When you are a Peace Corps Volunteer, or any ex-pat living and working in the “developing world,” you take a number of risks. Its a risk when you decide to not brush your teeth with filtered water. Its a risk when you sometimes purposefully miss your malaria prophylaxis. Its a risk when you swim in that fresh water river with your friends when you know it may be ridden with schisto. Its a risk when you eat that salad despite the fact you know that the kitchen probably did not clean the vegetables. Its a risk when you neglect to wear sunscreen on a day you are out doing home visits.
When I was studying at BU, one of my professors, Bill Bicknell, began to talk to us about these risks. I remember him saying that despite all the infections, diseases, ailments, and discomforts we may, and probably will have, our greatest risk was getting into cars.
When I got to Mozambique, that point seemed totally true. Its not just that the roads are bad, but its that the roads are bad, the cars are falling apart, and the drivers are rarely licensed. I have gotten in cars where no one sits in the front seat because the radiator gets so hot you cannot sit down. I have gotten in cars where the doors fall off. I get in cars that are over packed and are left with a blind spot bigger than the road itself. I fly down roads with huge potholes and often get out with bumps on my head because there are no seat belts to hold me in place as I am jostled as much as the goat sitting next to me.
Its a risk I take. Its a risk we all take. And until last week that was all it was. A risk. But it was not real.
Until last week.
When I heard about the accident it was so surreal. I had just boleaed, hitch hiked, from another beach a few days prior exactly like this group of volunteers did. We all do. Many of us prefer open back trucks; they are airy, spacious, and give you a chance for a ride without having to explain who you are for the thousandth time that week. The fact that we all take those rides makes the accident so surreal. So surreal but also so sobering.
The details of the accident are still a bit unclear, but the five volunteers involved apparently realized partway through their ride that this risk was greater than they were comfortable with. After asking the driver to slow down, they finally asked him to stop, but he, like so many Mozambican motoristas did not seem to care at all.
The tire in the truck blew out, scattering the volunteers as the truck flipped. Two volunteers, who had only arrived at site the previous week, sustained too great of injuries, and never made it to the hospital. The other three volunteers were immediately medivaced to South Africa where they received care.
Lena was new to Chibuto. She had a big smile and was willing to poke fun at her subtle Wisconsin accent. You could tell immediately that she was excited to be in Mozambique, to learn and try something new. To see the world.
Alden was opening an education site in Chissano. Her first weekend there she stayed around to help proctor exams, a particularly undesirable job. We all gave her a hard time for already being taken advantage of by her school director. She was just so eager to be a part of her new life in Mozambique.
Derek, Mary, and Mark are still recovering in South Africa. It is unclear if they will return as volunteers, but needless to say they have the support of every Moz Volunteer, past and present.
The other volunteers in the new swear in group have lost two of their sisters. Lena and Alden had only been at site a little over a week. After the ups and downs of training, I remember how close I was to to many of my colleagues, and I cannot imagine how difficult it has been for them to lose two beautiful women as they have.
We are all sobered by the events this month. The risks we take are real risks. They have real consequences. And while the consequences are often steps away, sometimes they are lurking nearby.
My heart goes out to the families and friends of Lena and Alden. Having had the opportunity to meet both of them briefly, I cannot start to express my sympathies but I hope you know you have the support of the entire Peace Corps Mozambique family.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
patience is a virtue, but so is understanding the functions of "right click"
Those of you who know me, know that I am not the most patient person. In high school it used to drive me crazy how long Dena, my younger sister, used to take to shower before school. I do not like waiting around for things to happen, and I am usually busy doing three or four things at once.
In Mozambique, you are lucky if you do three or four things in a week.
Things move much slower here. Its really not a bad thing, but it took some getting used to. When I make a meeting for 10 AM, I am no longer surprised when we don't start until 11:30 or 12. I know see the value in the kibitzing I do in that “waiting time.”
In Mozambique people take time to talk about the weather, how their fields are faring, and gossip about the neighbors. Its considered rude to walk past someone you know and not stop to say hello. And I have grown to love it. Some of my favorite interactions each day happen underneath a shady tree when I run into someone in the road. Then, if that conversation makes me ten minutes late, no one seems to mind. I am learning to appreciate the day for what it is and to stop being in a rush all the time.
Despite what I consider to be great strides in my patience, I still have a long way to go.
The greatest test of my patience so far has been a series of computer classes I started teaching last month.
I teach to two different groups. My REDES girls come in in the afternoons and I teach to a few of the Mozaic team and church members a couple times a week in the mornings.
My favorite Mozaic student was Mama Fatima, who is the wife of one of the Pastors in our network. Fatima is the mother of three beautiful children, the youngest of which is only about six months. I think she just liked that she had the opportunity to get out of the house everyday and do something a little different. She would bring her youngest son, and with him either strapped to her back or propped on her lap, we was content to “type” for hours.
I was able to install a typing program on the computers. The program prompts you to type a word and then times how long it takes you and how accurate you were. Each level adds different letters and characters and becomes a bit more difficult. Fatima would sit and work with this program all morning. One day I looked over her shoulder and realized that she did not care at all how accurate her typing was. She said she liked how it felt to tap the keys. She was sitting for hours typing gibberish. She was doing about 35 words per minute but only had about 2% accuracy. When I explained that she was supposed to try to type the words on the screen, she said that she knew but she liked doing it this way.
To her the class was much more about the prospect of something different every few days than it was about learning computers.
I think its this prospect that really made me excited about teaching computers, despite the test of my patience.
At my first lesson with my REDES girls, I had a short passage I wanted the girls to practice typing, then save in a folder that they create for themselves on the desktop. When Etelvinha, one of my favorite, most dedicated REDES girls, sat down and pushed the start key like a touch screen when I told them to click start, I knew I needed to take a step back.
You take for-granted how much you know about computers. I am anything but tech savvy, but I know how to turn on a computer, to hold and use mouse, and am familiar most of the basic functions of the computer's software.
I was starting at square one with my girls. Etelvinha, Fatima, and Neuzia came in almost everyday before the holidays, other girls did not come in as regularly, but were also excited to have the chance to play on the computer. They were happy to practice using the mouse in a paint program, play solitaire, and try to pass different levels in a typing program. While at times, teaching the difference between a right click and a left click made me want to pull my hair out, and sometimes ended in a mysterious malfunction of the entire machine which I still am unsure how they managed so many times, seeing the girls get better and better at typing was really fun. It was also fun for them to be able to sit down at the computer and open “their” folder, filled with paint documents cluttered with hearts and smilies and long letters that had no punctuation at all (punctuation is at the end of the typing program and we have not quite gotten there yet).
What is exciting about teaching computers to this group of girls is the fact that knowing the basic functions of a computer puts them among a small percentage of Mozambicans who can boast that. Knowing how to create and save documents is a marketable skill that will help these girls find themselves in a position where they can do something other than sell cookies in the market or work hard in the machamba all day.
And that prospect is worth my frustrations when I explain for the tenth time how to shut down the computer.
In Mozambique, you are lucky if you do three or four things in a week.
Things move much slower here. Its really not a bad thing, but it took some getting used to. When I make a meeting for 10 AM, I am no longer surprised when we don't start until 11:30 or 12. I know see the value in the kibitzing I do in that “waiting time.”
In Mozambique people take time to talk about the weather, how their fields are faring, and gossip about the neighbors. Its considered rude to walk past someone you know and not stop to say hello. And I have grown to love it. Some of my favorite interactions each day happen underneath a shady tree when I run into someone in the road. Then, if that conversation makes me ten minutes late, no one seems to mind. I am learning to appreciate the day for what it is and to stop being in a rush all the time.
Despite what I consider to be great strides in my patience, I still have a long way to go.
The greatest test of my patience so far has been a series of computer classes I started teaching last month.
I teach to two different groups. My REDES girls come in in the afternoons and I teach to a few of the Mozaic team and church members a couple times a week in the mornings.
My favorite Mozaic student was Mama Fatima, who is the wife of one of the Pastors in our network. Fatima is the mother of three beautiful children, the youngest of which is only about six months. I think she just liked that she had the opportunity to get out of the house everyday and do something a little different. She would bring her youngest son, and with him either strapped to her back or propped on her lap, we was content to “type” for hours.
I was able to install a typing program on the computers. The program prompts you to type a word and then times how long it takes you and how accurate you were. Each level adds different letters and characters and becomes a bit more difficult. Fatima would sit and work with this program all morning. One day I looked over her shoulder and realized that she did not care at all how accurate her typing was. She said she liked how it felt to tap the keys. She was sitting for hours typing gibberish. She was doing about 35 words per minute but only had about 2% accuracy. When I explained that she was supposed to try to type the words on the screen, she said that she knew but she liked doing it this way.
To her the class was much more about the prospect of something different every few days than it was about learning computers.
I think its this prospect that really made me excited about teaching computers, despite the test of my patience.
At my first lesson with my REDES girls, I had a short passage I wanted the girls to practice typing, then save in a folder that they create for themselves on the desktop. When Etelvinha, one of my favorite, most dedicated REDES girls, sat down and pushed the start key like a touch screen when I told them to click start, I knew I needed to take a step back.
You take for-granted how much you know about computers. I am anything but tech savvy, but I know how to turn on a computer, to hold and use mouse, and am familiar most of the basic functions of the computer's software.
I was starting at square one with my girls. Etelvinha, Fatima, and Neuzia came in almost everyday before the holidays, other girls did not come in as regularly, but were also excited to have the chance to play on the computer. They were happy to practice using the mouse in a paint program, play solitaire, and try to pass different levels in a typing program. While at times, teaching the difference between a right click and a left click made me want to pull my hair out, and sometimes ended in a mysterious malfunction of the entire machine which I still am unsure how they managed so many times, seeing the girls get better and better at typing was really fun. It was also fun for them to be able to sit down at the computer and open “their” folder, filled with paint documents cluttered with hearts and smilies and long letters that had no punctuation at all (punctuation is at the end of the typing program and we have not quite gotten there yet).
What is exciting about teaching computers to this group of girls is the fact that knowing the basic functions of a computer puts them among a small percentage of Mozambicans who can boast that. Knowing how to create and save documents is a marketable skill that will help these girls find themselves in a position where they can do something other than sell cookies in the market or work hard in the machamba all day.
And that prospect is worth my frustrations when I explain for the tenth time how to shut down the computer.
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