July 24

I realize it has been quite some time since I wrote anything and given my penchant for living an extraordinarily exciting life (sarcasm) this blog entry could potentially go on for days. In the interest of time (and length) I will proceed to highlight the highlights.

I believe I last wrote about Mozambican Independence day, which would bring me back to June 25 and the penultimate week of my second trimester here in Mozambique.

After telling my students exactly what would be on the final exam, I still had plenty of students who cheated, plenty who failed, and just a few that appeared to have been listening during my lessons. However, I can say with confidence that my second trimester of teaching went a lot better than my first.

Following my final exam, I attended a Fourth of July party at a PCV site named Mangunde. At the Catholic Mission of Mangunde, I think I was as in the middle of nowhere as I have ever been, but the party (which included a Brazilian-style pig roast) was a lot of fun.

Although school officially ended July 10th the reality is that neither students nor teachers (except me of course) showed up for the last week. I actually went to school to turn in my grades the last day before break, and I had trouble finding someone to whom I could hand my grades.

I spent the first weekend of the holidays at a meeting regarding the future of a Peace Corps Project called JOMA (I wrote about it in an earlier post if you want to refer back). In general, Peace Corps Volunteers live in different places, have very different experiences, discover their own useful ways of dealing with said experiences, and always think they are right. The result was that not a whole lot was accomplished during the meeting, but we got some stuff done and the discourse got me thinking (mostly about how ineffective “development” is in Mozambique).

Following the JOMA meeting I caught a ride to Beira (Mozambique’s second largest city which also happens to be set in mosquito-ridden swamp on the Indian Ocean) to judge a Science Fair for Sofala Province. Many of the Mozambican students have quite a ways to go in terms of understanding the scientific method, but I think the science fair (and its accompanying prizes) motivated them to think about some interesting ideas. Among the top projects were: toothpaste made from banana peels and ash, a homemade pesticide, and a study about how public urination (a serious problem here) affects plant life. I also got to spend some time in Beira, the city is primarily known for its dilapidated colonial architecture (which can be appealing), and its abundance of stores (lots of stores is among the greatest assets a city can have here in Mozambique). Crumbling buildings aside, Beira is a vibrant and interesting city, boasting attractions such as a golf course, fountain, and a mall.

Following science fair cleanup I returned to Chimoio for a few days of relaxing and eating the cookies that were left over from science fair (I ate a lot of cookies). I also spent a day at Mercado 38, which is an enormous used clothing market outside of Chimoio (imagine a Goodwill Store the size of an oil tanker - the used clothing primarily comes from developed western nations i.e. U.S.A, Europe, Australia). Anyway, it is a fun place to go and if you look hard enough you can find some great stuff.

I left Chimoio early last week for a few days in Catandica, which is a small town at the foot of the Serashoa mountains on the Zimbabwe border (the spelling on that mountain range is almost certainly wrong). I went hiking with some other PCVs on the trails that lead up and over the mountains (and harbor mainly unofficial cross-border activity between Mozambique and Zimbabwe). We spoke Portuguese with Mozambicans, English with Zimbabweans and tried to toss in a word or two of Shona (which is the local dialect for much of Zimbabwe and this part of Mozambique). The mountains were gorgeous and I am pretty sure I saw 762 meter-high Matarazi Falls in the distance (the tallest waterfall in Zim).