Beira Project Newsletter I: June 20 2010
Luis Pedro Coelho
Here is an update on how we are doing. During our first two weeks in
Mozambique we spent a lot of time with our local partners.
KUFUNANA
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During our first week, we stayed in Beira and became familiar with the
activities of Kufunana. We started developing [their website]
(http://www.kufunana.org) and interviewed Júlio João the head of the
organization (see clips on website, with English subtitles). We are still
translating and putting subtitles on the rest of the video so we can post the
whole of this fascinating interview.
We are also developing with Kufunana a two week theatre workshop that will
culminate with a performance and a debate.
ESMABAMA
--------
During the second week of our stay, we went to the schools and hospitals that
EsMaBaMa has in the province of Sofala and discussed ways we could help.
Starting tomorrow we are going to spend a week per school (a total of four)
teaching theatre and computer skills (some basic introduction and some
programming) and observing the medical facilities so we can see how their
computational tools can be improved. All the schools have theatre groups that
work on HIV related issues. We are going to work with the teachers and
students to teach theatre games that try to raise social issues that are
pertinent locally (such as: child birth in the hospital, gender issues, HIV,
education for girls, superstitions, reproductive health). But we are also
going to work on bringing to the stage African poetry and use the theatre
class as a fun Portuguese language class.
There are only three hours of electricity in the three first schools we are
going to visit (and often no running water, of course no garbage collection).
Due to the reduced number of hours we have energy and the reduced number of
computers per school (generally four working devices) Luis is going to teach
mainly to teachers and the as we have seen the need is essentially for
computer introduction classes. In the last school there is a electricity
twenty four hours a day, some students have computer classes, and there are
ten computers. Luis will then be able to teach intro to programming.
COMPUTER+INTERNET FOR KUFUNANA
------------------------------
We have given Kufunana a computer (gift from Lidio Meireles) and have paid for
them to get internet (now, we just need to wait for the Mozambican Telecoms to
connect them---which shouldn't take more than a week).
COMPUTERS FOR ESMABAMA
----------------------
Another of our goals is to use part of the money we raised to buy and install
more computers in one of EsMaBaMa's schools. Probably this will be a multi-
head installation (i.e., several monitor+keyboard+mouse terminals linked to a
single computer, but working as if they were separate computers), but we are
still studying this. We were surprised to realize that electronics are very
expensive here (often double the US price). Other things can be really cheap.
Today we bought wrist-watch for one dollar (one of those retro digital ones
that sell for forty bucks at Urban Outfitters). Again it's hard to believe but
the GDP per capita is $464 per year.
REST
----
The food is delicious, fruit so tasty it's impossible to describe, we have
also seen the most beautiful skies! When we see the pictures we took it's hard
to believe they were not photoshopped. Two days ago there were dozens of
monkeys in the middle of the road. And our hosts Mafalda and her soon Gabriel
are so nice.
We have more frequent updates on [our blog](http://beiraproject.org) and Luis
has posted some pictures to his [flickr account]
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/luispedrocoelho).
See you,
Luis & Rita