Primero Dia das Aulas

It had all been leading up to this, the first day of school as a volunteer.  From the applying to the Peace Corps, acceptance and waiting, getting to Mozabique, 10 weeks of training, learning a new language, figuring out a new culture and style of living, integrating into my site for 2 months prior, and also a lot of dinking around in those 2 months trying to stave of complete boredom at times.  But really all of that was so I could be here and teaching at this school, end result.
The night before on our way back from the market, we stopped at our neighbors’, the Pedagogical Director, house and asked him about what the plan was for tomorrow.  Telling us that the first set of classes were getting started at 7.  So a good dinner, I get all my lesson plans in order for tomorrow and check a couple Portuguese words so I don’t have a complete flop, and clock out early for the night.  Waking up at 6 to the sound of kids starting to go past my window on the way to the school.  Luckily the night was relatively cool so waking up in a puddle of sweat wasn’t a problem that morning, although it happens more often than not here in Tete.  Rolling out of bed and walking into the living room, Drew has already beaten me up and had hot water for out instant coffee out.  Mix up my African mocha: insta coffe, coco powder, and sugar.  After a cup I start to come alive and those ‘first day’ of anything butterflies are starting to flutter.  After getting dressed and busting out my first bow tie here in Moz we grab our things and head out towards the school.  It’s only about a few hundred yards or so.

(The white coats of Prof.s are called Batas)

  Outside the school we see the Senior Director and he is having all the coming students forming up in lines around our flag pole.  Coming up and greeting him he is kinda of surprised to see us here and ready to go, we had beaten the Ped. Director and any other professor there, ain’t hard when its our front yard, and it was already 7.  He goes into the typical first day speech, from what I could gather here and there, and then he starts to give us introductions.  These are our new white professors, yadda Americans, yadda Volunteers, yadda yadda Obama; don’t really know why he mentioned Obama I missed the lead up to that but it made me laugh.  All the students stare at us with the widest of eyes are about as deer in the headlights as you can be.  Ped. Director shows up and he gives he’s speech, leaving out us and Obama, then we sing the Moz national anthem and school has started!

Or at least you‘d think it was going to.  The students all run into their designated classrooms for each turma (like a homeroom) and we head back to the admin building to see when we are teaching.  Walk into the teachers’ lounge and all the other are professors are just  using the room for what it is for, lounging.  A bit confused, I ask about the class schedule and they kind of laugh and say its not made yet.  Then I notice the bit of chaos that is kind of happening about.  Students are in and out of classrooms, others and parents are lined up out the Directors door to register late or inquire about something or other, professors are shooting the breeze waiting to have an idea of where to go.  Honestly though we had a good hunch this would happen.  All PCVs former and current we talked to said the first week of classes is like college syllabus week expect even less serious or organized.

So after chilling with the other Profs for a bit and seeing the Ped. Director swamped with people waiting to talk to him.  It’s obvious that he hasn’t even got time now to finish the schedule or start if he hasn’t.  This is going no where I tell the Senior Director that I have a program the PC gave us that does schedules and I could help the Ped. if he needs it.  Side note, I’ve looked at this program once briefly and didn’t plan on using it, they never asked us to help on it, and  figured I’d take whatever schedule they gave me.  He immediately perks up and pushes me in front of the Ped. and says he can make the whole schedule.

Yeah, I created the entire school’s schedule for 2,000 students on a whim and an afternoon with  another professor explaining the combinations of double and single classes each subject has a week,  gets kinda wacky with 11th and 12th grade.  And the professor who helped, didn’t find out until I was printing the schedule, teaches English!  My Portuguese was being strained harder that clothes through a press.  I gave him some flack for that, in English, and he just laughed and said he thought it was easier to do in port.  Though it was some a solid pain in the ass, worked on it for close to 5 hours and was sweating bullets in the lounge once it hit high noon, it was all worth it.  I stacked mine, my roommate’s, and one of our friend’s schedules, nobody having to work on Fridays, gonna be a good year.

And yeah nobody taught classes that day.  Morning students just cleaned the rooms, which the students  of the school must do all the cleaning all year, builds character.  And the after students just worked in the school machamba(garden) in their uniforms.  So the first day here at do Vale de Chitima was not the typical beginning day of school but a first day non the less.  Glad to be starting my first job outa college.

His name is Rio and he pecks across the sand (queue ’Rio’ by DuranDuran)

So some of you may have seen this picture up on my instagram account....

He’s name is Rio and this is the story of how we ended up with a chicken.

Drew and I had arrived back into Chitima from a trip into the provincial capital a couple Saturdays back.  On our way walking back home from the market where the chappas drop you off, our friend/fellow professor, Armindo,  rolls up in his truck and asks where we are going. Us saying home he says to jump in.  Though we quickly realize he isn’t taking us back to the house.  He son, Iris, is in the backseat too and we all start heading in the opposite direction and stop at barraca on the outskirts of town and pick up the owner who is his buddy and he tells us we are going looking for alligators and elephants, with a chuckle.  Most of this day consists of a lot of poor understanding of Portuguese and just rolling with it, but I remember him saying alligators and elephants.
 Either way we are just pumped to be riding around in a car that isn’t trying to squeeze 20+ people in it.  We make a break out west of Chitima after picking up his friend.  Pass a couple mato (bush) villages and pull into the entrance of the road to Maringa Bay (where we went for New Year’s, older blog post).  We go down the road a bit and stop at a baobab tree and get out over looking this decent field with a small pond.  No animals around but they tells us this is where elephants come after the rain season, I’m picturing it being some sort of migration stop.  I can believe it, we are pretty out in the mato.  Though we only stop there for a hot minute and we are back in the car and off.  After we pass a few dried up rivers we make it to a rather good size town and stop at a road side baracca and have beer with the fellows Armindo knows sitting around on the patio.  After some short conversation and Armindo getting me to try this weird fruit in a shell that he says elephants love and then proceeds to dip it in charcoal ash (wasn’t bad),

(Tamarind Fruit)

he points out that the main guy we are talking with on the patio is the town’s chief or police, go figure.  But that he knows where there are alligators.
So we all pile back into his truck, which is now a party bus of sorts with the cab full and people now riding in the bed.  With the chief of police leading the way we turn of the main road and start tearing down this dirt cattle road that seems to just go la.  It opens up though into a beautiful field that kisses the water of the Lake Cahora Bassa.  We talk to some women washing clothes at the shore there for a minute and then we are off again following the chiefs directions he is shouting from the bed of the truck.  We come up to a gated area and it turns out to be a compound for kapenta fisherman on the lake.  There are huge rows of laterally hung black nets for drying out the little fish and even more piles of nets that are being repaired by teams of young men.  The chief gives the guy at the gat the secrete password, really just local language I can’t understand and we get out in the compound they start walking us around.  Fallowing the gatekeeper we make it to a group of men who are repairing a net, the young guys are untangling and retying the net will a older man watches over them.  We do the introductions and are talking with older man.  I ask him about some of the fish they get, specifically if Tiger Fish is one?  Which is the trophy fish people typically go for in this lake.  The conversation keeps going and I am looking around fascinated with everything; huge nets, their sleeping hut, cooking station, and chickens running around all in the same area.  The older fisherman sees me looking around and says something to me about piexe(fish) and galinhas(chickens).  I try and say something about them fishing for the chickens of the sea.  He and all the others seemed to find that quite funny.  He then turns to the net boys and says something in local lingua and in a hot second without me even understanding the context of what he might have said, the net boys drop what they are doing and start tearing after one of the roaming chickens, Rio.

Rio puts up a good show and has these boys running all over the compound for a while.  After a minute I realize that they are chasing it for us so I join in and the others seemed to find that absolutely hilarious too.  We get it cornered with their sleeping shack and a boys snatches Rio up.  Takes him to the older man and he just points to me.  Astonished a bit, thinking that they were going to want to cook him there to have dinner with us. Instead they were just being extremely kind and just gifting me a chicken.  Feeling very grateful and humbled I took Rio from the man and thanked him profusely.  After he said no problem I lifted him up and said I’m excited to have the fish of the land.   That corny line really got them going.
Though there wasn’t any crocodiles or elephants, we still ended up with a chicken.  Which we had to name Rio after getting him from fishermen on a river bed. Back home gitty with ourselves after recounting all the randomness and goofiness of what our afternoon that day had turned into, we proceed to take a few pictures with our new gift/pet/future dinner.

P.S. Rio is still alive to this post and he is roaming around our house with the other chickens.  We are waiting for him to get fatter and also a good occasion to have him for dinner.