Paul and Eli Blog in Moz

After a very stressful trip back from the Girls’ Conference, Paul and I are back home in Ile, ready to start the second trimester. I think Paul will write later about the Boys’ Training, but here’s what happened with the girls. There were about 50 girls, 15 PC volunteers and 15 Mozambican female teachers from 8 different provinces. The week was divided into themes, so for example, Monday was “sex and gender”, Tuesday “sexual health, HIV/AIDS”, Wednesday “self-esteem and relationships”, Thursday “future goals” and Friday was a general wrap-up day. My province was in charge of organizing the sessions for Thursday, which was really fun and kinda scary (you know me and public speaking). But I think it went really well, basically we had the girls think about the future (which is something they don’t do very often). One of the best activities was the “footsteps activity” in which we had cut up footsteps and asked the girls to think of an objective (step 1), think about the benefits of that objective (step 2), what obstacles you may encounter (step 3), how you can overcome them (step 4), who will be there to help you (step 5), and once you accomplish that objective, what is the next objective (step 6). So we had the girls think step by step and write in their thoughts in the footsteps. It’s kinda hard to explain, but I think it went really well, and it got them thinking about the future. We also had guest speakers (including two female, Mozambican med students that were amazing!) come and talk to the girls. Overall it went really well and it’s something that I’m very proud of, but man, I was exhausted at the end of the week! (I was even more exhausted after a horrible trip back home – involving a broken chapa, barely catching the last ferry across the river, not being able to find another chapa to Nampula, another broken down chapa to Ile, and a driver with malaria!!!! Seriously, that trip was a lesson on patience).

So, we’re back in Ile and classes technically started on Monday, but there are no students, and the teachers have to go into Gurue tomorrow to do some registration/paperwork. So, it looks like next Monday classes will start for real (which is fine with me, cuz I’m still recuperating from the conference!).

And the Boys’ conference in Chimoio went well too- it was six days (a day longer than the girls’) but I ended up meeting up with Eli on the way back because of all her chapa problems! I had a great time and was really busy- I got about 4 hours of sleep three nights in a row! Part of that time I was up working on a photojournalism manual to give to the kids, other people were up until 3am with me working on a newspaper using articles from the journalism group and pictures from my photojournalism group. There were a lot of fun activities for the kids, and my counterpart really enjoyed himself. On the last day we took the photo kids to an orphan farm (they don’t farm orphans, the orphans do their own farming- learning and growing their own food). It was really pretty spectacular- they are housed at the farm, fed, and it looks like they learn quite a lot. We got a tour and little orphans explained the uses and care of various plants. The whole place looked well run. This is a picture of the orphans shucking corn below.

Here's a picture of me putting my shoes on after the ferry ride across the zambezi river.

# posted by Paul and Eli @ 2:41 AM