Started My Secondary Projects!!

2/24/2012

                The past week or so since my last blog has been the busiest I have been since coming to Mozambique.   I gave a test last week to all of my English classes and since I have 5 different sections of English each with around 50 students I ended up with almost 250 tests to grade!  250 TESTS!   On top of having to grade these tests I started one of my secondary projects (projects that I do for my community outside of my duties as a teacher..more on this in a bit), my pedagogical director gave me these planning sheets I had to do for my classes, and I had to plan for the following week’s lessons along with laying down the frame work for a club I was going to start up on this week.  You can add to this list taking a trip to Muxungue to buy more supplies for the house, and then redoing my entire kitchen which took up all of my February 17^th’s afternoon.    It was by far the busiest week I have had, and by far the most productive!

                On Friday the 17^th I left on a bus to Muxungue and hung out there until about 2pm in the afternoon, I managed to buy a ton of food for the house and some shelving units for the kitchen.  (I also scored Ian and I a new “double boca fugao”  i.e.  a charcoal grill two places to burn coal, a serious upgrade from the little ground grill we were using before to cook our rice and beans.)   Once I got back from my trip to Muxungue I tore apart my kitchen cleaning and rearranging things until around 7 or 8 at night.  The following day I woke up and preceded to grade tests all day (except for the 2 hours in the morning I found out, very last minute, that I had to watch over one of my classes as the swept and weeded the school grounds, there is nothing like being told last minute on a Saturday morning you need to be at work:-P ).    I finished all of my grading, and inputting of the grades into my computer by around 11pm (There was a random break for a few rounds of UNO with some of my students around dinner time).   The next day (Sunday now)  I woke up and the rest of the work was smooth sailing, I planned my classes for the following week and talked to some people to get the ball rolling on the REDES group that I will be starting here in Mangunde.

                At this point I have mentioned two secondary projects and have yet to tell you anything about them, here goes nothing.    Right now I have two secondary projects that I am working on, the first is a simple project where every week I am giving computer classes to the local nurses and hospital volunteers in an effort to make some of the inner workings of the hospital more efficient.  I’m excited about this project because I feel like I am teaching something to the nurses that they are immediately putting into use in their day to day lives at the hospital.   I am also so amazed at the lack of knowledge here in Mozambique surrounding computers, but when you take a minute to think about the situation for an average Mozambican it shouldn’t be surprising at all.   The vast majority of Mozambicans may have seen a computer from afar but have probably never used or even touched one.  The students in my computer classes along with the nurses I am teaching are starting out with how to use a mouse, and how to operate a keyboard.    Given that some of them had never touched a computer before my class, I have to say that I have been amazed at how quickly they are picking it up, they are always so excited to be learning about computers.  Most of my students are enchanted with all of the little things a computer has to offer (the fact that you can change your font of the letters on the page at will always seems to invoke a little gasp and a giggle form my students). 

                My other secondary project that I am starting is called REDES (Raparigas Em Desenvolvimento, Educacao e saude)  This translates to “Teenage girls for Development, Education and Health).   The club is a woman’s empowerment group for girls between the ages of 12 or 14 up to their mid 20’s.   I talked to a few other volunteers about things that I could do at my school and a few of them mentioned about how lacking the resources for women at Mangunde have been, so I took that along with the fact that I really wanted to start something here that I could call my own and decided to open a chapter of REDES.  I’m very excited about the group because the first meeting which I had last Tuesday went very well.  The girls seemed very interested, and enthusiastic about the group.   The club is still in its preliminary stages and I still have a lot of work to do with it but I have high hopes for it.  The main goals of a REDES group are to empower women and give them experiences that they wouldn’t have had elsewhere.   There are conferences, workshops, and group get together where girls in other REDES groups across Mozambique come together meet each other and talk about issues that they face in their day to day lives.    I honestly have no idea where the girls in my REDES group are going to take the club, but I’m excited to see where it goes.

                On a completely unrelated note, yesterday was my 24^th birthday and as with all birthdays it was a day filled with reflection and that funny newness that you sometimes feel on your birthday.   It’s hard to believe that I just turned 24 and that I am going to be here in Mangunde for just a little under two more years.  Time is such a perplexing entity it seems to have the ability to make you feel as though you are going a million miles a second and crawling at a snail’s pace all at once.    I feel like just the other day I was receiving my invitation to serve here (that was 9 months ago), and Mangunde, though I like it, still doesn’t quite feel like home to me yet.   However with a few more months I think things are going to pick up.