A word on crianzas

Sometimes I think of Africa as a great parenting social experiment. What would happen if everyone lived really close together, had multiple children, and left said children free to roam unsupervised most of the day? Ta da! Welcome to Mozambique.
On any given day you can find small groups of children foraging through the trash pits for things to play with. At least here in this neighborhood they aren't usually motivated by hunger, although they do like to thoroughly lick discarded chip bags, eat cookie crumbs from the wrapper, salvage the last drop of juice from the carton... It's not so sanitary but hey, at least they're timely garbage collectors. A plastic bag that I throw out will usually be picked apart in a day; I'll see my anti malaria medicine carton in the hands of the little neighbor girl, my empty tin can is now a drum for her older brother. The only place trash is safe from the crianzas, is down the latrine. During training we heard a story about a volunteer who found kids using her tampon applicators as whistles..... The trash of foreigners is oh so fascinating.
What the kids do with the trash ranges from annoying (make loud noises, or leave the trash all over the yard when they're done playing, which defeats the purpose of me putting trash in the trash pit in the first playing), to somewhat dangerous (ie.Tie wire around the puppies' necks for a collar or leash, or feed the dogs whatever so that they'll be coaxed to come out and play- I rescued a cough drop from Mel's mouth the other day), to disgusting (the juice I threw out a few weeks ago was spoiled and im pretty sure they still drank it), to (rarely) actually even creative. One thing I've seen that impressed me, kids running around pushing sticks attached to wire cars with soda can wheels. I was standing at the chapa stop a while ago, waiting, and an older kid ran by with his toy. 'Look, it's a chapa!' he said as he passed and I saw it indeed was, a wire pickup truck carrying a cargo of crushed soda cans. I'll have to take a picture next time I see one of those toys, because they're pretty innovative. 'Ta nice!' as they would say here, mixing some Portuguese and some English in a strange kind of slang. (Also, 'ta crazy' and 'ta soft,' the latter meaning something like 'that's good')
Back to crianzas. I say rarely creative because it's true, Mozambicans are not taught to think creatively, either in school or elsewhere. In schools you find formal education, where the professor stands at the front and lectures the whole time, and the students regurgitate the information, usually without digesting it all the way. That's why failing a grade is so common. That, and low attendance due to family, work, or financial difficulties- school is technically free, but students are still required to buy book, uniforms, supplies, etc. So if a student fails or drops out, they start again next year or when they can, where they left off. In the higher grades especially, 11 and 12 for example, it's not uncommon to have students ranging from maybe 18 to 30 years old.
The kids who don't go to school, who don't have a productive way to spend their days, are generally the ones who cause trouble, for lack of better things to do. They hang out at my front door for hours at a time (I play this secret game called How Fast Can I Bore Them So That They Go Away) and you'd think that ignoring them would do the trick but, as Erica wisely explained in response to my initial bafflement, 'You're still their only source of entertainment, so it doesn't matter if you acknowledge them or not. It's not like they'll get attention elsewhere.' If I shut the door, they sometimes come to the other side. Lately they've taken to destroying my sugar cane plants (and they're not even ready for harvesting!) and pulling down the branches of my mafora tree (mafora is a fruit the size and shape of a bright orange garlic bulb, with big seeds inside each 'clove') because well, mango season is over and they have to steal their snacks from elsewhere. No wonder kids are so malnurished. Things like mangoes, cashews, sugar cane, are dietary staples- not to mention endless amounts of xima (not my dog, who is now referred to as XimaXima), french fries, and cassava root. You can tell the malnurished ones by their bloated bellies, twig like arms, and constant runny noses. (Side note: In Portuguese, the word for congestion is constipacao, which if you didn't know better might think it meant constipation.)
The other day a group of crianzas showed up at my door (this may happen several times in one day, with different groups of crianzas but fortunately my front porch area gets hit by the midday sun, making it uncomfortable for the kids to sit and harass me for too long). I was in a good mood, so I chatted with them a bit (this group contained some older girls, who are in school and can speak Portuguese... The young young ones tend to speak Changana and only know how to ask for things). I asked the girls if they like to draw and their eyes lit up. 'YES!' They all said. But I wasn't in THAT good of a mood so I told them we could draw the next day, which they seemed satisfied with (although the next day all three showed up at different times and demanded to draw, and I declined because I was not about to give art tutoring lessons three times. And besides, I had a small group activity planned.)
The oldest girl, about 10, is obviously excited about drawing. 'I'm going to draw a house!' she tells me proudly, and beams like she expects a cookie for such a novel idea. It's too bad Mozambicans don't understand sarcasm because I would have said something along the lines of, 'Oh really? That's not predictable at all.' I give you the opportunity to draw anything you want, and the best you can come up with is a house? Her enthusiasm about drawing a house almost kind of depresses me because of the sheer amount of work ahead of me, trying to instigate some spark of creativity. Ah, the rare days I'm feeling enough patience to actually open the metal grates that separate me from all the children.
I taught a neighborhood boy to draw stars the other day, which I think was definitely the highlight of his day if not his whole week. 'Mana Vivienne,' he said, 'You're such a good teacher!' Aw, shucks. When he came by later to ask for help with his math homework, I saw he had drawn stars all over his notebook.
There is a big difference between kids just roaming around in the neighborhood and kids in an organized school environment. A lot of the preschoolers I work with are, as I've mentioned before, OVC's. I'm not sure if I've explained this, but in Mozambique a child is considered an orphan if they've lost one parent, not necessarily both. The escolhina was created with these children in mind (and to give single working mothers a place to leave their babies and children), but at this point I think we're accepting anyone else as long as they can pay.
The first day of school (Feb 1), 10 kids showed up, a good turnout considering we started late and our start day was spread by word of mouth. (Eh pa, imagine what we could do with the convenience of email and newsletters and internet!) Over the next few weeks, more children will continue to arrive and enroll. Many of them are returning from last year and already have the routine down. Others, like the kid who cried for an hour after his dad left and never let go of his Batman backpack all day, are new to the escolhina and need some time to adjust.
The first day I saw one of the boys hitting the hand of his friend so I tried to teach the kids the hand slap game, the one in which one person has their hands underneath the other person's and tries to slap while the other tries to pull away in time. None of the kids got it. One kid managed to understand half of it, but once we switched roles he still kept trying to pull his hands back. Jump rope was sort of a flop too, as the kids were more interested in hitting the cord on the ground as hard as possible than in creating a jump-able arc. Or those familiar with the concept of jump rope were not exactly familiar with the technique, jumping up and down to no rhythm at all and expecting the rope to magically fly under their feet. Well, of course, I can't jump and swing rope at the same time, unless I'm jumping rope alone. So i guess I'll have to try to teach them again later with one of my coworkers, who apparently knows how, and we will demonstrate for the kids how it's done.
The only successful game I taught them that day was Simon Says, which fit in well with our anatomy lesson. (Simon Says touch your toes!) Later on I plan to introduce Duck Duck Goose, Twister, Sharks and Minnows (or, culturally adapted Lions and Mice). If any of you have experience with pre schoolers, activity suggestions would be helpful!
Also on the first day, I had a discussion with my coworkers about the payment schedule. This year, I think the escolhina is going to try to implement a pay deadline at the end of the month, with late fees. Paying at the beginning of the month isn't viable in Mozambique, they explain, because pay day is the 20th, so parents won't have money before then. But I don't agree, because asking (in many cases, unreliable) people to pay after they've already received something is how they skip out on paying altogether. (Equals more financial trouble for the escolhina) Why don't they switch the schedule and have parents pay in advance, even if it means their kid skips just one month? When I brought up the idea of taking a deposit (to return at the end of the year) along with registration fees (because people tend to skip out on paying over the holiday season and at the end of the year), they pondered it but then said, 'People would talk about how expensive our escolhina is!' and that was the end of it.
As of now the escolhina still does not have a budget or a written schedule for employees. ('But I know everybody's schedule already!' Irma Daulisa protested when I told her we needed one. Keep in mind, I was the first one there promptly at 7 that morning and she rolled in around 930 with the keys to open the classrooms. Imagine me and six toddlers sitting on a straw mat with nothing to do for a few hours. Thank God Angelica the cook is a punctual person and helped me with the kids. I now have the classroom keys and needless to say, I'm guessing we probably won't be seeing Irma Daulisa until after 10 in the mornings.)
Another problem I've been having is being stuck between Irma Catarina and Irma Daulisa, who are two very different people with very different ideas. Catarina is the founder and is technically in charge but has passed most of the escolhina responsibilities to Daulisa this year. Although I work with Daulisa on a daily basis, Catarina still has final say on all ideas.
For example, I found a couple of coloring books at Erica/alycia's house and I wanted to make photocopies of several pages for the kids. Daulisa was very excited about the books, looking through each page and commenting on each one (In a Lisa Frank book featuring kittens, there was a page with two kittens peering into a fish bowl and, probably to take up more space on the page, random fishes around the cats. Daulisa: 'Why are the fish out of the water? Are they dead? Wait, the kittens are underwater?') I asked for 20 mets to go to the city to make photocopies; she told me she'd give it to me after checking with Irma Catarina. Irma Catarina, when I asked her about it that day, said, 'No we don't have money for that. Write a letter asking the parents to send their kid to school next week with one metical, in order for them to have a copy and be able to participate in your activity.' 'What happens when not all the parents want to pay?' I asked. 'Then the kid will cry because all the other children are coloring and next time the kid will whine until his parents do pay.' Ouch, harsh. Is that really the best way? I don't know. I guess when I was in primary school the teachers did something similar; if you don't get your permission slip signed you don't get to watch the movie. But how is a 3 or 4 year old kid going to understand that he doesn't get a picture of a puppy to color because his parent(s) decided his education wasn't worth contributing 1 more metical? I better not be the one who has to deal with that.
Enough of organizational development frustrations. How can I talk about children without mentioning my own? Mel and Xima, 'Ze poopies' as I like to call them, or 'My little ponies.' Xima is quickly losing her puppy look, which makes me kind of sad. Pretty soon I won't have puppies anymore, I will have dogs. Big ferocious dogs! Mel is still the timid one but she's now a little less skittish, a little more confident. She recognizes some of the neighbor kids and isn't afraid to approach them. I have mixed feelings when I say the puppies don't pee in the house anymore, because they've started pooping in the house at night, which is infinitely worse. You really have to go number two (and three, awful) on my clean floor at midnight, when I'm super tired and cranky? But it's not like I can just leave it there to attract roaches and stink up the house so I take out what I can and mop up the rest with the door open, thus letting in a million mosquitoes. Sigh.
This happened two nights in a row, two different dogs. The first night, I accidentally locked myself out of the house when I tried to close the door a little to avoid letting in mosquitoes and it closed all the way. (No doorknob, can only be opened from the outside with key) So, naturally, I first thoroughly washed my hands in the veranda, and then contemplated my situation. I stumbled in the dark ('please don't let me run into a clothesline') to Alycia's window and creepily whispered into her bedroom, 'Hey it's Viv. I'm so sorry but I need my spare keys...' She opened the front door, super disoriented, and gave me my keys after almost handing me her flashlight. End of 1am adventure. The next day she woke up and wondered if it had been a dream.
Puppies puppies puppies. I think the Americans have started trend... In the past week there have appeared FOUR tiny puppies in the neighborhood, all four of whom were either brought to my house or to Erica/alycia's in an attempt to get us to feed them and essentially take care of them (like I've done with XimaXima and they've done with Bop). I'm at capacity at my house (still reserving a spot for a kitty) so I turned them away rather insistently ('Aw you got a puppy? How cute. Okay you can take him now, because he can't stay here'). Erica and Alycia are not as stern but they also don't want another dog. We'll see. Because a lot of these pups are female, in a year we anticipate a neighborhood 'cheia' (full) with new puppy litters...
Well, if the puppies live that long, that is. Some of the kids who now have puppies, are in my opinion not fit to take care of another living being, being as they can't even care for non moving things like plants (same kids who destroy my landscape). The neighbor's kid accidentally dropped his puppy from the top of a small flight of steps, and now it's limping. His solution was to try to pull on the dog's leg to straighten it out. When XimaXima tried to get close to the other dog (in our own backyard), the punk smacked her. I made it very clear he is not allowed to hit other people's dogs, and then took XimaXima back inside and told her to be grateful she doesn't belong to that kid. She responded by giving me kisses.
Today a group of kids came by with a rope to 'claim' XimaXima, who stays here night and day, responds only when I call, and who I've been feeding 3x a day for the past two months. Are you kidding? What a weird time to try to assert custody rights. I didn't let them take her. 'Are you going to feed her 3x a day and take good care of her? Because if not, she should stay here and play with the other puppy and roam free and be happy. You can come here to play with her but she needs to stay here,' is what I said. I went just short of saying, ' How would YOU like it if someone came to your house and grabbed you and took you away, and then tied you up when you wanted to go home?' It worked, however. They stared at the ground and mumbled that she could stay with me and I felt triumphant, like a mama tiger protecting her cub. Or a mama chicken protecting her chicks. Or something.
It's strange to me that kids can still consider a dog theirs when someone else is feeding it and taking care of it, and has been for months. The kids who 'own' Bop tie him up in their yard occasionally, which Erica and Alycia don't mind but would drive me nuts. Why should I feed your kid? Raise your baby? Whatever, my dogs are like my daughters. Besides, the exact same kids who technically own XimaXima actually just got another tiny puppy (Why on earth would you get a second dog when you obviously can't take care of the first?) who looks just like XimaXima. It (surprise) is staying at someone else's house.