Today took "surreal" to a whole new level.
I don't know where to start.
The beginning sounds good.
Well, I woke up at 6:30, like usual, to work out and get ready. Even though I don't usually have to be at school atl 8:00 AM, I keep to my schedule for days like today. The Minister of Education was scheduled to visit at 8:00, so it fit perfectly with my schedule.
When I woke up, there was a knock on the door. Blake's girlfriend's friend and a random man were there. She didn't know there wasn't school today due to the visit, and he was looking for a bathroom to fix. The only info he had was that the house he was to go to was a neighbor of "Mondlane" (THIS IS MOM -- I'M GUESSING ON THE NAME) "Mondlane" here is roughly equivalent to "Jones" in the States.
So he moved on and she sat inside, waiting for Blake's girlfriend to get up. I made breakfast, forgoing the workout due to company.
At 7:00 AM, Blake's sister and Blake woke up, along with his girlfriend. They started their morning routine, preparing to go to the airport so Blake's sister could catch her flight, ultimately bound for the States. Blake won't be back until Monday due to PC stuff.
Coincidentally, the Canadian couple is also out of town taking care of costly errands.
I noticed this morning that the cell phone wasn't getting service. After I said bye to everyone and went to school, I found that nobody was getting service. Not putting this puzzle together until later, I was and still am without the ability to reach a North American voice unless I want to pay a bundle for it, due to a set of strange coincidences.
We waited at school for 2 hours for the Minister to show up. This took nobody by surprise. It's not really anyone's fault, it's just that he has all of the city's schools to see before ours, which is where the "Meeting" for the entire school system was being held.
When he showed up, my director ran to the front of the school, teachers appeared out of nowhere and formed a very orderly receiving line.
This is THE Minister of Education for Mozambique and no other. He is in charge of one of the biggest challenges for a developing nation, and visiting our school in the first week of classes to try and set a tone for one of the nicer and well-performing schools in the country. He had an entourage of at least a dozen administrators, a sound system, a personal assistant, and at least four different media representatives including the television stations. I think Mozambique doesn't have more than a couple TV stations that cover news. This was shaping up to be a bigger and bigger deal by the minute.
I was about 3/4 of the way down the line, and my director introduced me as a member of the PC, as the Minister knows our program well. He paused a little longer with me, and then continued on down the line.
We then assembled in the gymnasium, as on Monday, except that this was a lot more important looking. There were three microphones set up, the TV cameras were getting background shots, and everything was very well put together. We entered the gym to find more chairs than I thought we could ever use. I realized later that this meeting was in fact for all of the schools in the area, and there ended up being about 400-500 people in the room including teachers and administrators.
And, oh by the way, me. The lone white guy and sole representative of the Western hemisphere.
We stood up as the Minister entered a half hour after we sat down, sang the national anthem, then started the meeting. Various people spoke including the Minister, and since my Portuguese comprehension and understanding of political education issues are both mediocre, I caught bits and pieces of what was going on. Teachers were invited to voice their concerns, and a few did. About 3 hours later, after every single administrator had said their piece about, well, something, the Minister took the floor again in what seemed to be a very broad appeal to improve the quality of teaching and that 2003 is very important. He addressed concerns that had been brought up by teachers with prepared statements at microphones, and seemed to be fairly animated.
Of course, this was at about 1:30 in the afternoon, a hot part of the day on a very hot day. I was not sticking to the desk I was sitting at, I was melting on to it. I didn't have anywhere to put my arms because I had thoroughly soaked the entire surface. I was getting ridiculously hungry, dangerously dehydrated, and thoroughly incapable of translating any more. I looked around and people were sitting with heads in hands, fanning themselves with anything they could get their hands on, generally spaced out. The Minister and administrators all had water being delivered to them on a regular basis, making us watching all of this even thirstier.
My daydreams started to get more and more intense, and I actually got so lost in one that I had to reorient myself to being in Mozambique. The combination of early signs of heat stroke and not being able to tell what was going on was pretty uncomfortable.
And then it just got ridiculous.
During his speech, I heard mention of the US a couple times in the context of a system to be emulating, but I couldn't quite catch the specifics.
Then I heard "Where is the American?"
I thought, "Oh, shit". Really.
"Levanta, por favor"
"Stand, please." I got a tap on the forearm from the guy sitting at my desk with me, who spoke very good English and had previously made a comment to the Minister in the open session.
A lot of my problem with understanding language is the context. And me standing in the middle of 500 professors because I was American, well, I must have misheard. But I looked over to my desk companion and he urgently nudged me with his eyes to do as he said.
I stood, and gave a half-wave to say "OK, I've made my appearance, I'm ready to sit down now". It would have been weird enough if that was it.
But the Minister continued,
"Why did you come here from America?"
My hands were tucked behind my back and I just kind of stood there, shrugged my shoulders as if to say "Do you want me to answer that, or is that supposed to be a rhetorical question" - or at least "Unnnhhh?"
My heart started to pound harder, and I was sure that everyone could see my shirt moving.
"Why? Why come?" he added.
I looked to my right, for assistance from the guy who was right now my lingual placenta. I guess I gave him a look like I didn't understand the question, but I really meant to give him a look that meant "I understand the question, but don't understand why he's asking this now and here." He translated for me, saying "What is your motivationn for coming here?" I responded, "Eu sei, eu sei."
"I know, I know". The Minister then said, "Speak up so we can all hear you."
Suddenly the meeting that was making my brain crawl sent it into a frenzy. "Remember voice class, open your soft palate and relax. Speak slowly and clearly - you're in no rush." My heart thought otherwise, but I stepped outside myself for a moment and fed John (the obvious American) the following line --
"Because I CAN help and I WANT to help in whatever way you all need."
And it came out almost exactly like that in Portuguese, loud, clear and precise. I might have said "thing" instead of "way", but I'm pretty sure everyone understood. He thanked me, with a surprised look on his face, and I sat down. And returned to my body.
I only get stagefright when I'm being judged - in front of audiences, I get nervous, but as long as I have something planned out, I'm usually fine. This was as scared as I've ever been in a public speaking situation, bar none.
And when I sat down, there were no pats on the back, no reassurance. Only one professor spoke with me afterwards. Of course, this is par for the course, because I don't know that many people yet, but I was deathly afraid that I had made some horrible mistake, and I still am. I really don't know what the Minister was talking about before he called on me, and I can only wonder how it fit into his pep talk to ask me why I came here.
The upside is that I can check the papers tomorrow to get a summary and maybe even find out exactly what I said.
However, I haven't been able to tell anyone but Mozambicans, who just can't relate to how incredibly surreal the whole experience was. This man who is in charge of the education of 19 million people interrupting a speech to ask some random American the fundamental question of his entrance into the Peace Corps. In another language.
My first reaction was to go home and curse him out for being so rude. How could he put me on the spot like that? It may not be rude here, but in the USA that would be downright ignorant, and as an American, he should have some sort of understanding about where I'm coming from and my culture, before just jumping right in.
But then I thought about how strange and presumptuous I seem to them, particularly the Minister. Why am I willing to get paid less, work harder, and do without the things and friends I had in America to be just one teacher in one school? We are an independent country, we've been in Africa much longer than you've been in North America, and just because your country is rich you think you know how to do things better? Or maybe, you've got a great life and you're throwing that all away for idealism for two years?
Why did you come here?
But I DID have an answer to the question, and it's the honest truth. Maybe I broke some unwritten rule, maybe I undermined my colleagues in front of the Minister, maybe I was being an obnoxious American, but I told the truth, and now everyone knows "Why?"
Peace
John
