Rebel Attack! ... (not)

Tonight started out relatively normal. I went to night school, about a third of my students were there, and about a third of those remembered anything we talked about last class. So I started my explanation over for the third time.

A few minutes later, the students were busy looking up past tense for various irregular verbs, when--

BANG!

Everyone's head shot up. And then again--

BANG!

Before my brain could even register the thought "Sounds like a gunshot!" half of my students were out the door, running for safety. The other half had flung themselves on the floor or were cowered under desks, covering their heads, wailing "Muxungue!" and "Renamo!"

Laura, at home and innocently cooking dinner, realized something weird was up when a bunch of my students ran by, shouting "Helen's been blown up by Renamo!" as they disappeared into the bush at a sprint.

In the meantime, we had discovered that the sound was not a grenade or an AK-47, but merely a rock thrown onto the tin ceiling by a misguided youth. I popped home to tell Laura that I had not in fact been blown to smithereens, and by the time I came back to school five minutes later, most of my students were gone.

"Where did everyone go?" I asked one of the leftover students "It wasn't an explosion! It was just a rock!"

I will never forget what my student told me in response.

"Teacher, the gunshot was fake, but the fear is very real."

The chances of Mavudzi being attacked by Renamo, or anyone else for that matter, are next to nothing. However, the horrors of war are recent memory for most Mozambicans. Sometimes, I forget how much this country has suffered, both at the hands of outsiders and from within. It's easy to get frustrated with how things are, and attribute it to laziness, apathy, and disinterest from the local population. However, until we have lived through the same atrocities that these people have, we will never know what exactly it feels like to be in their shoes.

Something to keep in mind.

On a lighter note, to end this post, one might say that my class tonight ended with a bang.

Ba dum tshhhhhh.

The Bricksburg Trap

Four weeks into the trimester, I gave a test covering what we had learned -- was and were, and the past progressive tense ("I was reading", "You were walking", etc).

My students did awfully. A small handful of them clearly studied and did well, most of them scored 3 or 4 points out of 20, with several students scoring no points and a whole slew of them getting zeros for cheating.

This was, naturally, upsetting to me. My students aren't stupid -- they don't know how to think, and I have no idea how to teach them that. Everything I've tried so far doesn't seem to have made much of a dent. Attendance usually hovers around 50% (including on test days) and I'm pretty sure a large percentage of my students still think they can bribe me with money (shocking, and not going to happen) or with -- and this has actually been offered to me -- sexual favors (more shocking, and certainly not going to happen.)

So I sat down last week and had Real Talk with them, explaining why I'm here (hint: not for money) and what I care about (that they learn something). Then I asked them to fill out a questionnaire that I wrote, with eight questions -- stuff like "What do you like/dislike about English class?" and "Do you have any difficulty reading or writing and understanding Portuguese?" and "Give me one suggestion for improving my teaching style." They wrote furiously, and I bustled with excitement to go home and read what they had written.

When I got home, I was disappointed. Even though I had explained to them several times that the questions were anonymous and I wanted to be completely honest and really tell me what they think, their answers were all the same.

I like English class. There is nothing I don't like. You are a good teacher. I have no problems reading and writing. I understand Portuguese. When you explain, it is clear. I like to pay attention and come on time and learn. I do not like to skip class and make noise and be disrespectful.

Ugh. What a waste of time.

This all stems from the fundamental problem I see in the Mozambican education system -- that there's no room for creativity and individual thought. Most Mozambican teachers have an entirely dictation and rote memorization based teaching style -- they drone on, students copy what they say, and then repeat it back when prompted. The system totally encourages this teaching style, too -- teachers that I know are creative and fun get sucked into it too -- because otherwise, there's no way the students will pass their exams, awfully written and horribly proofread by lazy, corrupt Ministry of Education officials.

What's the result? Students that have a lot of information in their brains, but don't know what any of it means, and couldn't form an original opinion if they wanted to.

I watched the Lego movie the other day, and the same-every-day, no-thinking, do-everything-like-you're-supposed-to mentality of Emmet Brickowski in Bricksburg really struck a chord with me. This is exactly the problem my students are having. They all like the same song, they all play the same sport, they all have the same hairstyle, and when they're older, they'll all vote for the same political party, because those are the "opinions" they've been told to have since they were able to talk. And let me tell you what, everything is NOT awesome with that.

I want to grab my students collectively by the collar and shake them until their brains jumpstart. Yes, you HAVE a brain. Yes, you can USE your brain. THINK. OPINE. ACT. Do something different from everyone else! Stop following all the instructions!

Bricksville Syndrome is the number one most aggravating frustration I've had to deal with during my time here. More so than rampant poverty, more so than ignorance and disease.

Mozambique is not going to go anywhere unless it can get its education system under control. Corruption at all levels is eating away at Mozambique's shot for the future. Students bribe their teachers to raise their grades, and then teachers turn around and use that money to bribe ministry officials into letting them "help" their students by telling them all the answers to the end-of-year national exams. The end result? Mozambique proudly holds its place at the bottom of the Human Development Index, followed only by the DRC and Niger. Well hey, at least the election results are still a landslide, and that's the important issue, isn't it?

This is not an impossible problem to solve. Zimbabwe, for example, with some pretty severe problems of its own, has taken charge of its education system and now boasts the highest literacy rate in Africa -- 90%. Mozambique, too, can overcome this hurdle -- but what it comes down to is individual responsibility for your actions. If all teachers stopped taking bribes, students would have no choice but to study. If the Ministry of Education and its provincial outposts would design a realistic curriculum and write decent tests, students might actually be able to pass the tests without cheating. Teachers could actually teach and students just might learn something.

The people of this country are hardworking and kind and intelligent. They have so much potential, but they haven't the faintest idea of the fact that they have it or how to use it. If they did, maybe they would look around them and think "You know what? I don't like how things are going, and I want to do something about it."

Come on, citizens of Bricksburg! Wake up! Look around you! Throw away the instructions.

THINK!

Have You Seen a Hyena?

After much stumbling along, the library project is finally thriving! We have between 12 and 30 kids that come every Saturday morning and Thursday afternoon to the library for reading and writing practice, English lessons, math and science games, and read-aloud stories. I'm really enjoying the time spent with these younger kids (compared to my high school students) because they haven't picked up all those robot-like tendencies of their older friends, such as

Don't speak up during class, as it is disrespectful. Stay completely silent unless spoken to, in which case you are either to respond only with "Yes, teacher" or "No teacher".

Nope, these kids actually talk and respond and listen and laugh, and it's so refreshing! Granted, a lot of the youngest kids -- first and second grade -- don't speak Portuguese yet, so it's been a workout for me to try to talk to them in Nyungwe. I've been taking lessons twice a week with my next-door-neighbor and library counterpart Quizito, so I can communicate on a basic level ("Can you read?" or "Write your name here." or "Books are not for eating!") but it's difficult.

Today was one of those days where cultural differences threw me off in a particularly amusing way. We were going over names of animals in Nyungwe and Portuguese, using a poster of "Bzirombo Bza Tete" ("Animals of Tete") that my friend Jeni provided for us. I would point to an animal and they would shout the name first in Nyungwe, then in Portuguese, and then we would do a funny imitation of the animal all together and finally, I would ask if anyone's seen that animal in real life. We went through lion, elephant, snake, and finally came to hyena.

"What is this?" I asked.

"THIKA!" they all shouted.

"How about in Portuguese? Who knows it?"

"Hiena!" most of them yelled.

"Great! Now how many of you have seen a hyena before?"

Every single had shot up into the air.

Wait, huh? For all the other animals, one or two of the kids would timidly raise their hands (particularly impressive when we got 'lion') and the rest of the kids would stare at them, wide-eyed.  I wondered if there was some pack of hyenas roaming around Mavduzi-Ponte that I'd just neither seen nor heard of.

However, when I asked again, "You've all seen a hyena?" they nodded furiously and unanimously, keeping their hands raised.

Hmm.

A few minutes later, Quizito walked in, and told him "You know, these kids are saying that they've ALL seen a hyena. Are there that many hyenas around here!?"

He looked at me, a smile creeping onto his face, and turned to talk to the kids in rapid-fire Nyungwe. He asked them something, then told them something, and then they all died laughing.

I didn't get it.

He turned to me. "This is one of those cultural things," he explained, "We have a myth, that if someone asks you if you've seen the hyena and you say no, the hyena will crawl into your house at night and eat you. So whenever you ask a Nyungwe person if they've seen a hyena, they'll say yes."

OK, so maybe these kids aren't totally void of the weird quirks of the Mozambican student. Still, this particular one made me laugh.

Have you seen a hyena before? Because I certainly have!

Individual reading time.

Quizito enchants the kids.

Silly story about a silly monkey!