Thousands of little boxes

Grading in Mozambique involves filling little squares with numbers
1-20. Each student receives marks for three tests and then a final
grade based on the average. That means filling four little squares for
each student, and we have about 300 students each - plus everything
must be in pencil first and then traced over in pen, and all grade
sheets must be made in duplicate in case of any irregularities.
Teachers are also responsible for statistical maps of their students'
learning outcomes, which involves another sheet of little squares
documenting how many kids took each test by gender, and calculating
the pass/fail percentage for each class and gender. Plus, due to our
faulty electricity situation, part of the task had to be done hunched
over the light of a candle. This all adds up to literally thousands of
little boxes we've filled this week and this is just the first half of
the grading process. Because we are taking students to national youth
conferences next week during the break, we're missing out on
'conselhos' in which teachers get together and read off the grades for
each class while the term director fills out a very large grade sheet
to display publically. This is another example of when Americans think
about how many work hours could be saved with the use of a computer or
photocopier.

Positive Testing Experience

If you've been reading our blog regularly you've heard a lot about
cheating and the general difficulties of administering tests in
Mozambique. While testing hasn't been all bad, we are pleased to
report a very positive experience we had giving our students oral
tests. Due to some of the previous frustrations with written testing
and scheduling issues due to finals being held three weeks before the
end of the trimester, we decided to experiment with oral tests.
Students were very excited by the idea and even applauded the
announcement. Since every indoor space at school is continuously in
use, we took students outside one by one and quized them, often
creating small crowds of spectating students, teachers, and
passers-by, which be had to periodically shew away so our kids
wouldn't get too nervous. When it rained we had to commandeer part of
the computer lab or take shelter under the roof eaves in the outdoor
walkway. Many students with low literacy performed much better on this
type of test, showing us that they really had learned something in
class. And best of all, it was virtually impossible for them to cheat
and we had no paperwork to grade at home!

Dia da Mulher (Women's Day)

I am often called a bad wife by our neighbors for letting Luc do
things like cook, clean, wash clothes, or other sorts of traditional
women's work instead of letting him relax while I slave away. Well at
least there's one day a year when this is not a problem: Mozambican
Women's Day. This remnant of Mozambique's socialist past (along with
Heroes Day and Workers' Day) commemorates the day Josina Machel died,
wife of the first president and father of the independance movement,
Samora Machel. We had no school for the day and instead gathered at
the town center for a ceremony with the whole community. Luc and I
have been working with our youth groups school to prepare a play for
the occasion discouraging early marriage, a common problem here. Our
groups also made songs and dances to go along. The celebration was
typically disorganized: it started two hours late, had no real agenda
and no one was sure who was running the whole thing. But there was a
large audience and after a lengthy flag ceremony (20 minutes and the
flag was upside down still), greetings from all the political parties
and local groups (1 hour), and switching venues, our students finally
got to perform. With the eager audience inching in on all sides of our
performance space, our actors had to plow through 8 layers of kids to
enter or exit a scene. But everyone enjoyed their performances and our
kids felt very proud afterwards. In the afternoon there was an
all-female soccer match - teachers vs. students. Being the only
secondary school female teacher, I felt major pressure to join in with
the primary 'professoras', much to my students' delight! I didn't do
anything great or anything stupid (thank goodness). Luc made sure to
tell lots of people at the game that he was going to make me dinner
for Women's Day... It was unclear if he inspired any other men to do
the same!

Easter in Africa

Although our community is mostly Christian and Easter is a big deal
here, it is not nearly as grandiose as holy week in other latin
countries, or as commercial as Easter back in America. We did have a
procession to commemorate the passion of Christ, but without flower
carpets or costumes like we saw in Guatemala; only black marker
numbers on white paper nailed to the electric poles on the highway
marked the stations of the cross, where we knelt 14 times on the
asphalt under the hot tropical run, often holding up semis hauling
their cargoes to and from Malawi. The most hilarious part was our
Argentinian priest's use of a backwards-turned baseball cap to protect
his fair skin from the potent UV rays of the sun. We should have done
likewise as the whole ordeal left us dehydrated and exhausted, causing
us to bail on the subsequent Good Friday mass, after several hours of
all Chichewa praying. Many people enjoyed telling us that they saw us
leave early. We also skipped the evening vigil on Saturday, which
included baptisms, that started after dark and lasted until past
midnight. Easter Sunday mass was packed and also included a wedding.
So no chocolate bunnies, Easter grass, creme eggs or marshmallow Peeps
for us, just lots of church and the sugar cookies Janet made to give
to all our neighbors!

Chiwindi

We still have considerable linguistic difficulties with the local
dialect, Chichewa. Today we received a major morning storm so power
has been out ever since. We decided, instead of undertaking the
charcoal stove project, to eat out at one of our smoke-filled bamboo
hut restaurants in the market. The proprietors spoke no Portuguese, so
communication was a little difficult. These types of places only have
one item on their oral menu, but when we tried to ascertain this
information all we got was the word chiwindi. We pressed the issue
further and got some pantimiming something about our bellies and we
figured the owners wanted to know how hungry we were so they could
serve an adequate portion. What they actually were telling us arrived
on our plates: goat liver and intestines. Bon appetit!

Suprise - finals week!

We arrived back in site after the long return journey from Nampula and
were surprised to hear from our fellow teachers that we were giving
finals that week, since we still had three weeks left in the
trimester. Apparently that's how they do finals here because when we
went to school on Monday we found the entire schedule altered to
accomodate testing, and that we were expected to proctor a history
exam that morning. Students take cheating to the next level for
finals. The school is literally littered in cheat sheets after every
session; we made a collection of our favorites, including one which
was bound and covered like a small book and had crib notes on every
discipline. Since teachers aren't allowed to monitor their own classes
during finals, we had no way to control cheating on our tests. Grade
averages were much higher than on previous tests we administered
ourselves. Students have learned that their American teachers actually
crack down on cheating. They usually moan and sigh when we enter the
room to administer a test, and cheer when we merely walk by. Given the
amount of cheating going on, monitoring tests can be stressful and
present moral/emotional dilemmas since calling a student out on
cheating during the finals means they will receive a 0 and almost
surely fail that class for the trimester.

Ilha de Moçambique

After the conference, we figured we'd better take advantage of being
in Nampula, since who knew when we'd be there again. We decided to
seize the moment and changed our plane tickets to have a couples days
to visit Ilha de Moçambique, Mozambique's sole World Heritage site.
The miniature island served as the Portuguese capital for the first
300 years of their rule over the country, and thus is jam-packed with
palaces, fortresses, churches and winding streets lined with cracking,
chipping stone houses. Given the island's historic importance in
Indian Ocean trade, it still reflects a melange of Arab, Indian,
Chinese, and African cultures and peoples. You can also see the ocean
from pretty much anywhere on the island since it's only 500 meters at
its widest. We loved swimming in the ocean, which neither of us had
done since site visits in November , since we are prohibitted from
swimming in the marshy ponds and streams at our site due to the nasty,
flesh-eating parasites found in Africa's fresh water. It was extremely
hot and humid on the island. Our continuous sweating made us extra
grateful for our cool mountain climate back at site (the sweating was
especially continuous in Luc's case). One of our volunteers lives on
the island, so we saw her school (with ocean views), cooked squid with
her, and slept out under the stars on straw mats on her lawn (escaping
the suffocating heat indoors). These are the kinds of alluring
activities available in Mozambique for any potential visitors!

Peace Corps Reconnect

After serving in site for close to 4 months, Peace Corps brought all
of us new volunteers together again for a four-day conference in
Nampula. If you don't have a Mozambique map handy, Nampula is
approximately a 1500 km journey from our site in Tete. So that
translates into an additional 6 days to travel there and back, even
including the fact that we flew one leg of it (given the airlines
sitation here in moz, we went 500 km just to get to the flight). The
upside of all this was that we got to see a lot of the country,
including Mozambique's second city, Beira, which had a delightfully
derelict maritime colonial feel. We also saw Ilha de Moçambique, but
that's another post. Everyone at the conference was more excited about
seeing friends and staying in a fancy hotel with catered meals than
anything else our conference had to offer. We were especially excited
because we hadn't seen anyone from our group since Christmas since our
site is so isolated. We loved hearing stories, getting gossip (like
who already has a Mozambican boyfriend), and strategizing about common
problems such as systemic cheating, low learning outcomes, and heavy
teaching schedules. We also loved our king-sized bed with a real
mattress, satellite tv, air conditioning, eating meat, cheese,
pastries, ice cream, pastries, yogurt, cereal, apples, butter, honey,
and pizza (needless to say, Luc gained 5 pounds). Our formal sessions
were also useful. Luc had to lead one on monitoring and evaluation
that was got good reviews (surprisingly, as you might imagine, given
the subject). We also had daily trivia games on Mozambican history and
geography, and together we won every one, meaning we got lots of
chocolate bars and cookies as prizes!

We want to learn!

In order to better understand Mozambican teaching and improve our own
methods, Peace Corps encourages us to observe our counterpart teachers
in the classroom and have our own teaching observed as well. I (Luc)
attempted to do this with the other English teacher before our
Reconnect conference so I could report back. Unfortunately, I was
unsuccessful. On my first attempt, I arrived on time to the class we
agreed on, only to find my counterpart a no-show. I later found out he
had an unscheduled visit to the hospital. Teacher absenteeism is a big
problem in Mozambique, and although our school isn't as bad as some,
this just confirms the reality of students missing out on learning
opportunities. Interestingly, the students, instead of enjoying the
free period chilling in the shade chewing on sugar cane, persuaded me
to teach an impromptu English class on colors. They kept insisting how
much they wanted to learn English. The next time I attempted to
observe my counterpart's class a similar thing happened, except this
time there was a teacher meeting he had to attend. I ended up doing a
review session for his students' mid-term, but I had on idea what they
had been studying! Our students love school so much and have so much
desire to learn - it's unfortunate that so many obstacles conspire to
prevent very much learning from happening in our little school!