Last Day of Class

It goes without saying that my students bring me a fountain of joy. Today was my last day of classes in Mozambique and I am struck by how quickly these two years of teaching have slipped past me. When I think on my first day of class and how nervous I was, how little I spoke Portuguese, and how I didn’t know what the content was that I was supposed to teach to my students, I am amazed that I was even allowed to teach. My students have taught me more than patience and resilience. They have taught me to enjoy my little successes and to roll with the flow.

My students have a wide variety of ages and ability levels and they have come unbelievably far in the year that I’ve worked with them. It’s a unique experience to live on the same campus as they do because we have moments outside of class together. I have enjoyed all the jokes, walks, dull moments, dances, and soccer games shared with them; it has been fun being one of the “campus moms” to give counsel and support to the students who want it.

Peace Corps wouldn’t have been the same without them.

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Our students surprised me and Leslie today during my time for math with a beautiful song that our student Mara created for us. It made us both cry it was so sweet! The translation is in the description of the video in the link.

Joy – Part 4: Agostino

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many Mozambicans have a knack for repairing everyday objects. For example, Agostino is a jack-of-all trades. He is a shoe repairman, technology wiz, and cellphone technician. It is rare to find him not working on a project. Agostino works from his home and charges modest fees for his work: about 50 cents for a shoe repair and about $1.50 for technology repairs, depending on the level of work needed. He truly is a miracle worker with a screw driver and has consistent daily business. Agostino is known for being reliable and honest with this work and is always there to greet people with a big “hello there” and an even bigger smile. He is a self-made man who could easily have been an engineer in a different setting.

Agostino’s dream within the next five years is to be able to invite 10 family members over to his house on Christmas to have a big party with them and other members of the community. He hopes to be able to eat rice and chicken at this party and have lot of music and dancing. While this might seem like a simple enough thing to do, few people in our town are able to throw parties for holidays. The costs of transportation for out-of-town family members, food, and energy for playing music are many times out of reach for the typical family in our community. Most families here do not celebrate Christmas at all – at least not in the Western standard of the day. Generally, only people in the cities or larger communities are able to celebrate with an extra-special meal or gifts. Due to the large Muslim population in our town, Christmas is also not widely thought of as a Christian holiday. Rather, most community members refer to it as ‘Family Day.’ Few people work on Family Day and almost everyone stays at home to enjoy their family’s company, regardless of their socio-economic level.

I am grateful for Agostino because of his hearty greetings and passion for work. His work ethic is inspirational and he always seems to see the positive in any situation, probably because he is able to fix almost anything he gets his hands on and knows that life’s hiccups won’t get him permanently down.

Joy – Part 3: Leticia

I have gotten to know Leticia, a 48-year old mom and farmer, after I was able to take her daughter to a girl’s empowerment workshop last year. Our relationship started with basic greetings on my walks home and have since developed into sometimes hours-long chats. She has become one of my ever-increasing number of host moms in town as she makes sure that I am eating well enough. It is not unusual for her to send me home with something that she has grown in her farm, because she doesn’t believe me when I say that I do indeed cook for myself.

Leticia is one of the coolest women I have met here. Despite having given birth to 11 kids, spanning from 6 to 37 years of age, she still has the energy to set entrepreneurial goals that go outside of the family. Since March, Leticia has been in the works to start a farming coalition with 18 other women in our town. Amongst the 19 participants, they have raised 8,500.00 Mt (about $140) to put into a bank account with a partnering organization. This organization will contribute 40,000.00 Mt ($665) to the funds that the women have already raised to buy seeds, better farming materials, and training for the women. If all goes well, Leticia’s group will receive the money within the next two months, which lines up perfectly with planting for the upcoming corn season.

Setting up this woman’s coalition has been no easy feat. Leticia has had to go to the city countless times throughout this past year to make every step official. For example, she, along with her husband, have needed to get approval for this group from the town leader, gather together the various women participants, fill out the correct documents – which is a difficult task for most women in our community as the literacy rates are deplorably low, meet with the leaders of the partnering organization, set up a bank account, and motivate the women in the group to not only raise the money but to also turn the money over to the group’s bank account. At every step, there has seemed to be a challenge that delayed the process. However, all the documents have now been turned in and the money has been raised, so it is currently a waiting game to receive the final approval from the organization to get the remaining money in the account.

Leticia is particularly proud of this project – as she should be – because it means that the quality of her produce will only increase, meaning better profits when it comes time to sell. With better profits, she will be able to purchase more lucrative seeds to plant, such as sesame seeds, which will set her apart from the other farmers in town. As she continues to better her farm, she will one day be able to consider hiring farming help. These extra hands will give more flexibility for her younger kids to continue with their studies because they wouldn’t need to help in the fields every morning. For every child that manages to finish their schooling and gain a job, it will be an ever bigger economic boost to their family.

I am grateful for my relationship with this incredible woman. She truly is one of the most humble, motivated, hardworking, and generous women that I have the pleasure of knowing. If we could all strive to be like a little bit more like Leticia, the world would be a better place for it.

Joy – Part 2: Flora

My friend, Flora Agostino, is yet another person who fills me with joy. Flora is one of the strong women I referred to in a previous blog post about women I have gotten to know throughout my time in my community. She is extra special to me because our conversations have been able to go beyond the typical greetings, as she speaks Portuguese in addition to the local language, Macua.

 

Flora was born in March of 1988 in Nampula city and lived there with her family until she was four years old. After her dad died, she moved to our community where she has lived for the greater chunk of her life up until now. She is 30 years old and has 5 kids: 3 boys and 2 girls, ages 4 months (pictured in the photo), 5, 6, 7 and 10 years old.  Like many women in our town, Flora is a single mom who is trying to support herself and her children. She had been living in Nampula city with her husband, the youngest child’s father, until she decided that she wasn’t going to subject herself or her kids to poor treatment and then moved back to town while she was still pregnant. Flora unfortunately is not receiving any financial help from her children’s fathers.

One thing that Flora loves to do is to cook. She loves cooking beans, chicken, xima, matapa, and so much more, mostly because she loves to see the joy on peoples’ faces after eating her treats. Her goal is to start selling this kind of food in the market to help raise money for her family. Flora currently sells a bread-type snack called ‘putos’ on the side of the road to earn an income, though she says that it is very difficult to sell all that she makes. It costs about 130.00 Mt (around 2 dollars) to buy all the ingredients, yet some days she only sells 100.00 Mt worth of putos – a loss of 0.50 cents. To put that in perspective, the 30.00 Mt could buy a dried fish dinner for her whole family for a night. When it is a good day, she makes a maximum of a 70.00 Mt profit (a little more than a dollar). Flora currently has the funds to start selling meals in the market; the present challenge is to find an available spot to cook and sell the food. She had a location lined up but unfortunately the owner gave the space to someone else during the time that she was raising the start-up money.

Despite the seemingly endless stream of challenges that she faces, Flora always looks for the bright side of the situation. For example, even though she has had tougher relationships with her previous two husbands, Flora loves her kids and has said that they are the best thing that came out of those marriages. She would still like to get married again so that both she and her husband can work to provide for a more secure future. When I asked, she told me, giggling all the while, that her ideal man is someone who loves her, is educated, tall, strong, and someone who can love her family.

The days that I can laugh with Flora are some of my favorite days. I have loved painting our nails together, making friendship bracelets for her kids, prepping food for her dinner, and simply sitting in each other’s presence. Her strength and humor have been a wonderful part of my experience and have brought me much joy.

Joy – Part 1

With the last weeks in my town coming up, I figured that I should take some time to write out the things that fill me with joy before I pack up and start making my way to my American home. I thought that I could write little blurbs about these moments and share them with you all!

On my walks around town, I usually find myself going on a path that passes by this family. This family constantly fills me with joy because they always greet me with a huge smile and a, “Katarina is here – Katarina is here!” shout. The little girl expects to be swung around a few times and the boys and I go all out with ninja moves or kicking a soccer ball around. The mom is always there to ask me how I am and where I am off to on that day’s walk. These little things make me smile, no matter the circumstances of the day. My wanderings wouldn’t be nearly as bright without them.

Grief

In Mozambique, death is unfortunately a common occurrence. My roommate’s host dad died of an unknown illness shortly after we moved to our town. A few weeks later, a neighborhood child who was eight years old died of diarrhea. I have known people to die in car accidents as well as due to stomach aches, malaria, parasites, and many other illnesses. Children are especially vulnerable to these illnesses.

It is difficult to describe, but, after a time these mortalities become numbing. A person can say, “my dad died” and seem – to my foreign eyes – to be indifferent about it. In my experience, I have learned that Mozambicans handle their grief much differently than Americans do. For example, if any relative (or relative of a relative or friend of a relative) dies, everyone will go to the funeral. The only exception I have heard of to the funeral attendance “rule” is if a person lives more than a two-day drive away from the deceased’s residence. Even if a person doesn’t have money to travel to participate in the service, the community will put funds together to make sure that they can go. Due to the lack of ways to preserve the body, the funeral usually takes place within three days of the death. During this time, the family gathers together, cooks together, sleeps together, and shares what they can together. The day of the funeral is for crying. Afterwards, it is seen as a weakness to cry. Generally, after the funeral, I have noticed that the deceased is not mentioned very often. Friends of the grieving will ask how the funeral went, though not about how the family is handling the death. It seems that people tend to grieve through not talking much about it. Or, if they do, it is very matter-of-fact. For example, they will say, “yes, …., was sick” or “…. was in a fatal car accident.” It is rare for the grieving to speak of the character of the person.

In mid-May my aunt started to get sick. My family very quickly found out that she had an aggressive form of cancer that spread astonishingly fast. It was miserable being so far away from home during these weeks. All I wanted to do was to help take care of Auntie Lynn. With every update, it was increasingly difficult to keep my grief at bay. At first, when the prognosis seemed hopeful, I was hesitant to talk about the situation with my Mozambican friends. With so many other illnesses going on here, why should I burden them with one more? However, once my grief started to overflow into my everyday life, people started to notice and ask what was wrong. It was surprisingly comforting to listen to their views. While I didn’t want to hear about how illnesses are the way of life and that we need to learn how to accept them, I knew that every person who spoke to me had lost someone to some form of illness. They were speaking from their hearts and experiences. My friends have experienced much more loss than I have and it was humbling to remember that there is no chemotherapy or radiation treatment in my province. Almost every person in this region who develops cancer will die from it due to the lack of care options.

My friends grieved with me when they learned that I couldn’t participate in my aunt’s funeral and memorial services. To support me, they sent me many encouraging messages and gave me many hugs. The day after my aunt passed, I emotionally couldn’t get through one of my classes and literally had to run out of the classroom to avoid bursting into tears in front of them. Afterwards, my students made sure that I knew that they were now my family and a few even offered to cook for me. I felt loved.

The interesting part of this whole experience was needing to explain the time gap between my aunt’s passing and the memorial service as well as the reason why I was still expressing my pain, even weeks later. As I mentioned, it is almost unheard of for a funeral to be more than a week after the death and my aunt’s memorial service was two weeks later. I needed to explain what cremation was and how it is more difficult for people to drop everything to travel for an unexpected funeral. I needed to explain how amazing of a person my aunt was and why her death was affecting me as much as it was/is. I needed to explain how close my family is and how it was emotionally straining not to be able to take part in this family time. I needed to explain how, even two weeks before my aunt’s death, we were still expecting to have much more time with her.  It was strange to share stories about my life with her, because my friends seemed uncomfortable talking about her life.

Grief affects everyone. However, I have learned that the signs of grieving are cultural. What is grieving to me is completely different than how my friends process their pain. As terrible as these past months have been emotionally, it has been a unique learning experience. I was close, so close, to choosing to end my time in Mozambique early to go home and be with my family. Thankfully, I chose to stay. I know my aunt would have wanted me to stay and make the most of my short time left in this beautiful country. Hopefully I will be able to continue my learning.

World Cup

Recently, my little world has been filled with the bigness of the World Cup. I know what you must be thinking. Me? Into soccer? Say what? I started watching the games about a month ago and have been following it obsessively ever since. It is fairly common knowledge that soccer is a bigger deal abroad than it is in the States. This is the game that brings people from ALL OVER THE WORLD together; it is the truly unifying sport. What other sport has such a large representation of nationalities? While most people in my community don’t keep up with the progress of the games, most of the students, teachers, and workers at my school do follow them. I have been lucky to be able to watch most of the games from the comfort of the cafeteria TV or through a live stream on my computer. Normally there are at least ten people watching the game of the night with me (sometimes many more). We spend the game cheering on our preferred team and egging on our competitor’s supporters. I’ve learned a few phrases to rag on the other team, such as “your team has been eating a lot of beans” and “your team spent the night in the bar.”

The strangest part of my World Cup experience occurred during my students’ week break. That Monday of the break, I was watching the game in the cafeteria like normal and, without notice, an entire soccer team piles into the room watch the game as well. I quickly found out that they were a team from Lichinga (the capital of one of the northern provinces) and that they came to play a game with the team on Ilha de Moꞔambique. They decided to train at our school for the week leading up to the match. It was hilarious having them here. They were big guys with even bigger egos and their presence could be felt throughout the entire campus. Everywhere they went, they were completely at ease as if they were at home. My favorite part was going on a walk with a few of the players to show them our town’s local quarry. It is a beautiful spot and visitors of our town shouldn’t leave without making a stop there. The guys and I played Uno, listened to some music on my speakers, and had a good time while there. They thought that I was crazy to be doing what I’m doing and I told them I thought that they were crazy to be doing what they were doing. We got a good laugh out of that. By the time the soccer team left the school for their match, I was invited to ride with them in the team bus to watch their game. I decided to turn them down due to the craziness of the situation… I’d have been the only woman in a bus full of extremely muscular, masculine, and confident men. With that being said, if I can be transparent, I was tempted by the offer…

While my initial World Cup team favorites have slowly and painfully become eliminated, I will still go into the city this Sunday to support Croatia in the final game. I have made a few bets on this game and I don’t want Croatia to lose when there are pizzas on the line. I am glad that I have found the enjoyment of the tournament, which has allowed me to become closer to those around me. It has been the best way to pass my evenings. I’m a little sad that the World Cup is coming to an end, though I feel fortunate to have lived through the games in Mozambique. Few things are sweeter than watching people jump out of their chairs, run around a bit, and yell their excitement when their team scores a goal. That level of passion for soccer is hard to find in the States.

Flash Flood

These past couple of days (weeks, if I’m being honest) I have been feeling down. I have still been loving my work, but my mind has been elsewhere. Consequently, that has made it difficult to connect with what it is I am doing at the given moment. Nothing seemed to change, despite all that I was doing to get past it. I just kept finding myself disconnected. After my friends from my town persisted in knowing why I was so tired all the time, I finally started to confide in them about how I was feeling. I wasn’t expecting much… Maybe just an ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ or a ‘you’ll work through it’ comment. How I was wrong.

At first nothing seemed to change. I still gave my normal classes. I still went on my afternoon walks around town. I still talked with the same people and played with the same kids. However, I began to realize that my female friends started opening up to me more. One thing I need to mention before going on, is how many female PC Volunteers observe the difficulty of making female Mozambican friends. Not having kids or a husband/boyfriend of one’s own is perceived to be a huge barrier against being truly accepted as a part of the women’s group. To grossly over-generalize, there isn’t much to talk about (on the surface-level) with women when one does not have kids or a husband of their own. Throughout this year, I have slowly gotten to know some of the women of my town, but it has only been through basic conversations about the home, family, fields, and husband.

After opening up about what has been going on with me, these conversations have begun to shift. Now, I find that I am spending the vast majority of my afternoon “walks” sitting with my female friends talking about whatever comes to mind: American culture, dating in Mozambique, opinions on staying at home versus continuing studying, premature marriages, good/bad husbands, food, daily tasks, learning languages, difficulties at home, music, etc. I have also been asked to sit in the yards of more women than normal. Granted, this did not happen the very next day after I opened up. It is still a process trickling in after a few weeks of admitting that I’m not completely fine. In comparison to the entire past year, however, this level of openness came like a flash flood.

The acceptance that I am beginning to feel among the women is amazing. I honestly think that it took the first step of saying that not everything is okay to let the trust of my friends run both ways. While I am still feeling disconnected and a little off, I know that I am going to be just fine. To me, going through this disconnectedness has been worth the opportunity to become closer to my female community members.

Esperança

 

As a student, I never wanted summer break to end. Don’t get me wrong… I loved school and was (almost) always excited for the first day of classes. However, I never thought, “Gee, I want my summer free time to end.” I loved the seemingly endless days playing with friends and running wild around my neighborhood. Every memory I have of summer break has a shimmering glow about them.

Now, as a teacher, I can definitively say that I can’t wait for classes to get going again. The seemingly endless days have lost their glamour; I find it ironic how much my perspective has changed. I am trying my best to stay busy while I wait to receive my schedule, through hanging out with my host family, playing with the kiddos, and exercising. As fun as this is, and how nice it is to be with my community members, I am still anxious to get going on the school year.

However, due to a few predictable delays, our school hasn’t received the list of students who were accepted into the teaching training program. As such, there is yet to be a single student in sight and classes will not be starting on Monday, which was the scheduled start date. This is actually turning out to be a good thing, despite the summer-time boredom. There are a few complications with the Mozambican Ministry of Education and Peace Corps Volunteers teaching at teacher training school (i.e.: my school). Peace Corps is doing everything it can to try to allow those of us at these schools to finish the year without needing to switch to a high school. Since my town doesn’t have a high school, if the decision isn’t in our favor, my roommate and I would need to move to a new town to teach at a high school.

I have esperanꞔa, hope, that everything will work out, regardless of where I end up. If I am being honest, there isn’t much I can do at this point except to hope. I am trying to go about life in my town as if everything is normal, until I am told that I need to move (or not). I am hoping that my school gets its list of students, so that classes can get underway. I am hoping that we get a positive decision from the Ministry. I am hoping that this school year goes even better than last year. Finally, I am hoping that summer break, with all its uncertainty, ends soon.

Traveling Around

A common critique of Peace Corps Volunteers is how our time is essentially a vacation. On one hand, we are needing to learn new languages, work in that language, figure out how to navigate cultural differences, etc. so our job can be very challenging and nothing at all like a vacation. On the other hand, we are in new (to us) parts of the world and have more avenues to travel around during our breaks.

This past month I did have the opportunity to travel around with my mom and aunt. This time was truly incredible. We were able to meet in Johannesburg before going to a safari outside of Durban, South Africa. It was pathetic how much I enjoyed the food in the buffets… At one point I commented on how the food smelled heavenly and, if I am honest, I almost cried at the deliciousness of the delicacies.

The safari was a blast. We got to see elephants, black and white rhinos, a cheetah, baboons, monkeys, hippos, impalahs, zebrahs, giraffes, and more. We also had the opportunity to participate in an elephant interaction where we were able to feed three elephants, touch one of their tongues, and feel up its tusk. It was a very fun experience because the elephants know what time to show up to this encounter every day and then leave shortly after. It’s the time of day that they get to have special treats (for us too!).

Cape Town was a whirl wind experience with a full day tour of the Cape Point Peninsula and a trip to Table Top Mountain. Cape Town is stunning… The ocean views are jaw dropping everywhere you can look. My favorite part was seeing a baboon run towards a car and hang out for a bit on its roof.  My (close) second favorite part was going to the location in Cape Town that has a colony of penguins. They are ridiculously cute.

After our time in South Africa, we made our way up to northern Mozambique to visit my home and community. We had an adventure straight from the get-go with two blown tires… One thing about Mozambique is how we must be flexible in all aspects. We had a great time walking around my community to meet my host family and other friends around town. Everyone was so excited to meet my family (and I loved showing them off to my community). Due to the cyclone that passed through the northern coast, we stayed at home longer than I had originally intended enjoying playing Uno in the candlelight.

From this point, we made our way to southern Mozambique in Maputo city where I had my midway through service conference with the other cohorts in my group. It was a wonderful time to catch up with the other volunteers from all over the country. For many of them, I hadn’t seen them since December 2016!

The last part of my travel was a quick trip back to South Africa to gain a Mozambican work visa. Eleven of us got to enjoy the comforts of an extremely fancy mall where we saw movies (in a movie theater!!!), bowled, got haircuts, and ate Greek-Mexican food and juicy burgers. It was a treat to be able to pamper ourselves for a bit before going back to our homes across Mozambique.

Now we are on our way home to begin our second year of teaching and our second year of service. It was great to travel, but I am absolutely excited to get back home and back to work.