From zero to sixty in 3.5

'You've got the keys, now shut up and drive.' -Rihanna

After 1 1/2 months of sitting around and doing essentially nothing, the sisters are back from their conference in Maputo, the escolhina is starting up again on Feb 1, and there is no shortage of things that need to be done.
Aside from my personal projects, which currently include raising and potty training two puppies (and a kitten to come in the next few weeks), learning Changana, designing a poster-size map of Mozambique on the living room wall, setting up my house (the never ending project), starting a garden in the backyard, and building a fence, (in March, painting the house, and teaching that boyfriend Portuguese) I now have an onslaught of professional projects: a stack of binders of organizational documents to sort, analyze, and probably revise, a small 5 computer room to set up, computer and English lessons to plan, preschool activities to come up with, an escolhina program to create. Eh pa! Where to
begin?
As I continue my analysis of the escolhina, I see a lot of opportunities but I also see a LOT of hurdles. For one thing, I am now one of a total of only five people who continuously work at the escolhina. There's Catarina and Daulisa, two catholic Irmas (sisters) who live in Chibuto, Angelica the cook who also lives in the city, and Orpa from Chimundo who might not be working this year due to her school schedule. Oh, and me- the overwhelmed Peace Corps volunteer who lives closest to the escolhina and will probably have to be there earliest to greet the kids when they arrive at 7.
A handful of people work on and off for the escolhina, but the big problem is funding, and the escolhina's inability to offer a competitive wage to hire and keep trained workers. Additional problems include lack of funds to continue work on its several unfinished classrooms, as well as limited capacity. Last year over 40 children wanted to attend, but some had to be turned away.
As this is a pre school/ day care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC's), many of the children's parents are unable to pay the tuition (300 mts, around $9, a month). Worse, the parents are offered a chance to work off their debt by contributing some labor for the escolhina (ie. Cleaning the classroom and children play space) but the parents don't show up. They just don't care. And when this happens, it is the child who suffers if he/she can no longer attend. So we still accept these kids, a heavy financial burden for the escolhina.
Income generation projects (raising livestock such as chickens, goats, and pigs, growing produce on the escolhina's own farm, starting an after school program, opening a computer center) have been met with very limited success. I guess that's why I'm here.
They're hoping I can write grants for them, but that is only a temporary solution to a large sustainability problem. I don't know yet what I can do for them, in the long term. In the meantime, I'm preparing to start giving community English and computer lessons and teaching the Irmas as well, so they can continue once I'm gone.
It's not the easiest task. Irma Daulisa is a bit of a character, a big woman with glasses who likes to push around her three false bottom teeth and fall asleep in the middle of conversations, at times bossy and pushy, technologically challenged...
She sees my ipod on the speaker stand. 'Is that your phone?'
'It's an ipod. It plays music.'
'Oh, a radio.'
'Not quite. You put music on it from a computer.'
'Where's the computer?'
'Well, I don't have it here but I already put the music from the computer on the ipod. It acts like a storage device.'
'So you record the music from a cassette tape?'
'Hmm...No.'
'Then how?'
She is temporarily in charge of the escolhina while Irma Catarina is on vacation, so she's pretty much my boss for now. (I use boss as a loose term, the escolhina doesn't have a strict hierarchy). I'm trying to get her to do the daily schedule for the kids and the roster, BEFORE the kids arrive for school on the first.
'How do we know who is attending this year if they're not here yet?' She asks when I ask her when we're going to sit down and make a list of kids. 'Then what's the point of registering?' I ask. It's a conversation that gets us nowhere; we don't see eye to eye. In the meantime, she's putting out radio announcements for the escolhina, and we don't have a clue how many kids we already have.
Aside from my work related frustrations (and there are many), things are going well. I have cut back my city shopping trips to once a week now that I have all the basics. My house actually feels very much like home, especially with two puppies waiting for me. They both still can't be trusted not to fazer xixi in the house, so when I'm gone I close them up in a corner of the kitchen, with boxes. Sometimes I leave them outside (they have food, water, and shelter in the outside veranda area) but this is kind of tricky because I then have to escape without them seeing me, or else they'll follow me to wherever i'm going. Erica and Alycia's dogs come by my house a couple of times a day to visit, and it's even harder to a sneak away when they're around because well, puppies are easily distracted and even outrun... Big dogs are not. Several times I have slipped out the front door and made it a few yards thinking I'm home clear when out of nowhere two big dogs come bounding towards me, ears flapping, tails wagging as if to say, 'Uh, you forgot to invite us!' They're usually trailed by one or two eager puppies who have been alerted of my absence. I roll my eyes, stop, tell them to go home, but to no avail. I have to turn around and go back, where I either stand in the veranda until they get bored and distracted by other things and then make a run for it, or I once again try the other door. It's a bit hilarious actually, how I have to escape from my own house every day.
Mel, the newest addition, is doing well. She cried the first couple of times I shut her in the corner but now that's her safe spot. When the other dogs are ganging up on her, which happens a lot (Xima is no longer the smallest, so she is now more than happy to become a tormenter), Mel cries and runs and curls up in her box (which, I'm always telling her, is going to fall apart if she keeps chewing and tearing it up when she's bored). She's still a little homebody, afraid to wander alone too far from the safety of the house, but she's starting to go for walks with me- it took about half an hour the first time I led her away from the house, she kept running all the way back every time a noise frightened her, or another person walked past. My little scrawny scaredy cat.
Xima is a little explorer; she knows the area (having been shuffled around from house to house) so she goes off to play for several hours at a time, and always returns covered in little green seeds from the weeds. She's also grown a little bit of a belly, from eating first at my house and then heading to Erica/alycia's for seconds. (I was right to name her after the food that she loves, and always gets all over her nose) She'll eat and eat until she gets tired from standing, then she'll lay down on the ground with her face still buried in the plate. Oh, my family. I refer to them as my 'daughters', which makes Mozambicans laugh and shake their heads.
For puppies, they're not too much work. I get up once in the middle of the night to let them out (approx every 5 hours) but they're good about coming back. I get up at 5 just to open the doors and feed them (I love you fridge) and then I go pass out again.
I don't know why but I've been sleeping a lot (well, I always have, but an unusual amount even for me), on average 10 hours a night. It might be because of the interruptions in my sleep now (and I tend to stay up for a bit to use internet on my phone in the middle of the night, because that's when the network is unclogged). Physically, I feel fine though. I've been eating well- aside from my usual source of protein, eggs, I stocked up on some cans of tuna and this week I bought a chicken and Irma Daulisa killed it for me (I'm still not there yet). I never realized how small chickens actually are, well organic chickens I guess. I ended up giving most of it to the dogs (innards, head, neck, butt, feet, bones) which they loved. The rest I cooked and fried and enjoyed. I'll be thrilled again for grocery stores though, and easy access to pre packaged meat!!
I've also somehow ended up with about ten types of fruit, gifts from neighbors, Irma Daulisa, and kids. I have pineapple (did I mention mango season is just about over and given way to pineapple season? Yum!), mangoes, passion fruit, guava, watermelon (here, yellow with a million red seeds, and tastes like cucumber), papaya (good for the digestive system), lemons (that look like limes, I'm really not sure which), bananas, apples (on a good day, only 5mts each!!), and a grape-like fruit called a jambalaya (ps. Would die for some jambalaya right now, the food not the fruit). So then I've been getting creative- pineapple juice (from boiling the rinds), mango salsa, tropical fruit salad, and jam! Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have never tasted so good.
The government of Mozambique has recently declared a red alert due to flooding in south and central regions, but I feel very safe and dry here in Chimundo. Another volunteer in Gaza woke up this week to knee high water in her house, and had to pack everything and evacuate her site. She is currently staying with another volunteer, and doesn't know if and when she can go back. My bairro in Chimundo, on the other hand, Setenta Casas (70 houses) was built for victims of the flood in 2000, and is located on top of a hill. Unless it rains nonstop in February, and it might, being the 'month of floods' here in Moz, I should be okay. I've noticed a distinct rise in the number of mosquitoes though, due to rain (boo) and I've had to be more vigilant about putting on bug spray. The buzzing outside my net gets ridiculous sometimes, and im always paranoid it's in the net with me, but these things are just slight annoyances and minor inconveniences and I'll take them over flood any day. I've heard that some of the owners of the houses here, many of whom moved back to their lands after the prior flood and now rent out their house here, are preparing for flood and moving back to Chimundo and displacing their tenants. Thank God for contracts, hmm?
Anyway, I feel super safe here (knock on wood) and I'm pretty happy. It's nice to have Erica and Alycia so close by, as well as Yoko the Japanese volunteer. I went over to E/A's tonight and we watched Robin Hood Men In Tights which was just what I needed. Haven't received any mail since getting to site (except for one Christmas card), in case you're wondering. Please keep sending! They'll show up any day, probably all at once.
Time for me to catch some zzz's- it's 3am. Night!