Movin' On Up.....

Every Monday and Thursday Almasse arrives at 7:00am. He timidly com licensas at the door.

“Good morning Almasse! How are you?!... Ok, today after your done cleaning the quintal, could you ummm…. cart water? Then we also need you to wash some towels and clothes. And, uhhh… if you have enough time… could you, please, burn the lixo? Is that ok? “

I’ve started annoying myself with all of the niceties and uhs and ums.

Almasse is our empregado. I can’t bring myself to use the word maid… but housekeeper doesn’t really explain it either. Empregados in Mozambique do everything. They clean the yard, wash clothes, cart water, cook dinner, babysit, run errands. You get the idea. Word choice aside, what I’m having trouble wrapping my head around is the fact that I have an empregado.

I, me, Rayna, I have a maid, butler, housekeeper. This isn’t right. I am firmly part of the working class. I come from a coupon-cutting, month-to-month, used=new-to-us type of mentality. My family shopped at thrift stores long before it became a hobby for hipsters and we certainly do not pay people to do things we could do ourselves.

Here in Mozambique, I am no longer a working class hero. I am now part of the upper class. PCVs usually don’t like to look at it this way because we are given roughly $250/month as our stipend.  This is a lot less then our Mozambican teacher counterparts. It’s just enough for food, communication, and travel. At the end of the month I’m counting the meticais left until pay day. But, compared to most Mozambicans, I am living the good life. And people who have a good life, have an empregado.

There are a few things I tell myself to feel better about abandoning my blue-collared shirts.

First, I’m providing a job for someone. We met Almasse when he was selling vegetables door-to-door. Little by little, we got to know him. He lives with his mother and nephew. He likes using English phrases like “Excuse me” and “good bye”. Before us, his only source of income was from selling vegetables from his uncle’s machamba.   

Second, there is so much to do! We teach and have secondary projects. To do housework – Mozambican housework- drains my energy and time. Dishes, cooking, sweeping, mopping, washing, washing, washing. EVERYTHING IS DIRTY!! There is no way to keep up with it all. I specifically came to Mozambique to teach. I love what I do and I want to invest my time and energy into planning, preparing and grading. So, why not provide employment to a hardworking individual and focus my energy where it’s needed?

Third, it stimulates the economy! Hmm…well, this might be a repeat of number one. But that just means it’s really important!

So that’s that. I have an empregado.

Something I don't do anymore. 

Love love love 

Malaria Madness!

So I missed Malaria Awareness Month (April) but my counterpart for my REDES group wanted to focus on malaria so for our small group of girls it's MALARIA MADNESS time! 

Here's a link to the WHO info graph about Mozambique and malaria. http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/country-profiles/profile_moz_en.pdf?ua=1 

The summary is that there is a ton of misinformation and complacency that leads to lots of people dying from a preventable disease. It's sad and, if you think about it too hard, anger-inducing. 

A little about my REDES group. There are 12 girls between the ages of 10 and 13 and are in third to seventh grade (if they actually go to school). Their primary language is Imakua. All of them speak basic Portuguese, which is just enough to greet people and convince their teachers they know what's going on. They are regular attendees of an after-school program at the mission where we hold the meetings but half of the are Muslim. 

This group is really the only thing that keeps me going. I love getting to know these girls and am really proud of the progress we've made as a group in such a short time. 

Here's a little of what we've been doing :) 

Lesson 1: What is malaria? What are the symptoms? 

I drew pictures of symptoms. Headaches, fever, chills, vomiting, and diarrea are all symptoms of malaria. A rash, itchiness, coughing and a sore throat are NOT symptoms. 

 

 

Before going through what were symptoms, we had the girls guess by placing the pictures in the correct category (Symptoms vs Not symptoms of malaria). Right away we realized that the girls do not know what malaria is. It's so common for people to have malaria that everything was assumed to be a symptom of malaria. That's when Esmenia had the girls do gestures for all of the ones that were symptoms. It was hilarious watching 10 girls imitate diarreaha!! I was impressed (andalso a little jealous) by the idea. 

At the end of the lesson all of the girls were able to list (and mimic) all 5 symptoms from memory. 

Lesson 2: What should you do of you get malaria?

For this one, I came up with 10 steps to do if you have malaria. 

1. Show symptoms. Sentir sintómos.

2. Go to the hospital. Ir a hospital. 

3. Get tested. Faz análise. 

4. Get a positive result. Recebe resulta positiva. 

5. Go to the pharmacy. Ir a farmácia.

6. But medicine. Comprar o medicamento.

7. Take medicine. Tomar o medicamento. 

8. Finish the medicine. Acabar o medicamento. 

9. Rest and drink water. Descansar e

Beber água! 

10. Feel better! Sentir melhor! 

We discussed why each step was important. Especially, immediately going to the doctor, not taking medicine before getting a result, and finishing all the medicine. Again I saw Esménia step up to the plate and clearly, creatively explain everything to the kids. 

The girls were given a step and had to draw out the event. We walked around and encouraged the girls to draw as much detail as possible. The end result was pretty awesome!! 

Finally, we ended the day by assigning the girls a different step (represented by their peer's drawing), mixing them up, and putting themselves back in order. 

Lesson 3: Review! 

The lovely Angela, a health volunteer, told me about a relay race she did with her REDES group and I loved the idea. It involved reading facts about malaria, but how could I do that with my kids? As you may have noticed everything we do is visually based, but I can only take so much drawing!! So, we did a relay race but instead of picking up facts they picked up images. Round one was symptoms and round two was you think you have malaria steps. I spent the whole day drawing miniture versions of the symptoms and steps. The end result was a really fun day and I am really convinced that my girls know their stuff. There are more pictures on Facebook but here's a quick run down. 

1. The girls are splint into two teams of 5. One member of each team must run to a chair that has a pile of symptoms. 

2. They run to the next chair that has two boxes labels "symptoms" or "not symptoms". They choose which box to put the symptom and run back to tag the next team member.

3. The winner is the group that had the most correctly placed symptoms in the shortest  amount of time. 

Round two worked the same way except instead of symptoms there were steps and instead of boxes there was a time line. 

So that's what we've done so far. Next, we'll talk about avoiding the disease.Esménia  also brought up the idea of putting on a play for the other kids at the missionary! 

I'll be sure to keep you updated! 

Love love love