October 18
My classes officially ended on October 16, although a majority of students and teachers stopped coming to school near the end of September. The point is, however, that as of October 16 I officially completed one year of teaching ninth grade chemistry in Mozambique. Luckily (or maybe unluckily) for me ninth graders do not take a national exam so I do not really have anyway to evaluate the effectiveness of my teaching. Were I to give myself a self-evaluation however, in would be glowing (except for the first trimester when I could not speak Portuguese to save my life).
The end of a year of teaching in Mozambique is not all fun and games. To make a broad generalization about Mozambican students (which is a bad way to consider people of any nationality) they do not study, and they are always unhappy with their grades. As a result, I have spent the last week dealing with students and their bad grades. I have to explain to them that they did not study during the year, they cheated or tried to cheat on all of my tests, they do not know anything about chemistry and they do not deserve to pass. This kind of reasoning blows their minds, in large part because many of my colleagues give students completely underserved “help” at the end of the year – which allows them to pass, thus moving on to the next grade without knowing anything. To be frank, the education system in this country leaves a lot to be desired.
Students result to some pretty desperate measures at this time of year, in fact I would not hesitate to say that most of many students put more effort into trying to get me to “help” their grade than actually studying during the year. Some students offer to buy me things, some offer other kinds of favors I even had one student forge a letter from my school director (signature and all) that mandated I change his grade. For me it is all just an exercise in saying no, and thanks to all those anti-drug campaigns in elementary school (“just say no!”) I am well practiced.
I think I mentioned something in my last post about my electricity problems, they have been taken care of (thank goodness) and I am once again living happily in Gondola.
My birthday came and went at the end of September (kudos to all of you who remembered and shame on those of you who did not). The literal Portuguese translation for getting older is: “I did years”. So I did years here in Mozambique, and I have to say it was a nice birthday. There was a gathering of Peace Corps Volunteers the weekend before and we all went out for pizza in the city. The actual day of my birthday I taught six classes (and did not tell my students because a bunch of them are older than me and it would be kind of awkward for them to know my age) and my roommate (who a year ago could not have made grilled cheese) cooked an excellent dinner of spaghetti and meatballs.
Elections (which I mentioned last time) are coming up in about a week and they are really consuming the country at the moment. As per Peace Corps policy I do not have an opinion about Mozambican politics, though I do hope the various parties can avoid any kind of violence. The combination of imminent Mozambican presidential elections and the latest dose of trouble in Zimbabwe has us (PCVs) on relatively high security alert – which, in addition to our heightened vigilance means we are not supposed to leave site.
