We left the Cabrini Ministries early Monday morning without my dad; he’d be traveling by himself the next day to Johannesburg and then back to America. The sisters had arranged rides to get us to the border and from there we planned to hitchhike to Maputo. Standing just outside the border, the boarder guards helped us get one of the best beleas (rides) ever. First, it was in the back of a pickup truck which meant both a spectacular view and no forced polite conversation with the drivers. Second, the driver was booking it and we made good time. Third and most ridiculously amazing, the driver and passengers were trying to get to the French Embassy and asked my sister if she knew where it was. My sister only happens to know where it is because she walks by it whenever she goes to the Peace Corps office (our destination) – a block away! Just so you understand how lucky this was for us, the car could have been headed anywhere in the very large city of Maputo and getting from where they dropped us off to the Peace Corps office could have taken anywhere up to another few hours depending on our luck with chapa rides. So getting delivered pretty much to the doorstep of our desired destination was incredible. And to top it off, the driver was so thankful for my sister’s direction that he neglected charging us for the ride.
That afternoon, we met up with Sarah and Stefanie, two sisters and long time family friends who were traveling through Africa. We went out for ice cream and Thai food again (of course).
Sunday, July 31, 2011
25-28/06/11: The Cabrini Ministries, Swaziland
So my father had an old friend he lost touch with and only recently rediscovered had become a nun who, quite serendipitously, runs a mission in Swaziland, relatively close to where Scooter is posted in Mozambique. My dad and sister have visited the mission once before, but it was my first time.
Like the Laura Vicuña mission where Scooter lives, the Cabrini Ministries mission is also a school and orphanage and so, while we were there, we went to work, painting a dorm they’re renovating. When we had done all we could in the dorm, we painted “The Wall”. “The Wall” is a 6’x40’ nightmare sprung into reality while the sisters were away from the mission. Due to corrupt contracting, the request for a building foundation turned into “The Wall” which siphoned off $4k to build – a ridiculous price anywhere, but straight up unthinkable in a place like this where that amount of money could move mountains. It’s also one of the shittiest walls ever – we had to paint in completely with brushes because it was too rough to paint with rollers, not to mention chunks of concrete would come off if we painted too hard. I guess all you can do in an awful situation like this is learn from it, laugh it off, and make the most of it; at least now it looks kinda pretty painted, though I doubt it’ll last too many of the wind storms they have here.
After a full day’s work, we would have dinner with the sisters at 5:30 before their evening prayer sessions. The food was good and the conversation was engaging, ranging from the corruption in countries like Swaziland or Mozambique to the corruption and hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy. It was refreshing to be around people who are fully aware of the problems within the church and yet so devoted to the faith and living in what I believe is its truest form: devoted service to those who need it most.
Sunday, we took a break from work and attended mass in the morning. The church is the most noticeable building when you’re coming to the mission, being a large, sky blue dome in the middle of the barren landscape. However, the most remarkable thing about this church was the acoustics: breathtaking. It was like every person was miked, and when the children started singing, the harmonies just enveloped you.
Like the Laura Vicuña mission where Scooter lives, the Cabrini Ministries mission is also a school and orphanage and so, while we were there, we went to work, painting a dorm they’re renovating. When we had done all we could in the dorm, we painted “The Wall”. “The Wall” is a 6’x40’ nightmare sprung into reality while the sisters were away from the mission. Due to corrupt contracting, the request for a building foundation turned into “The Wall” which siphoned off $4k to build – a ridiculous price anywhere, but straight up unthinkable in a place like this where that amount of money could move mountains. It’s also one of the shittiest walls ever – we had to paint in completely with brushes because it was too rough to paint with rollers, not to mention chunks of concrete would come off if we painted too hard. I guess all you can do in an awful situation like this is learn from it, laugh it off, and make the most of it; at least now it looks kinda pretty painted, though I doubt it’ll last too many of the wind storms they have here.
After a full day’s work, we would have dinner with the sisters at 5:30 before their evening prayer sessions. The food was good and the conversation was engaging, ranging from the corruption in countries like Swaziland or Mozambique to the corruption and hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy. It was refreshing to be around people who are fully aware of the problems within the church and yet so devoted to the faith and living in what I believe is its truest form: devoted service to those who need it most.
Sunday, we took a break from work and attended mass in the morning. The church is the most noticeable building when you’re coming to the mission, being a large, sky blue dome in the middle of the barren landscape. However, the most remarkable thing about this church was the acoustics: breathtaking. It was like every person was miked, and when the children started singing, the harmonies just enveloped you.
23-24/06/11: Traveling to Swaziland
We left for Maputo, the capital and major city of Mozambique, early Thursday morning. The chapa ride down was pretty smooth until the very end where a bunch of roads were out and all the traffic was piling into one huge traffic jam. It must have taken about half an hour just to complete the last 2 kilometers of our trip.
So turns out there’s a young woman, Jackie, living in Maputo who went to Uni (my now old high school) and is a cousin of one of my classmates, Tahar. My sister discovered her through a mutual American friend and since then they’ve kept in contact. Jackie was letting us spend the night in her apartment, but she really went above and beyond the normal call of hospitality, picking us up directly from the junta, taking us to back to her place, and providing us with lunch before she had to head back to work. After we ate, we spent the afternoon walking around Maputo, first to the Peace Corps office, then to a crafts market, then to the “Teacher’s Bar” (a hole-in-the-wall PC discovery, named for the enigmatic, desolate building next door supposedly belonging to some international teacher’s organization).
The two major highlights of going to Maputo for Scooter and I are Thai food and ice cream. We were getting the first for dinner but Scooter was worried the ice cream shop would be closed by the time we finished so we went ahead and got ice cream before dinner, just to be safe.
The next morning, we took a series of chapas to Goba where we expected to cross the border into Swaziland. However, despite the border post we were going to being named the “Goba border post”, it was located about 12k outside the city, up in the mountains, and so we found ourselves slightly stranded on the edge of the town, trying to hitch a ride from the sparse selection of cars passing through, all charging increasingly exorbitant prices for the lift. After a few hours, we decided to hike a few kilometers up to the highway and got a ride from there. Maybe it’s partially due to not having to cross it at night, but the Moz-Swazi border was much less intimidating than the one from Moz to SA. Once across we found the driver the Cabrini sisters had sent to fetch us and rode to the mission.
So turns out there’s a young woman, Jackie, living in Maputo who went to Uni (my now old high school) and is a cousin of one of my classmates, Tahar. My sister discovered her through a mutual American friend and since then they’ve kept in contact. Jackie was letting us spend the night in her apartment, but she really went above and beyond the normal call of hospitality, picking us up directly from the junta, taking us to back to her place, and providing us with lunch before she had to head back to work. After we ate, we spent the afternoon walking around Maputo, first to the Peace Corps office, then to a crafts market, then to the “Teacher’s Bar” (a hole-in-the-wall PC discovery, named for the enigmatic, desolate building next door supposedly belonging to some international teacher’s organization).
The two major highlights of going to Maputo for Scooter and I are Thai food and ice cream. We were getting the first for dinner but Scooter was worried the ice cream shop would be closed by the time we finished so we went ahead and got ice cream before dinner, just to be safe.
The next morning, we took a series of chapas to Goba where we expected to cross the border into Swaziland. However, despite the border post we were going to being named the “Goba border post”, it was located about 12k outside the city, up in the mountains, and so we found ourselves slightly stranded on the edge of the town, trying to hitch a ride from the sparse selection of cars passing through, all charging increasingly exorbitant prices for the lift. After a few hours, we decided to hike a few kilometers up to the highway and got a ride from there. Maybe it’s partially due to not having to cross it at night, but the Moz-Swazi border was much less intimidating than the one from Moz to SA. Once across we found the driver the Cabrini sisters had sent to fetch us and rode to the mission.
21-22/06/11: More Teaching
I write these blogs by going back through the journal I keep and here’s what I had to say on the day my afternoon classes began:
“…if I’m not careful, I’m accidentally going to punch one of these kid’s faces in. Hm, I’d get banned from teaching for sure – maybe that’s not such a bad thing…”
So the second week of teaching I got another class, this one from 3-4:00. The class was only an hour, I was pretty sure Irma Agnes had told me the students were going to be older, and with any luck the class size would be smaller and more manageable. Things were looking up. Well, actually no. Turns out the class was younger – kindergarten/1st graders (my first class is 3rd and 4th graders) – and bigger – around 40 to 50 students. Gradual but absolute chaos. Even better, the classroom I teach is right next to the room for a woman’s study group so we couldn’t get too loud. When some genius finds unicorns or invents a time machine, please work on this question next: how do you teach 40+ 6 year olds “music” quietly for an hour? For at least 3 months? Oh right, and, having just started school, they know about as much Portuguese as I do since they grew up speaking the local language, Xopi.
That evening, Scooter helped me talk to Irma Agnes who was very sympathetic and willing to negotiate changes. The class size would be reduced to about 26 and she would give me simple math books to work them through.
Another excerpt from my journal from next day:
“Best class yet this morning! I didn’t even know a class could go that well.”
So obviously this job has its ups and downs and I just happened to go through the two extremes in rapid succession. It was a very good class though and definitely made up for the previous day. My morning class went through all the English phrases we had learned so far and strung them together into a short conversation that the students got very engaged in and by the end they were having the conversation with each other and without my help. Everything went so great, it took up nearly the entire first hour, which never happens. After that we went over some basic math rules and then I wrote problems on the board for them to practice and, would you believe it, they worked quietly on the problems! At the end of the lesson, I told them that’d I’d be leaving to Swaziland tomorrow but when I returned we would start learning music. I played Waka Waka and Wavin’ Flag on the recorder as a demonstration and they loved it.
“…if I’m not careful, I’m accidentally going to punch one of these kid’s faces in. Hm, I’d get banned from teaching for sure – maybe that’s not such a bad thing…”
So the second week of teaching I got another class, this one from 3-4:00. The class was only an hour, I was pretty sure Irma Agnes had told me the students were going to be older, and with any luck the class size would be smaller and more manageable. Things were looking up. Well, actually no. Turns out the class was younger – kindergarten/1st graders (my first class is 3rd and 4th graders) – and bigger – around 40 to 50 students. Gradual but absolute chaos. Even better, the classroom I teach is right next to the room for a woman’s study group so we couldn’t get too loud. When some genius finds unicorns or invents a time machine, please work on this question next: how do you teach 40+ 6 year olds “music” quietly for an hour? For at least 3 months? Oh right, and, having just started school, they know about as much Portuguese as I do since they grew up speaking the local language, Xopi.
That evening, Scooter helped me talk to Irma Agnes who was very sympathetic and willing to negotiate changes. The class size would be reduced to about 26 and she would give me simple math books to work them through.
Another excerpt from my journal from next day:
“Best class yet this morning! I didn’t even know a class could go that well.”
So obviously this job has its ups and downs and I just happened to go through the two extremes in rapid succession. It was a very good class though and definitely made up for the previous day. My morning class went through all the English phrases we had learned so far and strung them together into a short conversation that the students got very engaged in and by the end they were having the conversation with each other and without my help. Everything went so great, it took up nearly the entire first hour, which never happens. After that we went over some basic math rules and then I wrote problems on the board for them to practice and, would you believe it, they worked quietly on the problems! At the end of the lesson, I told them that’d I’d be leaving to Swaziland tomorrow but when I returned we would start learning music. I played Waka Waka and Wavin’ Flag on the recorder as a demonstration and they loved it.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
16/06/11: Teaching, oh baby! / How I am indebted to Justin Bieber
Early this morning Irma Agnes took me down to the Primary School and explained how I would begin teaching a class from 10-11:30 every day. She told me that I could teach them pretty much whatever I wanted, be it music, P.E., or mathematics, etc. This was a relief; if I didn’t have to focus only on music, I could definitely come up with a ton more of activities and things to teach. And when do I start? Today, of course! More accurately, in two hours. It’s strange how time works: the study hall sessions yesterday were some of the longest two hours of my life whereas the next two, in which I had to prepare my first lesson, were easily some of the shortest. When 10:00 came, I went to class armed with “Bon Dia a Voce/Good Morning to You” (sung in the tune of “Happy Birthday”), “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” (thanks Brittany!), and “Pato, Pato, Ganso” (Duck, Duck, Goose). Turns out this wasn’t nearly enough for the hour and a half, but the kids were super enthusiastic and engaged and ready to repeat stuff over and over (I must have played the accompanying “Good Morning to You” chords on my mandolin about 25 times for them to sing the song to everybody in the class). For the first class, it went pretty well. I was definitely in dire need of more ideas though so, as you all well know, I sent out requests for help on this blog, gmail, and facebook, and (thank you all so much!!!) over the next few days received tons of great suggestions.
I was asked to supervise another study hall in the afternoon (just as wonderful a time as yesterday) but in the evening things got much better. It was Irma Claudina’s birthday so Irma Agnes had asked if I could play along on my mandolin as the girls sang Happy Birthday to her. I had only burned the chords into my muscle memory that morning so I was more than happy to oblige. So, after a special dinner, we performed Happy Birthday, the Luara Vicuna song, and then another number we had learned while rehearsing before dinner: Baby. Turns out the chords to this Biebtastic number are ridiculously simple which is convenient because it’s probably the most popular song at this mission after Waka Waka. When I showed the girls I knew how to play it, they got really excited and made up their own dance to go with it (which I later apparently got credit for teaching them). Being able to play and sing song definitely won me a lot of popularity among the girls here at the mission. It was a festive night, only enhanced by the lunar eclipse.
I was asked to supervise another study hall in the afternoon (just as wonderful a time as yesterday) but in the evening things got much better. It was Irma Claudina’s birthday so Irma Agnes had asked if I could play along on my mandolin as the girls sang Happy Birthday to her. I had only burned the chords into my muscle memory that morning so I was more than happy to oblige. So, after a special dinner, we performed Happy Birthday, the Luara Vicuna song, and then another number we had learned while rehearsing before dinner: Baby. Turns out the chords to this Biebtastic number are ridiculously simple which is convenient because it’s probably the most popular song at this mission after Waka Waka. When I showed the girls I knew how to play it, they got really excited and made up their own dance to go with it (which I later apparently got credit for teaching them). Being able to play and sing song definitely won me a lot of popularity among the girls here at the mission. It was a festive night, only enhanced by the lunar eclipse.
15/06/11: Study Hall Miseries
The way school works here, there are students who have classes in the morning and others who have their classes in the afternoon. For the girls in the orphanage this means that those with afternoon classes have a morning study hall (and vice versa) supervised by an older girl or a mission volunteer. Ronnie usually oversees the morning one but today he had to unload a truck and asked me to man it for him… it was pretty awful. I had no idea what the rules were supposed to be nor would I have even been able to enforce them with my fumbling Portuguese. And as an only recently graduated high school student, I know very well what a substitute teacher means; it was no surprise how the girls took advantage of me, talking loudly and leaving in droves to “go to the bathroom” (and often not coming back).
I suppose the bright side to the ordeal was that I was able to help some girls with their math homework. The stuff they had to do was ridiculously complicated and tedious though, with a conversion chart between grams and kilograms and about 12 different other something-grams. It just seems pointless to throw something like this at students who are still struggling with basic algebra and multiplication – why confuse them with all this other stuff and make them want to quit altogether?
I also got asked to monitor the afternoon study hall. This time, girls didn’t even bother asking to go to the bathroom, they just left. Meanwhile the little ones were supposed to be coloring but of course there weren’t enough coloring books or pencils.
I guess the worst thing about all of it was it made the idea of teaching music absolutely daunting. How am I supposed to teach if I can’t even manage a two hour study hall?
I suppose the bright side to the ordeal was that I was able to help some girls with their math homework. The stuff they had to do was ridiculously complicated and tedious though, with a conversion chart between grams and kilograms and about 12 different other something-grams. It just seems pointless to throw something like this at students who are still struggling with basic algebra and multiplication – why confuse them with all this other stuff and make them want to quit altogether?
I also got asked to monitor the afternoon study hall. This time, girls didn’t even bother asking to go to the bathroom, they just left. Meanwhile the little ones were supposed to be coloring but of course there weren’t enough coloring books or pencils.
I guess the worst thing about all of it was it made the idea of teaching music absolutely daunting. How am I supposed to teach if I can’t even manage a two hour study hall?
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