Activity

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Mrs. Strayer at Thomas Jefferson Middle School and my parents and everyone else who donated books. Over 400 books, cassettes, magazines, and other resources are catalogued and tagged. Things often take a long time here, and in that line we´re still working on negociating a fitting space for this marvelous collection so that we can have a grand opening. But already we´ve let students use some books. It´s awesome to see how some students devour the books. Books here are expensive, so our students haven´t had the same experience as me and Jesse who grew up surrounded by books (and we still love and devour them, especially the great ones in this collection!). Jesse and I will let you know when we find a good room for the books and then we´ll request even more when visitors come. If you´re in college, please tell your classmates to save their education methodology textbooks and other books as they´re difficult to come by here.

We have successfully completed our first semester of teaching in Mozambique! Soon we´ll have a couple weeks of winter vacation before the second semester begins at the end of July. (By the way, our winter here is in the upper 60s. It´s perfect.) I feel like we´ve done a lot this semester.

Jesse´s journalism group posted the first official edition of their newspaper last week. Students swarmed the bulletin board to read it as it was put up. Five articles addressed the critical issue of the school needing to feed the students well. Other articles educated about health issues, community events, and there was even a culture/arts section with poems and humor.

My REDES group developed a core of interested women who are enthusiatic to continue next semester. We´ve bonded with baking banana bread, a dance party, etc and talked about issues like women´s bodies and reproductive health. They´re aware of information to share with their students. It was eye-opening for me to see how important it is to educate and talk openly about potentially taboo issues because girls really don´t know things if they´ve never been told.

Jesse has begun an English Theatre group. They are developing a script on the theme of HIV/AIDS, and will prepare to compete in the Peace Corps organized competition in September.

We´ve hooked a bunch of students on Frisbee. We had a listening class activity about the rules of Ultimate Frisbee and Jesse is meeting students regularly to practice and form an Ultimate Frisbee team. Frisbee is such a great game because it just takes a little bit of practice and anyone can join in no matter what their athletic background. So it´s a good sport where girls are on the same playing field as the guys. We want to try to give frisbees to the students on the Ultimate Frisbee team at the end of the year so that they can share the game with the communities where they´ll be teachers next year.

In other news, we got a second kitten who we named Mhaka which means Trouble in the local language. He´s cute when he´s not clawing up my leg and stealing food.
We´re continuing to enjoy cooking for ourselves and others. One day a man selling crabs walked through our backyard so Jesse got to buy some for an impromptu dinner party. But first the cats and the puppy we were pet-sitting tried to make friends with them.

Several weekends we´ve gotten to visit other Peace Corps volunteers at their sites. It´s inspiring to see what their doing and also to share experiences. For example, I´m not the only one frustrated with one particular administrator. Here is a photo with our friend Paul at his rural site.
Though classes are over, the school director is holding the students on campus to work in the gardens and clean. Yesterday we learned how to play a strategy game similar to Mancala from some of our students who had dug little holes in the sand and were taking a little break from their labor. (You can notice the piles of burning trash that they´re working on in the background of the photo.)
Jesse and I will hopefully have the opportunity to use the break to see a lot of the country by traveling North up the coast. So our next blog entry will probably be about the beauty and diversity of this big country. Thank you again for your interest and support and prayers. We´re thinking of you!

Happiness

My parents visited for the past couple weeks. They brought books to initiate an English resource library, gave guest speaker presentations to our classes, and got to meet our friends and see exactly where we are and what our days are like.
Then right before they left, we went for an amazing safari for a couple of days in Swaziland. Here´s the elephant - 3 feet from the Land Rover, just sniffing us. And here´s the rhino - who we approached by foot to admire and click photos from 6 feet away. We were practically the only guests at the camp and felt privileged to be there to appreciate the hippos who hung out at the waterhole right outside the window of the house. The animals made a hippo/rhino parade for this photo.

And here are the amazing lions that were laying in the road because the grass was wet so the Land Rover just drove up to them and we watched the cubs play under their father´s watchful eye for an hour!It was the best vacation ever!

JOMA and REDES conferences

We´ve had a full month! First, Jesse brought 2 students to the JOMA conference where they focused on communication skills through journalism. This photo shows students interviewing the community on Mozambican Women´s Day. His journalism club at school is a big and dedicated group.

Then I switched places with Jesse and brought 2 women to the REDES conference the following week. It was awesome to see the confidence of the women grow over the week together. One of my favorite memories was everyday when our large group of women sang in strong voices, dancing, sometimes with fists in the air, lyrics like "We want equality and strength!"

Homecoming

This morning I got to visit our fantastic host family in Namaacha for the first time since training. Look how much baby Michael has grown!

Beyond the Institute

Jesse and I got to share ideas and experiences with other volunteers at a regional Peace Corps conference last weekend. Following that, I participated in a REDES (and JOMA) "Training of Trainers" conference. Peace Corps volunteers working with REDES (which stands for "Girls in Development, Education and Health") organize an annual national conference to discuss issues of interest and importance for the lives of women in Mozambique, including facts about sexual and reproductive health, self-confidence, professional opportunities available to women in Mozambique, and the rights of Mozambican women. Mozambican teachers involved with the REDES program were invited to this conference to prepare them to facilitate the sessions for the girls at the national conference next month. Generally, someone who is originally from Mozambique can better relate to and discuss important issues with Mozambican girls and REDES wants to empower them to be leaders of the conference. More than that, the five women I met at this conference are awesome. They are assertive, animated, fun - great people and great role models. A trainer from the Brazilian NGO, ProMundo, led much of the gender training at this REDES/JOMA conference (http://www.promundo.org.br).
In addition to enjoying our professional work, Jesse and I are also appreciating this beautiful country. A few weekends ago, we got to camp with a couple friends on a beautiful, unknown, and practically deserted island just a few minutes of the beach in Maputo. This island, called Xefina, was a military base and jail during the colonial rule of the Portuguese. It was abandonned at the end of the colonial period. Big cement buildings and canons are sideways, tilted by the moving sands and some are under water. Now only ten or so families live on the island, though we think that there are immenent plans to develop it into a resort. We asked a fishing boat to take us across and enjoyed exploring. Our tent was surrounded by a herd of goats at sunrise. The water was low when we returned so we waded half the distance back to Maputo from the island. So, again, Mozambique is amazing.
In addition to being amazing, Mozambique can be a tough place to live. We recieved an email from a fellow Peace Corps volunteer in the northern region of Mozambique, Alex, who wrote about the destruction cause by Cyclone Jokwe in Angoche. She is organizing to personally purchase immediate aid for this community. She provided information about how to make monetary donations in case you're interested in supporting in this way. Email me and I can forward you the details, or check out her blog site - http://alexkruzel.blogspot.com.

Teaching

Jesse and I are continuing to enjoy teaching. Here's a picture of some of my students working as a team.
The school does not have any textbooks so Jesse and I have the flexibility to develop the curriculum outlined by the Ministry of Education using whatever resources we can find by ourselves. The weekly themes of the curriculum are broad enough to allow us to integrate information about health and discuss important issues during our lessons.
Our students are eager to continue learning outside of class. Jesse and I are beginning fun activities like a weekly English movie night, lunch bunch speaking English, English discussion group, and, of course, English at the beach. Interest is high.
One evening we met with our students for an informal "English hour" where we brought to the classroom a bunch of magazines that Justin and Mike (the returned volunteers) had collected. I was struck by how enthusiastically the students devoured the magazines. The loved paging through the articles and advertisements. Many were unfamiliar with the format of a magazine because access to printed resources is so limited. We are beginning to collect resources in English - education textbooks, teacher idea books, and a variety of other books at a variety of levels. We are hoping that people who come to visit us will use some of their suitcase space to bring the books here. In this way, we're hoping to gradually collect and organize a resource library for the students here, both to enrich their study of English and to offer resources for their teaching of English. Please send us emails if you have resources or ideas or connections for this project.

First Weeks of Teaching

Jesse and I began teaching classes a couple weeks ago. It´s going well and we´re enjoying it. Our students are at different levels, but they´re enthusiastic. (Last week, the theme of the lessons was elections. At one point, my whole class was chanting "Obama! Obama!") We´ve submitted a bunch of proposals for opportunities for the students to practice English outside of class. Hopefully they´ll be approved by the director of the school and we´ll be even busier soon.
The English track of the teacher training program has 3 classes of 30 students each. The students stay in one room and the teacher of each subject goes to them. Jesse is teaching Speaking Class and I am teaching Listening Class. Most of the students live on campus in a boarding house. They have a disciplined schedule of waking up at 4:30 to exercise, gathering to sing the national anthem at 6:45 before class, and filling assignments of work in the gardens after classes. Some of our students are in their late teens, many in their 20´s, and a few even older. Many have families of their own and are motivated, giving up a lot of time with their families to be here.
If anyone is interested in corresponding with one of our students, we have some motivated students who would be excited to correspond and practice their English. Send us an email to let us know if you would like to do that.
One of my favorite parts of Peace Corps so far is that I´m living in the community as a neighbor, not just a visitor. That´s why I love it when the kids stop by after school to kick the soccer ball with Jesse, when the neighbor´s baby toddles in the door to visit, or when when I can share dinner samples or cake recipes back and forth with my friend.