JOMA and REDES to the beach!

Last Saturday, Jesse and I had a great time bringing members from our extracurricular groups to the beach. We had good discussions, the journalists interviewed the REDES girls, and then everyone had fun with beach activities!

It´s hot!

After many complications, Jesse’s journalism group published their first edition of the journal for the semester. A compilation of work done so far, it’s over 20 pages long!! The photo shows a few of the students who are particularly involved journalists – the woman in the picture is the student editor.

Jesse and a few other Peace Corps volunteers organized a regional meeting for us to get together last weekend and share our ideas. Here’s a photo of us there in case you forgot what we look like.

The next picture is not Mozambique, but Jesse and I are very excited because we received a report about Bangladesh Connections. The picture shows the nutrition initiative – our school scholarship recipients now also receive breakfast! I updated our Bangladesh Connections blog. If you’re interested, the address is http://bangladeshconnections.vox.com. The Bangladesh Connections website is http://bangladeshconnections.atspace.org.

Ultimate Frisbee, Timbila Festival and More!!

Jesse's Ultimate Frisbee team is good and preparing to challenge the team of another Peace Corps volunteer. We're still interested in connecting with more Ultimate Frisbees. Besides supplying the team for games and practices, we want to give team members a disc at the end of the year so that they can spread the game to through the rural areas of Mozambique where they'll be going to teach.

My REDES group interviewed the founder/coordinator of a community-based organization that works in the neighborhood of our school, Kuvumbana. They learned about the projects and services of this NGO and about how an organization works. Kuvumbana mostly works to support people living with AIDS and orphans.

My students were thrilled to recieve their penpal letters. (Thanks, Phil and Mandy!! ... Marcia is on the far right of the photo in white. Vasta is second from the left in brown.) We're thinking that the skills development of our REDES this semester can be computer literacy. We're going to learn how to type, and I'm showing the girls how to set up and use email. That will facilitate more exchanges - let me know if you'd be interested in corresponding.

We got to go to the Timbila Festival last Saturday. The timbila is an important instrument in Mozambican culture. It's made of wood over various sized balls to make the scale (hard, hollowed shells of a local fruit called massala). The music is perfect for Mozambican dancing, and it was fun to experience this celebration of music!

The festival was in the town of Quissico. There's a beautiful lagoon there, so of course we enjoyed a great hike. We were told (later) that people shouldn't go in the water because they might get eaten by crocodiles.