On Life Logistics

The requested: How I spend my days.  Since coming to Mozambique, I would divide my time into 4 parts: The first 4 days in the chic Cardoso Hotel, PC training with my host family, being “at site” before school preparation really started, and being at site when there is actually work to do.

Hotel Cardoso: A hotel that is entirely too fancy to host 68 dirty, jet-lagged Peace Corps volunteers, yet hosted us anyway.  We lived in a magical land of never ending buffets and never ending conference sessions.

“Pre-Service Training:” A 10-week period that often felt like a glorified study abroad, where I spent mornings and afternoons Monday-Friday learning Portuguese and security/health/education tidbits, weekends learning how to do things without machines (laundry being the prime example), playing with my host siblings (ages 17, 13, 12, 11, 8) and playing with other volunteers. 

The tea field before the work:  As soon as we moved in, we commenced helping the school finish up final grades.  That work quickly ended and our new professor friends went back to their “zonas” to visit family for the holidays.  We spent a lot of time hitchhiking into our nearest city to grocery shop, visiting the Sisters who live here, and walking up and down the road.  Blog post to come about one or two of my more eventful walks up the road.

The tea field during the school year!: Classes “started” last week, but really started this week.  By “started,” I mean on the schedule only – most of the teachers did not show up, and anywhere from 0 to 10 students were in a class.  It was a nice way to ease into teaching, but today I showed up to 6 full classrooms of about 40 students each.  Numbers within the classes will change because students are still registering.  I teach both mornings and afternoons – so I wake up, go to school, come home for lunch, relaxation, and lesson planning, then go back to teach a full afternoon of ninth graders.  In between classes and during my breaks I’ve been able to meet and hang out with other teachers, who seem like a good group of people.  I also wear this really cool white thing that looks like a short-sleeved lab coat.