.  Then, we learned how to pound the peanuts into dust using a pilao. (Peanuts were pounded, inspected and sifted for larger pieces, and pounded again). This process was repeated until the Maes decided the dust was acceptable. Lastly, coconut milk was made using a something that resembled a small stool with a sharp razor attached to it (I asked time and time again what this was called, but just cannot seem to remember).  The insides of coconuts were shaved out, then the shavings are doused in hot water, wrung out for ‘milk’, then doused again and again until the liquid squeezed out was essentially only water.  

Galinha (Live Chicken)

Still alive galinha about to become
frango (dead chicken for eating)

The ingredients are then combined in a large pot and boiled until it is deemed “done” by one of our Maes. These incredible women, who have been cooking nearly their whole lives, can tell whether or not food is ready by just simply glancing at it. On our cooking day, our Maes also taught us how to make other traditional dishes such as xima (a white cornmeal porridge/loaf type substance), vegetable salads, chicken, and rice with vegetables. 

Plucking the feathers from our frango.

For our American dish for cross-cultural cooking day, decided to make fried chicken sandwiches and mashed potatoes.  In the United States these foods are extremely common and are readily available from your local fast food restaurant.  However here in Mozambique, eating these foods means buying all the ingredients and making everything from scratch. Potatoes, butter, milk… Bread, tomatoes, lettuce, mayo, and a LIVE chicken. It’s some sort of long-standing Peace Corps tradition that trainees learn to kill a chicken during their training.  We had 2 live chickens to kill on cross-cultural cooking day (one for the Maes’ dish and one for our chicken sandwiches).  I got to kill one of them.

Taking the life out of that chicken was awful, I felt disgusted and nauseous afterward (especially during the de-feathering and de-gutting process).  But our fried chicken sandwiches tasted that much better because I knew how hard we worked prepare that food for our table.  Here in our village, most families prefer to prepare their own food, so they know that the food is safely and well prepared. However this means seeing animals killed while walking along the side of the road is quite normal. The upside to the animal killings, the meat is always fresh. In addition to fresh meats, the markets here are filled with fresh fruits and vegetables from local machambas (gardens), and the bakery is filled with freshly baked bread (we buy fresh bread every evening to have it for breakfast). Fresh foods that are local to Mozambique are cheap and easy to find.  Since we are so close to the borders of Swaziland and South Africa, the things that are not produced are imported from these countries.  A local gas station store that sells imported ice cream bars has become a common ‘place to go’ for PCTs after a long day of classes.

IFP DAYS

Every week, we spend at least one day of ‘classtime’ at the local IFP (Teacher Training Institute), attending training sessions in addition to our language and technical classes.  These sessions cover Safety, Security, Medical, and others necessary topics, and are lead by Peace Corps Staff members or current Peace Corps Volunteers.  Although this is always a long information-packed day, these sessions have also become a place for us to talk about many topics that are often too avoided in such as differences among race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation/identity, and other physical or emotional differences among people in the United States. Some sessions are presented in a fun manner, some more serious, and many involve a bit of role-play/ skit acting (we all will have professional acting degrees by the end of training).  Through these exercises we not only learn more about the Peace Corps, but more about each other as well.  My fellow trainees are all such incredible people.  Everyone comes from different backgrounds, and everyone's experiences back home in the U.S. and here in Mozambique have been different.

As Peace Corps Trainees, we are here as cultural ambassadors to share with Mozambicans the diversity of our country.  At the end IFP days, we have Ngoma Time – a time designated specifically for cultural exchange performances of Mozambican and American.  Local performance groups have been invited to perform for us, and we in turn put together presentations to reflect upon the different aspects of American life.  Our groups have been quite creative – some fun performances have included singing and dancing to well known American songs, reenactments of classic American stories, explanations of American holidays, and even an impressively choreographed step routine. 

Local Mozambican dance group

MOZAMBICAN HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS.

During our few weeks here, we have been fortunate enough to witness the celebrations of 3 different national Mozambican holidays. On each holiday, schools and most public businesses/offices are closed, and celebrations take place throughout the country.  In our village, we attended ceremonies in the town’s plaza, where officials spoke, priests lead prayers, local dancers and singers perform, and actors often reenacted significant historical events for which the holidays celebrate.  

Here is a brief overview of the holidays that we have celebrated thus far:

September 7 – Dia da Vitoria (Victory Day)– On September 7, 1974, Mozambique signed an agreement with Portugal to end the Mozambican War of Independence.  The war had lasted from 1964-74, although Mozambique did not officially gain independence from Portugal until June 5, 1975, (June 5^th is celebrated as Dia da Independencia (Independence Day)).

September 25 – Dia das Forcas Armadas (Armed Forces Day, or Revolution Day) – On September 25, 1964, Mozambique political party FRELIMO officially launched their first offenses against the Portuguese authorities, and began the Mozambican War of Independence.

October 4 – Dia da Paz (Day of Peace and Reconciliation) – On October 4, 1992, the Mozambican Civil War officially ended with the signing of the Rome General Peace Accords.  The civil war between revolutionary and governing party FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front) and rebellion party RENAMO (Mozambican National Resistance) had lasted over 15 years.

...AND MORE

There is still so much of Mozambican history that I do not know.  As my Portuguese improves, I am looking forward to reading and learning more about Mozambican history from the locals here.  According to my first Language Placement Interview (LPI) I am now speaking at an Intermediate-High level – a significant improvement from the Beginner level which I started at just weeks ago.  For now I am enjoying training and taking advantage of the wonderful scenery.  This past weekend, the Peace Corps staff put together a hike/picnic for us trainees to visit the Tres Fronterrias (Three borders – Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa).  Here we all are at the top!

Sadly, in less than a week we will all be separating.  At the end of this week we will be concluding Phase 1 of our Education training program. In a few days we will find out where our future sites (our homes for the next 2 years) will be. We will be spending Phase 2 (3 weeks) at our future sites, living with local host families and learning ore about the city/villages customs and language(s) before returning to our training village for our final Phase 3.  

This is all of I have to share for now...

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