Hey y'all, I'm gonna try something new this time around!
Here’s some stream of conscious/unrefined excerpts from my journal from every
day this past week. Mix 'n match between Sunday's comic relief, Monday's dedication to an old teacher of my own,
Tuesday's pig poo hunt, Wednesday's restless musings, and a brush with
corruption and sexism on Thursday! And of course, Friday, I fought the law (aka
8th grade mobocracy) and won. Enjoy the crazy lack of filter and candidness. Dig in!
[SUNDAY]
WHO DOES THAT TO THEMSELVES?!? noob.
 |
| Creative artistic interpretation of Teacher Karina (me) |
[MONDAY]
Passed back tests to all five Turmas. Was immediately begged for "recooperacao" or extra credit. I told my students I don't believe in extra credit, that they should study harder next time. There were a handful of kids that actually did really well!! So, I know the test was doable, and I'm a lenient-benefit-of-the-doubt grader anyways. I'd also like to believe tough love builds character. Thank you Mr. Driscoll for teaching me that invaluable life lesson (he failed my whole 10th grade Honors English class and put us in "grammar hell" until we worked our way out of it! Move over Dante, we've got another Inferno on our hands!! Hahahaha, ooooh where are all my fellow English majors when I need them!? ;) Someone's gotta laugh at my nerdy jokes!)
[TUESDAY]
My day off!! Can't remember what I did today. Nothing? Naw. Maybe I sat and stared at my hut's awesome ceiling watching my gecko family eat bugs, and listened to This American Life. Probs. Ira Glass has a sexy brain. Oh, yeah, I shoveled some "poo do porku" and hung out with the neighbors under the big Baobob tree that I've been wanting to wander out to for a while. It’s taken me about two months of fofoca-ing (gossip) to figure out who could hook me up with “estrumo” without paying money. No way do I want to spend my precious meticais on…well… you know. Planted carrots and tomatoes. Peppers and lettuce will follow this weekend. It's 7:30. BEDTIME. MUWAH. Such a granny![WEDNESDAY]
I woke up this morning to discover a particularly
asshole-ish mosquito had bitten the top of my boob (try scratching that
in-front of 60 eighth graders! Man, I was trying out every "readjustment"
strategy in the book! HAH!). Also, had to run the N-1 sim iPod - feel like that
type of plod, plod, shuffle beat sets
the bar pretty low for the rest of your day. But it'll only get better!
Or. Not.
In general, the restlessness came on hard and strong today. And
while some monotony (although my life is hardly monotonous!) is a lovely indicator of a well-established routine and proof
that my life here is "normal" having integrated well into the rhythm
of my community, the reality of course is that I'm living in a small, fairly
isolated village. And that reality can make even the most content and happy PCV
start to feel itchin' to get out and see the rest of Mozambique sometimes. As such, I caught myself Googling random
things like "How-far-is-it-to-walk-from-Mapinhane-to-Kilimanjaro"
(585 hours, or 2,870 kilometers if you were curious). I'll even begrudgingly
admit to searching for flights home for Christmas... a huge turn of events for
a girl who a week ago was morally opposed to the use of parental dinerho for
anything other than traveling Africa. So what changed?
I'm not homesick. I'm not unhappy. Quite the opposite really.
Whenever I do travel away from site for weekenders I always look forward to going "home" to my
little hut, hanging out with my neighbors, taking care of my garden.
But I had a late-night convo with an awesome
friend/fellow-PCV a couple weeks back about just what I was being so stubborn
about in my refusal to go home. At the time I rambled on about wanting to prove
to myself that I could do it, that I could sacrifice and go without all the
things I deeply love for two full years to focus on the needs of other people.
Then I'd truly understand what it means to serve selflessly right?
But then the "Africa-will-always-be-there"
argument was posed... and I stumbled. I mean yeah, Africa WILL always be there.
Mt. Kilimanjaro will always be climbable (although the glaciers won't be there
in ten years womp womp, woooomp... oops, bad joke, too soon!?). People WILL always need help, care, education, or nurturing. That night, I shelved these original musings to the back of my mind and rolled over to sleep. Yet, after having this conversation
keep popping up over the following week, I realized I probably didn't have a
very good answer to my dilemma. Or rather, my answer was rooted simultaneously in pride and a
rather philosophical value of self-deprivation. That it was better if I "toughed
out" the two years for what it would teach me about myself than to
appreciate the things that I already had - wonderfully wise and hip parents,
loving, adventurous, supportive friends, a beautiful homestate...
(Lets just say there was a reason my parents had to pull the
car over for me to vomit up my last breakfast on the way to the airport nine
months ago... In a way it’s like I had convinced myself I wasn’t ever coming
home again! At that moment, 27-months felt like an eternity!)
And knowing that my future career path will most likely take
me across the globe and (again) far from the people I love, is it foolish to
not take an opportunity to go home when an opportunity arises? Would there be
regret later?
And so, for the first time I'm looking at going home halfway
through my service as a viable option. We shall see. I might change my mind
again tomorrow.
[THURSDAY]
I walked out again on the hooligans of Turma A and this time
didn't come back. Moreover, I gave them the school-appropriate equivalent of
the middle finger by going straight to Dir. Adelaide and asking her to lecture their
disrespectful you-know-whats. No wheedling the Dir. de Turma this time when all
he'll do is just find some scapegoat kid to beat on a little to scare the
others OR brush me off with the Portuguese equivalent of "boys will be
boys" and do nothing. Going straight to the WOMAN in charge
thankyouverymuch!!!
Moreover, I bypassed Turma A's appeals for forgiveness and
went to teach Turma B instead (since surprise surprise they didn't have a
Prof...). I love Turma B - they're great kids. And I told them so. They try,
they participate, the listen. Turma A may be "smarter" in the sense
that they do better on tests, but I would take any turma of kids who need more
guidance but also who want to learn, over a turma of sycophants.
Also today, after finding out that I had missed yet another
meeting because I was magically supposed to know about it without anyone
telling me, I talked with the other three female profs, Hermenigilda, Gloria,
and Angelica, and found out that they hadn't been told either... AGAIN. It seems
like us ladies are regularly being unrepresented at these school meetings!!
That makes me soooo mad! What's more, apparently there's been some discrepancy
with recording our number of faltas (absences). Sounds like (from what I could
make out of the angrily fired Portuguese amongst my colegas) some profs are
gone all the time yet their faltas magically disappear while other pros (again,
primarily the women) have faltas recorded that are incorrect/falliciously
changed! There's suspicion that white-out was even used on numerous Livro do
Ponto entries to change the attendence record AFTER the professoras had already
signed to its veracity!! Unbelievable.
Let me tell you, corruption sucks (obviously). But! When the
perpetrators of corruption suddenly, explicitly wear the faces of your
colleagues, especially the ones you like and trust to look out for you as not
only your colleague but your friend, it sucks when their suspected of such
discriminatory transgressions.
We'll see how this whole fiasco pans out. The ladies kept
saying "vamos falar, vamos falar" ...but whether they actually are
able or want to air their grievances... we'll see.
The thing that disturbed me about this whole incident too is
where I fall in this equation. I am "woman enough" to be included in
sexist discrimination at meetings (aka being viewed as unimportant or simply
forgotten), but not "woman enough" to qualify for discrimination in
pay, (ie through the suspected falsified falta scheme). Unlike my female
colleagues, my faltas were correct and unchanged. Or rather, the one time I had
a falta recorded incorrectly, I brought it up and it was immediately
on-the-spot changed with all sorts of
chagrin and apologies. Yet, when Hermenigilda tried to do the same thing
she was told she was "wrong" that she actually had "missed more
days then she thought" or "recorded". And that was that. No one
to appeal to. Nothing to do except choke it back and move on. It's infuriating.
My faltas mean nothing financially for me - it operates more
as a self-check. But for everyone else, it's your salary that gets whittled
away with each "absence." And salaries have to go a long way here to
make ends meet. It affects if you can eat three-meals-a-day, how you live, and
essentially your whole ability to be mobile! For Gloria and Angelica, mobility
is key because they have families (including a 1 year old baby!) living four
hours south of Mapinhane in other towns. They can only afford to home to see
their kids and families once or twice a month. And if their wages are late (as
they frequently are), then they're delayed from seeing their families even
longer! It's cruel. Single moms like Gloria and Angelica are the sole providers
for themselves, their children, and usually even their parents. So in other
words, these forged faltas have a significant impact on not only their quality
of life, but the lives they're responsible for caring for!
Yet, I am the one school admin bends over backwards for to
please ad apologize?! That's so *ucked up in soooooo many ways.
Moreover, I've been asking myself all day, "what can I
do about this?! Unlike my colegas, I get listened to when I make a fuss.
Perhaps what overcomes my "womanness" is my whiteness. Plan and
simple. Being a mulungu makes me exempt from certain rules and/or offers me
more privilege, leniency, and status without reason. Would I have as much to
lose if I did some movin' and shakin' with the admin for my female Mozambican
colleagues? No. Worst-case-scenario is that I confront the right person in a
way they can't save face from and then alienate myself from admin and my other
colleagues who can't risk offering me comraderie. And I suppose that'd be
pretty devastating.
Yet, isn't not doing anything just as bad if not worse??
It'd be like saying, "Well ladies, that's the way it is, you might as well
get used to getting screwed over by the system (even by other women like me in
the system who are trying to take care of ourselves!)
So, I can't do that. But then... what do I do?
It's also tough because my extra mulungu priviledge divides
me from Hermenigilda, Gloria, and Angelica. Even though I'm a woman, I'm
"upper-class" so to speak. The rules for mulungu ladies like me are
different than for them. And because of that, I think they don't really see me
as a part of their struggle.
During their angry back and forthing today, comparing notes
and figuring out just what's been going down right under our noses, they didn't
really include me in their convo. Hermenigilda tried a couple times, but for
the most part I hovered awkwardly on the sidelines, offering my supportive
grunts. I wanted to join in but knew as well as they did that I had been
exempted from their mistreatment. Even though I identity more with them as
women than with my whiteness or wealth, those two factors continue to interfere
in deepening my relationships. It's so frustrating. Yet would I give up my
privilege? Could I? How? And at what cost?
Thank god my hand is cramping up, I don't feel like
scribbling out an answer to that question right now.
[FRIDAY]
New day, fresh eyes, fresh heart, a game plan, lets roll!
Today, I fought Turma A...and won lol *cue Western movie
theme song*
I walked into class with a plan. Assigned seating. Class
rules. No more "nice-happy-cute-brincar-ing-Teacher-Karina" anymore.
It's business time. On my end that means I've got to have the ovaries for
enforcement. And it was tough. They broke the no-talking-without-raising-hand
rule? That minus one point from your test score. Talked again without raising
your hand? Minus another point. Oops, now you "mishkalgi" student
(thank you Arabic for popping into my brain randomly!) you are now failing my
class when 30 seconds ago you were passing.
Had to mentally coach myself through those astonished looks
of disbelief... those looks that crumble my resolve and make me want to take it
all back. But no! They'll survive. They'll learn. Who knows they might even
forget it all by next Monday and I'll have to go through another round of
deductions.
But, seeing the glass as half full this enforcement thing is
as good for me as it is for them. It takes gumption to make someone live
through the consequences of their actions. I’m teaching and getting through to
them more about life today, than perhaps any other week of the year.
And for the first time in months, I attained a wonderful,
respectful, class learning environment. It was miraculous. And it brought back
some of my fondness for my little smart-asses. I ironically find myself musing
that after all, they are just kids.
Then, of course right when I thought I had smooth sailing, I
walked into Turma B and found one of my favorite students Vavia bawling, tears
rolling down her face. "Vania," I asked alarmed, "O que e que
foi??!" Between sobs, burying her face in her arms on top of her desk so I
could barely hear her, I made out, "caneta," "dinerho," and
"roubar."
Apparently, someone had stolen not only Vavia's pen but 40
meticais out of her school bag. That's a lot of money for anyone here.
"Who has Vavia's money?" I asked the class. "You can give it to
me now, without any punishment."
*silence* "Entao, I will go
to speak with Sr. Directora immediately and she will deal with the
situation." And with that, I swept out of the classroom and brought back
the Pedagogical Director herself who let Vavia go through everyone's bags in
front of her. The money wasn't found, but I can't say we didn't try. Some days I really do wish I could wear a
Wonder Woman outfit. Or carry around a lasso at the very least haha. BAM!! Restorative
justice.
Taught at the Primary School again today. Then I stayed late
and helped serve lunche... a mysterious cream-of-wheat-style mash of goodness
that might serve for some kids as their only main meal. At least it's not
Cheetos.
Oh! One last thing! I found out my grant application for USAIDs Books
for Africa program was accepted!!!!! That means I’ll be receiving 100 childrens
books in Portuguese to start up a children's literacy program here in Mapinhane!
AND if that sets some solid roots, maybe I can even get a library going before
I leave! Obviously the hardest work is yet to come, but we’re one step closer
to putting books at kids fingertips and social/economic mobility on the
horizon. BRING IT ON.
Anyways, time for some Friday night craziness. Hot cocoa, a
toasty warm blanket, and some Samantha Power by kerosene lamp. I’ll try not to
set my highly flammable mosquito net on fire…
Life is truly good.
Oh and here's some pictures of my primary schoolers. How can you not love them!
No comments:
Post a Comment