every moment a lesson

Coming to Mozambique, there was no question that I would be offered different perspectives on things. I wasn’t sure if it would be some things, or all the things, but I knew I would leave here different…and I hoped, and still hope, different in the best way. These past few weeks have encouraged me to challenge myself in the way I see people and situations, both inside of and outside of the classroom. 

My thoughts…

…On Cheating.

I have no tolerance for it. In the States cheating is more than just “frowned upon”, it’s forbidden. If you get caught doing it, you not only receive a bad grade, but you could be kicked out of school,for good. “Cheating is bad” has been ingrained in our noggins since we were old enough to understand what cheating was. Teachers would make us use folders to make a fort on our desks so our fellow classmates couldn’t peak at our work. Some college professors make you submit papers to a certain website to ensure a student didn’t purchase his/her work. Looking over your mate’s (I’m reading a book set it Ireland right now by Tana French) shoulder to double check that #8 was in fact C could get you sent to the princpal’s office…or worse. So, naturally, coming here I already knew that cheating was going to be something I just plain and simply would not tolerate.

I gave my first test last week, four weeks into the school year. Over those four weeks, we learned exactly six vocabulary words relating to mathematical logic. We did what seemed like gazillions of practice problems. We reviewed truth tables multiple times. We decided if simple statements such as “My name is Sarah” were true or false. We did the same for numerical statements such as 1+1=2. Four pages of a text book over and over again until I thought the students were so bored they might die. Then we played a Jeopardy style review game—they went nuts for that. I wrote on the board the list of topics that would be covered on the test. They had a week and a half to study. The average scores of each of my classes were: 10, 12, 11.6 and 10.4 (all scores out of 20 points). Even though students were able to stand up and recite the information to me before and after the test, what they wrote down did not match what they actually knew. And I didn’t—and still don’t—understand the disconnect. 

I also gave 22 students a grade of exactly zero points, for cheating. I warned them before starting the test that if I saw them copying work from another student, I would take their paper, give them a zero and ask them to leave. There would be no room for discussion and they would not have the opportunity to retake the test. I gave verbal and non-verbal warnings to students before taking their papers and drawing big fat tragic red zeros on the top of their papers. I am a fun, nice, incentive system-implementing, joke-about-my-portuguese, sometimes-speak-in-English-on-accident, want-to-know-my-students-as-people, patient teacher who prefers to lift my students up rather than highlight their faults and ignore their accomplishments (like many of my colleagues tend to do).  Yes. I am all of those things, and I am proud of that. But I also have expectations of honesty and hard work. And if you as a student, cannot adhere to my simple and fair expectations, you can leave right now. Becsuse if you’re going to earn your grade dishonestly, why try at all?

#endrant

…On Beauty

I made a friend named Sonia. She is 12 years old. I met her because one day her mother approached our gardener, Valiente, and asked if I could help her because her daughter is fat. (Did I mention that she is 12 years old?) Her mother said that she wanted her daughter to come exercise with me because she needs to lose weight. As a person who has relatively recently “recovered” from an eating disorder, I can boldly say right now that that’s pretty fucked up. Sorry for the language, but if you read my blog post about mental illness, you understand why this topic causes me to cuss like a sailor. Anyways, I agreed to work with her, mostly because I wanted to combat the negative feedback she was getting from her family about her body. A 12 year old girl, even in a country like Mozambique—or perhaps especially in a country like Mozambique—should not be scrutinizing her own body, or having her body be scrutinized by others.

Our first couple sessions were pretty informal. We did jumping jacks, high knees, plank, lunges, squats, windmills, arm circles, etc. It was pretty much like middle school gym minus balls (soccer balls, footballs, or boys’ balls…because it was just Sonia and I…see what I did there?). 

Then our third session was when I felt like we knew each other well enough to start asking some questions that were really weighing on me. I asked her why she wanted to do exercise with me, and this is what she said: “I want to get smaller because right now I am ugly”. I think in that moment my heart broke a little bit. I told her that exercising is a good way to make your body healthier and stronger. I told her she didn’t need to lose weight to be beautiful; that she already is beautiful. I told her that she is smart. I told her that I like spending time with her. I told her that if she didn’t enjoy doing exercise with me, that we could do other things such as read books, color, go for walks, or practice English. I told her that working out is a healthy habit and that the goal of working out should be to have fun and make your body stronger. I told her that if she worked towards staying healthy, her body would be exactly the size it wants to be.

I told her about my eating disorder. I told her that I used to be very afraid of gaining weight. I told her it controlled my life. I told her that I got very sick because I was very skinny but I was not healthy. I told her I was always tired and never had any energy. I told her I became afraid of food. I told her I did exercise to get skinny and I got very sick and I was sad and tired all the time. I told her I didn’t believe I was beautiful. She told me that she didn’t understand how I could think I was ugly. I told her I didn’t understand how she could think she is ugly. I told her intelligence is beautiful. Strength is beautiful. Being a good big sister is beautiful. Being a good student is beautiful. Being honest is beautiful. Helping your friends is beautiful. And that she has and does all of those things. Every time I see her, I subtly give her affirmations relating to her role as a sister, a daughter, a friend and a student. I tell her that she is beautiful. 

And she says thank you. 

Sonia, her brother Jelson and I after a workout session.

…On Women and Hard Work. And Moms. 

Mana Marta is a woman that lives nearby who has become my friend. Her daughter is 16 and one of my students, her son goes to night school and works during the day. Her other daughter has finished secondary school and is studying higher education in Maputo (the country’s capital). She has one more little boy but he’s always off being a rascal with other neighborhood boys, so I don’t interact with him much. Mana Marta works in the district medical office. She has credentials to be a doctor but got promoted to a job that is similar to hospital management. She is also a singer, and her singing group gets paid to preform around Mozambique. She is a seamstress and is working on making me a dress as we speak. Her husband works for the Red Cross in Maputo and comes home on the weekends. She owns a barraca, which is a small shop that sells things like sugar, flour, whiskey, crackers, sandals, soda, beer, cigarettes, etc. A smorgasbord of Mozambican essentials, if you will. She goes once a week to check stocks and make sure the people who work there are doing their jobs.  She maintains four jobs to support her family. She works from 7am-4pm at the hospital office and spends her other time making dresses, performing and managing her shop. Oh yeah, and being the mother of four children—three of which still live in her house. She is also a wonderful friend and is always willing to sit on her porch and talk to me, correct my Portuguese, encourage me when I talk about teaching challenges, and share her perspective on Mozambican culture. I’m so glad I found her and her family. (Also her daughter got the highest test score out of all of my 200 students so props to her!). 

One day Mana Marta and I were talking about how men in Mozambique like to have multiple wives. She says there are laws prohibiting more than one spouse, but many men do not follow it. I told her I don’t like this, and that it’s better to be a man’s only woman. She agreed, and told me that her church feels that way too—one man and one woman should promise to be faithful forever. We were on the same page.

Then she said “I am one of three”. I said excusemewhat. I have met her husband. He seemed nice and hardworking and benevolent. But the moment she told me that, I wanted to find him and kick him in the gooneys (remember I’m reading a book set in Ireland). Instead of doing that—Maputo is at least 4 hours away—I asked her why she puts up with that nonsense. And she said: I am a mother first and foremost and I need to keep my family together. She said “my children need a father and I cannot take that away from them”. She said that she could not support them by herself. I saw both sadness and strength in her eyes when she told me those things. 

It’s easy to think that women who stay in shitty situations are weak, or not brave, or that perhaps they could do more to better their own situations. And maybe in some cases they could. But Mana Marta is doing everything she possibly can to provide for her family. She has capitalized on every identifiable way that she can use her skills to generate income to support her family. And yet she is stuck in a situation where she is one of three wives and doesn’t like it one bit. But she swallows her personal feelings on the matter, keeps her head up, and works her ass of every single day so that her children go to school with appropriate uniforms, that they have food to eat, and—perhaps most importantly, so that they can have an incredible role model that demonstrates honesty, dedication and hard work every single day.

I see many of my own mother’s qualities in her: strength, compassion and love…and a “do anything for your kid no matter what” mentality. It’s quite beautiful, and I am glad to be her friend.