March 1

Normally around this time I would be eagerly anticipating the end of the college basketball season (for reasons ranging from the excitement of the conference and national tournaments to the end of practicing everyday). Here in Mozambique, however, there is not much in the way of college basketball exposure – people who can afford televisions generally prefer to watch Brazilian soap operas.

I recently told my mom that I was considering scraping this blog – as I view my life at this point to be extremely unexciting, but she assured me that people were actually reading it. She also (albeit unsolicited) gave me topics to write about such as “thoughts about water conservation in the US and Moz”. I am not sure where that came from, but perhaps I will address it later (I can tell you that it is a lot easier to conserve water when it does not come out of a tap). Maybe the truth is that reading blogs is just more uplifting that watching the ticker on MSNBC these days.

My teaching career here in Mozambique is progressing smoothly. I actually have about 430 students (but only a fraction of them show up to any given class). Sometimes (lots of times) I pronounce a Portuguese word incorrectly and at other times I use a masculine article for a feminine word or vice-versa. At these instances, my students giggle at me. Generally though, they seem to understand my lectures – though that does not mean they will study. Whenever I tell another English speaker/white person that I teach high school chemistry in Portuguese they are always extremely impressed, which I am fine with (I like being impressive). I do realize, however, that if they actually visited one of my classes they would be much less impressed (naturally I do not invite them to my classes).

I am giving my first test this week, and I am expecting some bad results. I am supposed to follow a strict national curriculum. The progression of the curriculum, however, is not particularly logical and most of my students act as though they have never taken chemistry before (which they all have) so it is difficult to follow the curriculum. As the teacher, I am the only person who has a textbook (or really any books) therefore I am the textbook for my students. So it is very important that I give them notes that they can go back and study that will make sense. This is difficult for a few reasons. First, my students do not have any note taking skills – they can only copy stuff that I write on the board. Second, most of the students do not try to understand stuff during class – they just want to get the notes and get out of there (this is like what I did during organic chem. in college). They might study the notes before the test, but they do not have a textbook to read if they do not understand something (like I had in college). This is a problem. They are used to is teachers giving definitions, memorizing the definitions and than regurgitating the definitions for the test. I am the first Peace Corps science teacher in my village and regurgitation is not going to work on my tests. I predict there will be a lot of students failing and a lot of students cheating – both are bad.

On another note, the school uniform for the Escola Secundaria Geral de MaCombe - my school – is pine tree green pants/skirts for the ladies, mint chocolate chip ice cream green shirt, and a pine tree green tie.

We put up a tire swing on one of the mango trees in our backyard as a present to the children who feel that they need to keep us company every hour of the day. Although I think they like it, the tire swing compares favorably to the coke bottle in “The Gods Must be Crazy”. It causes all kinds of problems, but it does keep them off of our back stoop.