Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Why we need a vacation after the school break
Today is only the second day of the third (and last) trimester of school this year. The last two weeks have been ferias, or school break. Of course, as teachers we don´t get a whole 2 weeks off- the first week is spent doing grades, and during this break, proctoring national exams as well. To keep a long and boring story short I will summarize the duty of proctoring exams as follows: It takes a very long time, and it is very boring. If you´re imagining 8 kids taking a test in a room being proctored by two teachers, both of which must sign the students test and check the students ID multiple times during the test, then you are accurately imagining what we did for a whole week.
But that was just the prelude to a really great school break. Eli had been planning for a long time to go to the 2nd annual girls conference in Manica province (somewhere to the south and near Zimbabwe). The 1st girls conference was a huge success and the inspiration for the boys conference. Like the boys conference it was totally organized by PCVs and talked about HIV/AIDS and gender things (you practically have to, to get funding). Eli took 4 girls to the conference, 2 from Nacala and 2 from Monapo.
I also went down to Manica- I had a ride in a private car lined up to take me down (about a 3 day trip!) so I bought a one way plane ticket to come back up. Unfortunately at the last minute my ride fell through, so I had to buy a round trip ticket, but that meant that I got to fly both ways with Eli and her girls. It was a good flight, but none of those four students Eli took had ever flown before. At first it was kind of funny when they couldn´t figure out the seat belts, but things got a lot less funny when they all got air sick and had to run to the bathroom to be sick (somehow the airplane had no barf bags so I was pretty nervous when they were sick). We had made sure to give them window seats, but I think having a view didn´t help them any.
We all flew to Beira and got a Girls Conference rented van to Chimoio- I just tagged along J I got left in Chimoio to find my way to another PCVs house and Eli took her girls to the conference in nearby casa msika.
I spent that week with a bunch of other PCVs who were nice enough to let me stay in their houses, feed me and show me around. Most of my time was spent in the cities of Chimoio, Catandica, and Manica. Manica is really close to the girls conference, so one day the country director picked us up and took us there to spend some time and have lunch.
The volunteers in Manica are working on building a hot tub in their front yard, and I have no doubt it will be a first class hot tub- they have already built day beds, installed ´running´ water and made a zen rock garden. After coming back from their house I was inspired to build a shelf in my kitchen, after which Eli took away my hammer and said in a very loud voice ¨You are NOT a handy man. You have no idea what you are doing. STOP NOW before you break something!¨ So I haven´t built anything else, but my 1 shelf is really nice.
Manica is famous for some really old cave paintings- the whole area is part of the rift valley which is supposedly the origin of humanity, so here´s some pix of both the paintings and my friends school as seen from the mountain in his back yard, and a picture of casa msika on the bottom. Sorry, the pix are comming out a little wierd. Also, I took two sets of batteries and they both died during my first day there, so there aren´t many pix!
After Manica I traveled north to Catandica. Its supposed to be about 2.5 hours north of chimoio although we made the trip in 6. Our chapa broke down repeatedly- at first it was every hour, then every 20 minutes, then every 5 minutes, until we got to the point were immediately after fixing it, it would break down. So we did what any good peace corps volunteers would do, considering that night was falling, it was freezing cold, and we still had a ways to travel. We started a bonfire on the side of the road and waited for a new chapa to pick us up, which, thanks to the bonfire, didn´t take too long.
Catandica is one of those little towns that mainly serves as a truck stop. Somehow, despite this, it has been selected by the world bank to receive a brand new, model school. They just finished building a beautiful, new, modern school in Catandica, complete with new teachers housing, which is where the PCV in catandica lives. Every classroom there has ceiling fans, they have a computer lab, sports facilities, you name it. It’s a really nice school! The teachers housing came with a fridge and stove, hot showers, and everything.
Catandica is also a town in the mountains, and there´s a relic from the Portuguese nearby called the Pool. I went to check it out one day, and it´s a natural waterfall, rock slide, and little water pool up in the base of the mountains. The interesting thing is that once upon a time it had been a major hang out for the Portuguese, there were the ruins of little snack shops, a fancy stone bridge, and old tables which had sunk into the ground. There were changing rooms (now empty, with no roof, and falling apart), and little benches that were crumbling. It was still a pretty area, but now little kids were using the pool and natural rock slides to wash their clothes and nobody was swimming. A lot of Mozambique is like this.
Back in Casa Msika Eli was having a great time. She filmed a lot of it and is going to make a little video. She wants to blog about it herself, so I´ll save it for her.
Anyways, the whole conference was more work than play for Eli because she had to be a chaperone and help with the sessions, and I´m just tired because I traveled all over the place. Now that schools started again we both feel that we need a vacation. Fortunately, our students seem to agree about needing more vacation since they haven´t really come to the first day of class, which makes our jobs easier.
In other news, we recently had some work done in our kitchen (no not by me, Eli doesn´t trust me not to break things). We had our kitchen sink hooked up to the buildings plumbing so it doesn´t have to drain into a bucket anymore. I watched the work being done and had to wonder what my grandpa, who was a plumber, would think if he saw what was going on. The guys doing the work didn´t have any of the right pieces of tubing, they just cut apart a PCV tube to make the right lengths, then put it over a coal fire to get it soft when they needed to bend it. When two pieces had to be stuck together, they went back to the fire and heated them up again. After they got all the pipes assembled and found that it leaked, they tore apart plastics bags to wrap the joints with. Then they cemented around that. I´m not sure how long the situation will last, but the sink does drain. I guess I shouldn´t complain since we ended up paying about 8 dollars for all of the work that they did on the sink.
But that was just the prelude to a really great school break. Eli had been planning for a long time to go to the 2nd annual girls conference in Manica province (somewhere to the south and near Zimbabwe). The 1st girls conference was a huge success and the inspiration for the boys conference. Like the boys conference it was totally organized by PCVs and talked about HIV/AIDS and gender things (you practically have to, to get funding). Eli took 4 girls to the conference, 2 from Nacala and 2 from Monapo.
I also went down to Manica- I had a ride in a private car lined up to take me down (about a 3 day trip!) so I bought a one way plane ticket to come back up. Unfortunately at the last minute my ride fell through, so I had to buy a round trip ticket, but that meant that I got to fly both ways with Eli and her girls. It was a good flight, but none of those four students Eli took had ever flown before. At first it was kind of funny when they couldn´t figure out the seat belts, but things got a lot less funny when they all got air sick and had to run to the bathroom to be sick (somehow the airplane had no barf bags so I was pretty nervous when they were sick). We had made sure to give them window seats, but I think having a view didn´t help them any.
We all flew to Beira and got a Girls Conference rented van to Chimoio- I just tagged along J I got left in Chimoio to find my way to another PCVs house and Eli took her girls to the conference in nearby casa msika.
I spent that week with a bunch of other PCVs who were nice enough to let me stay in their houses, feed me and show me around. Most of my time was spent in the cities of Chimoio, Catandica, and Manica. Manica is really close to the girls conference, so one day the country director picked us up and took us there to spend some time and have lunch.
The volunteers in Manica are working on building a hot tub in their front yard, and I have no doubt it will be a first class hot tub- they have already built day beds, installed ´running´ water and made a zen rock garden. After coming back from their house I was inspired to build a shelf in my kitchen, after which Eli took away my hammer and said in a very loud voice ¨You are NOT a handy man. You have no idea what you are doing. STOP NOW before you break something!¨ So I haven´t built anything else, but my 1 shelf is really nice.
Manica is famous for some really old cave paintings- the whole area is part of the rift valley which is supposedly the origin of humanity, so here´s some pix of both the paintings and my friends school as seen from the mountain in his back yard, and a picture of casa msika on the bottom. Sorry, the pix are comming out a little wierd. Also, I took two sets of batteries and they both died during my first day there, so there aren´t many pix!
After Manica I traveled north to Catandica. Its supposed to be about 2.5 hours north of chimoio although we made the trip in 6. Our chapa broke down repeatedly- at first it was every hour, then every 20 minutes, then every 5 minutes, until we got to the point were immediately after fixing it, it would break down. So we did what any good peace corps volunteers would do, considering that night was falling, it was freezing cold, and we still had a ways to travel. We started a bonfire on the side of the road and waited for a new chapa to pick us up, which, thanks to the bonfire, didn´t take too long.
Catandica is one of those little towns that mainly serves as a truck stop. Somehow, despite this, it has been selected by the world bank to receive a brand new, model school. They just finished building a beautiful, new, modern school in Catandica, complete with new teachers housing, which is where the PCV in catandica lives. Every classroom there has ceiling fans, they have a computer lab, sports facilities, you name it. It’s a really nice school! The teachers housing came with a fridge and stove, hot showers, and everything.
Catandica is also a town in the mountains, and there´s a relic from the Portuguese nearby called the Pool. I went to check it out one day, and it´s a natural waterfall, rock slide, and little water pool up in the base of the mountains. The interesting thing is that once upon a time it had been a major hang out for the Portuguese, there were the ruins of little snack shops, a fancy stone bridge, and old tables which had sunk into the ground. There were changing rooms (now empty, with no roof, and falling apart), and little benches that were crumbling. It was still a pretty area, but now little kids were using the pool and natural rock slides to wash their clothes and nobody was swimming. A lot of Mozambique is like this.
Back in Casa Msika Eli was having a great time. She filmed a lot of it and is going to make a little video. She wants to blog about it herself, so I´ll save it for her.
Anyways, the whole conference was more work than play for Eli because she had to be a chaperone and help with the sessions, and I´m just tired because I traveled all over the place. Now that schools started again we both feel that we need a vacation. Fortunately, our students seem to agree about needing more vacation since they haven´t really come to the first day of class, which makes our jobs easier.
In other news, we recently had some work done in our kitchen (no not by me, Eli doesn´t trust me not to break things). We had our kitchen sink hooked up to the buildings plumbing so it doesn´t have to drain into a bucket anymore. I watched the work being done and had to wonder what my grandpa, who was a plumber, would think if he saw what was going on. The guys doing the work didn´t have any of the right pieces of tubing, they just cut apart a PCV tube to make the right lengths, then put it over a coal fire to get it soft when they needed to bend it. When two pieces had to be stuck together, they went back to the fire and heated them up again. After they got all the pipes assembled and found that it leaked, they tore apart plastics bags to wrap the joints with. Then they cemented around that. I´m not sure how long the situation will last, but the sink does drain. I guess I shouldn´t complain since we ended up paying about 8 dollars for all of the work that they did on the sink.
# posted by Paul and Eli @ 5:20 AM 
