So, rather than blog about Cuamba, I´m just going to
copy and paste the letter I´ve written for the person replacing me here at site. In case the new PCV doesn´t receive it on Week 7 of PST, then here it is, long
before site-placement announcements.
As always, contact information and full names have been omitted from the original letter.
20
October 2013
Hello Moz21er(s)—
You’re
almost done with PST, well on your way to starting your service and leading a
more autonomous PCV life. Congrats! You will be replacing me and
another Teacher Trainer here at the IFP in Cuamba. This letter will give you some information
about living and working in the second biggest city in the province of
Niassa. It probably won’t totally answer
all of your questions, but I hope to answer many of them. Don’t hesitate to call or email if anything I say here needs more
clarification.
You’ll
be living in the school compound of the IFP, which is actually located on the
outskirts of Cuamba, about 6 kilometers from the city proper. The good news is we have plenty of stores and
three markets that supply produce and other goods.
Bad news is that you have to go to town 2-3 times a week to buy
groceries. But you learn to adapt, and after
about 6 weeks, for me, biking to town just became part of my routine. The heat and the dust can be unbearable, so I
minimize the number of trips to town. And
yes, invest in a good bike. “Boleias”
are rare for us Cuamba boys, and walking to the town center can take over an
hour, whereas biking only about 35 minutes.
The
advantage of being so far from the city is the safety in the IFP. We live in a walled compound, a sort of
cement city built by the Japanese in 2009, surrounded by mud-hut villages, the
bairros of Mendoça and Rimbane. My
housemate and I leave our bikes unlocked outside our house, and we’ve never had
any problems. People in the city, on the
other hand, have seen many burglaries. During
your service, you’ll probably hear of other PCVs’ houses being broken into
while they are out on vacation or in conferences. We do not have this problem here at the
IFP.
If you´re one male Moz21er coming to Cuamba, then you would probably move in with
my current housemate, Richard (Moz19).
He teaches computer classes at the secondary school of Cuamba. If two of you are coming, then a second house
would be made available. Only two PCVs
can live in a two-bedroom/one-bath house at the IFP. You will have regular running water and
electricity. Occasional
outages do occur, but the amenities are available most of the time. The cold showers and regular electricity make
living in Cuamba relatively easy compared to other, more “mato” sites.
Another
challenge that the distance of the city brings is integration. I admit, I’m not integrated in the city. My one favorite Mozambican is Dona Roquia—she
has met many PCVs, runs a restaurant at her house near the train market, and
you’ll probably visit her on your first night here. There is also Miriam from Malawi—she works at
the big Movitel store and speaks fluent English. These are my only local acquaintances, as cultural
integration is difficult when you’re in town for only a couple of hours twice a
week.
I
did, however, focus my integration at the IFP.
I spent a lot of time with our 30 students, the “formandos,” training to
become primary school teachers of English.
I taught not just English Listening and Speaking courses, but also a TICs
(Tecnología, Informática, e Comunicação, or Information Technology) class. With the same students, I did English Club,
which was also my JUNTOS and English Theater group. We went on a hike up “church mountain” (which
really is just a hill), listened to guest speakers of English, and watched
movies in English. My students are
not my close friends, but we’ve developed a professional relationship
that became an important part of my cultural integration.
If
I were to stay in Cuamba for another school term, I would participate in the
students’ informal activities more. They
play volleyball, basketball, and soccer, and sometimes have dances on Friday
and Saturday evenings. This is what I
would do differently, if I had another year at the IFP.
Like
most PCVs, I experienced isolation at site.
Cuamba is the end of the train line, and there are no paved roads
linking it to other cities. Despite
this, Cuamba is still somewhat of a hub:
JUNTOS conference and English Theater take place here, so once or twice
a year it receives waves of PCVs from all over Niassa, and even from Zambezia
and Nampula. Moreover, your sitemates,
Colin (Health Volunteer, Moz18) and Richard are wonderfully
laid-back and remarkably well-integrated in the city. Colin lives and works in the city, and he’ll
invite you to one of his splendid Sunday brunches. Richard, as I mentioned, teaches TIC’s at the
only high school in town, but he also takes regular Makua language classes, and
works with Colin. I’ll give you
their contact info when I see you in PST, if not sooner. There is also a warm and welcoming family of American
missionaries who invites us to their home for dinners. These people became my family in Cuamba and
reduced my sense of isolation.
In
terms of work, I found myself under-utilized.
Hence, the secondary projects/extracurricular activities. (If you’re
interested in EGRA, I recommend getting in touch with Rocio, an Argentinian
missionary in town who is already doing work on literacy with kids.) The English department at the IFP has two
Mozambican English Teacher Trainers (Rafael and Suzana), and if
there are two new PCV Teacher Trainers, then you’d probably be teaching no more
than two classes. The English classes
are Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking, Language Use (i.e., Grammar), and
Methodology. There’s only one group or “turma” of
about 30 students studying English, so you’ll get the
same students in all the classes. In
addition to your teaching load, you must also observe some of your students’
teaching at a local primary school, probably in Rimbane, which is the closest
village with a school. The students are
respectful, though their language skills are low. A few come from cities as far away as
Metangula and Nampula, but most are from Cuamba.
The
technology at your disposal here at the IFP is impressive. In addition to the computer lab, which has
about 19 computers and access to the internet, we also have a “smartroom”
containing a smartboard, 15 computers, an ink-jet printer, a document camera, and a flat
screen television! Ironically, this
“smartroom” doubles as a “biblioteca” (a library) that suffers from a dearth of books. The IFP director wishes to use this room for
distance learning, but it is not yet connected to the internet. Nonetheless, it’s an excellent classroom that
I use regularly to present podcasts, play songs, and show movies. I almost never use chalk since I use the
smartboard and the document camera/projector.
