Article September 2, 2002 Issue

The young people of Chokwe, Mozambique

Update from a Peace Corps volunteer

By Kim Shippey Sentinel staff

Last September , the Sentinel ran an interview with Blake Schmidt of Portland, Oregon, shortly before he flew off to begin a two-year tour of duty as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. He has now completed his first six months of teaching English to ninth and tenth graders in a school in Chokwe (pronounced SHOKE-way), Mozambique, which is close to the flood plains of the Limpopo River. It's about three hours' drive north of the capital, Maputo. Blake spoke with us during a summer furlough in the United States.

"It's quite a leap from the classrooms I grew up in to the classrooms I now teach in, where windowpanes are often missing and the blackboards are badly worn and hard to write on—damaged by the floods of two years ago," says Blake.

"It's another leap—but a learning leap—to negotiate the gap between the home I grew up in on a tree-lined street in Portland and the humble homes I see from the windows of the cement house I share with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer on an untarred street in the town of Chokwe."

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