Daily Challenges

Yesterday, I was headed into Xai-Xai on a chapa and an Asian man entered at one point on the way.  There are a good number of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean people here working in Mozambique.  After about 15 minutes I realized that a man in the front row was trying to talk to him and basically harassing him in the process: “Hey China! Hey China! Why you have no car? In China car cost 2 dolla!”. I realized after a bit that this man also didn’t speak any Portuguese.  The man in the front row then asked me to translate for him, inviting me into the conversation (bad move for this Mozambican).  I then told the Mozambican to leave the other guy alone and asked him if he’d like to be treated that way.  The poor foreigner was just trying to get from point A to point B, and ended up being harassed by this guy because of his ethnicity.  I think it reminded me of the way that I am sometimes treated for being white and a woman.  At least I have the language skills to try and stand up for myself, but I felt bad that this guy didn’t.

Since I do all of my teaching in Portuguese (local language is not allowed at school), I haven’t learned too much of the local language.  It is spoken within Francelino’s family and other families in the community and it is the first language that children learn when they start to speak. I have learned many words and taught myself to understand many things in Changana, but it’s more of a task to speak it.  So I was at the beach yesterday making arrangements for a group of volunteers to stay there and I was waiting at the bus stop for a really long time without sign of a chapa.  After about 40 min I decided to climb the hill and start walking to another stop where I might find more chapas.  As I was walking away a group of older ladies shouted at me “there’s a chapa (bus) coming!”.  They shouted at me in Changana, but I was able to pick up the words and understood and turned back around.  When I turned around to head back and they realized that I understood them they started laughing and really got a kick out of it.  Here’s to local language skills!

This weekend I put together a weekend get together because Gaza province is welcoming 9 new health volunteers!  We plan to go to the beach and all get to know each other—so exciting!

So the past few weeks it has been pretty “cold” here.  Okay, I know I’m in Africa—how cold can it be? Right?  Well it has been in the high 40’s, low 50’s every morning, which in New Hampshire is certainly not considered cold, however the living conditions here are different.  Consider this: the houses are not insulated, so if it’s 50 degrees outside, it’s probably 55 in the house?  Also many of the classrooms at school don’t have doors and the windows are broken so when it’s 50 degrees and windy outside, it’s 50 degrees and windy inside too, rough.  Some of the kids just use their short-sleeved uniform shirt at school, which is not enough in that weather and you can’t just ask a kid why he didn’t bring a jacket because it’s possible that he doesn’t have one.  It’s so tough!  That being said, I personally wouldn’t mind if the cold weather sticks around because in a few months it will be 100 degrees every day, and that isn’t exactly the most enjoyable weather either!

Other than that, things are going well.  School wraps up October 26^th and then we have testing and other things going on at school, but I won’t lie, I’m looking forward to the school year ending.  The big classes, lack of books and other resources, and being under appreciated at school is starting to get to me.  10 weeks left until summer break!