Every day thus far I’ve gotten out of bed, only to be overwhelmed by crashing waves of terror, excitement, abandonment, relief, laziness and satisfaction. There’s a little bit of homesickness as well as some serious yearning for the things I left behind (air-conditioning is a big one), but those thoughts are trumped by the quick realization that I’ve finally made it. I’m here. And I have a ton of work to do.
I arrived at site last Saturday, and how appropriate that it was also the first night of Chanukah (I think…). What I arrived to was quite possibly the best gift I have ever received: a house with electricity and running water that is nothing short of fantastic. There’s a special title – more of a joke actually – about Volunteers who have electricity and running water. They are part of the Posh Corps. I’m now officially a part of that group; and in Mozambique none the less, one of the poorest countries in the world. Go figure. What’s more is that Chris, the volunteer that I’m replacing at site, left me a ton to work with.
This was completely unexpected. Prior to arriving, I had the opportunity to talk with Chris a few times on the phone. During one of our conversations, he told me that his house, now my house, had recently been broken into while he was away from site, and some of his stuff had been stolen. He mentioned that both the fridge and mattress had been taken, so I kind of assumed the worst, and figured that I was going to be arriving to a practically empty house. When I got here though, I discovered that was far from the truth. Although there was no replacement fridge, there was a brand new twin-size foam mattress present and beckoning me to start working on my own personal body groove (it’s only been a week and I’ve already got a body mold…). In addition to that, I’ve got art on the walls, a diverse collection of time-worn spices, some kitchen supplies (I HAVE A WOK!), a mini-oven with two burners on top (this thing is pretty janky though and may or may not work), a collection of books, and a ton of little knick-knacks for me to play with (broken electronics, tools, schools supplies, cards games, etc.). Happy Chanukah to me.
There are three other cookie-cutter duplexes flanking my house, and all border a high cinderblock wall that forms the eastern boundary of the school complex. Each house is equipped with running water and electricity. The water is cold (well, more like luke-warm), but being as that it’s about 194 degrees outside, I’ve come to relish its mildly-frigid feel. The electrical distribution system here works just the same as it did in Namaacha. I’ve got a meter on the front of my house that shows me a balance of Kilowatt-Hours. As I use up energy, the meter goes down, and when I need a refill, I have to head into town and wait in line with the rest of the locals to buy credit from a store-front (hold your horses people, it’s not as exciting as I’m making it sound).
My new house, a quaint little concrete duplex, was built as part of the city’s new expansion zone. With it, they built a brand spankin’ new secondary school (Escola Secondaria 15 de Outubro, where I’ll be teaching) complete with ten classrooms, two dormitories, a fully equipped cafeteria and kitchen, water tower, teacher lounge, office, library, infirmary, science lab, and computer lab. Yeah…computer lab. I haven’t gotten to go in it yet, but from peeking in the window, it looks like they have a pretty decent set-up. Things are pretty quiet over at school right now, as they are currently in the middle of the Mozambican equivalent to the American summer break until mid-January when things will get started again. In the meantime, all the teachers are working on grading tests and preparing for the new school year.
I spent a few days over at school earlier this week. I wanted to meet some of my new colleagues, as well as my new bosses (there is a huge political hierarchy of directors in Mozambican schools, but I’ll save that information for another post when I understand it all better). What I can tell you is that the big head-honcho – or Chefe, a synonymous term they like to use a to here – is the School Director; and my Director seems great. He was excited to have me around, which made me feel the same way. Apparently, Monetpuez is desperate for Physics teachers, so I’m helping to fill a huge void that would otherwise be empty.
It didn’t take long for him to put me to work too. The other physics teacher needed help putting together the 11th and 12th grade curriculums this year, so I sat down with him and did what I could (not much, since I don’t know what these students need to learn, nor do I know how to write a curriculum). I spent most of the time just sitting there learning new words and gawking at some of the things the government (which determines what students will learn each year) wants us to teach these kids. Some of these subjects include waves (standard), mechanics (standard), thermodynamics (semi-standard), electromagnetism (also semi-standard), and a little unit on nuclear physics (whack). Not only do I have to learn how to speak Portuguese, but now I need to learn to speak Portuguese and then use it to eloquently describe the process of nuclear fission. This is gonna be an interesting year.
Other Highlights:
- For the past few days I’ve been under a self-imposed house arrest as two Mozambicans work to put security bars on all of my windows and doors. It’s taking forever and making my house dirty, but it’ll be worth it when I can leave my windows open at night! Oh yeah, the protection sounds pretty cool too.
- Holy shit it’s hot here.
- Holy shit, when it rains here, it really rains. Kinda like the rain in Florida. It just shows up out of nowhere. Storms for a while (sometimes five minutes, sometimes two hours), and then disappears again. The difference is that things dry up really quick around here.
You have a wok!? Jealous. And yeah, I'm with you on "Holy shit it's hot". I used to think Chimoio was hot. People here describe Chimoio as either "fresco" or "frio". Errrrr
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