Paul and Eli Blog in Moz

Or something equally as strange, because we’ve found six frogs in our house over the last five days (and none before that in the last three months- very strange). Maybe it’s the same frog coming back each time?

We are on our last week of classes before final exams for the first trimester. We don’t actually teach classes next week at all, just proctor exams all day. After that it’s smooth sailing until April 14th, when both Eli and I will be taking kids to conferences (the REDES conference in Beira and the JOMA conference in Chimoio respectively). It should be fun, but also a lot of hard work and it means no break at all!

We’ve been doing a lot of interesting projects with our HIV/AIDS activist group. Lately we’ve been making short films with them about gender equality, discrimination, using condoms, etc. Then we show a film to the whole group and have a discussion. This last Saturday the group then presented the film to the kids who live in the school dorm, and had a little debate about it. It went well, but there were over 100 kids in the room, watching a small TV, and they were making a lot of noise (see picture). Next time I think they’ll show it a couple of times to smaller groups.

I’ve also started coaching basketball 4 times a week. I’m enjoying it a lot so far, although we still don’t have hoops(!) and we only have 4 balls- 3 of which I bought.
But there are a number of students who are really interested, and we’ve been doing a lot of dribbling and passing drills. At least one backboard and hoop has been made locally, and supposedly will be mounted soon. It’s actually been completed for over a month, but things here can take so long to happen, it’s unbelievable!

Speaking of things taking a long time- early this month a contract was signed for us to move into the missionaries’ compound. The only problem is the school doesn’t have the money for the first payment (apparently they only have $41 right now!). So we’re waiting for a while longer, in the meantime all our clothes smell smoky.

We have tried biking around a bit, but my bike pedal has fallen off 3 times. Eli tried to fix it but it fell off again after we went 20 yards or so. Even the professional bike fixer here only got it to stay on for 15 minutes or so of easy riding. I’m not sure I have a lot of confidence in the bike anymore.

I did a final count and we have about 420 eight grade students total. The classroom without chairs and desks somehow lost the few chairs and desks that it did have, and now is completely empty. At the same time the school transferred more kids there, raising the number to 93. Yesterday, giving an exam, only 13 kids were sitting on chairs, and none of them had a table to write on. They all spread out sheets (capulanas) to sit on the floor of the room. Before giving the test I made all the kids leave the room, then I picked up their capulanas and removed all the biology books which they had stashed.

Everything else is normal- we’re really busy but having a good time. Hope everyone at home is doing well.