It’s truly amazing what a difference a couple hundred kilometers and a beach make. Doing nothing in Vilanculos is so much different than doing nothing in Machanga because Machanga, despite its coastal location, is lacking swimmable ocean.
The location change also apparently changed my sleeping habits for the better. I slept until nearly 8:00 and for the first time in months, I couldn’t recall any dreams. Maybe it’s Machanga and not the Larium that’s driving me crazy.
What little time we had left in the morning, we used to finish “Troy”. Due to calls from one of my best friends and my grandfather, we didn’t have the chance to finish it last night. And with twenty-four hour energy in Vilanculos (the rich get richer), we have the power to watch movies whenever we want.
But why watch movies when there is beautiful weather to be had? Following lunch, Richie and I relocated to the backpackers’ lodge that we like. Located on the beach and with two unused hammocks, we each took some time to read. I got sucked into “Rule of Four”, a novel I read years ago. That’s right, a novel. This one is special, though, because it is full of history and that’s what got me good.
I spent almost the entire day in that hammock. I really can’t think of a better way to spend a day. Returning around 5:00, I was back home in time to cook dinner. We just did a simple and sauce dish. Richie watched some “30 Rock” while I spent some time on the phone with my parents. Amazingly, this was probably the last time I’ll talk to them before I see them face to face. It’s so close now.
We had a relatively busy and productive Monday. One of the things that Peace Corps really stresses is “community integration”. As this is our community for this week or so, we thought it would be best to integrate ourselves. This is a fairly simple task, given a lot of time, but it is made especially difficult because of the location and time of year. These days, Vilanculos is full of muzungus and to most people, we appear to be just two more South Africans. Our goal today was to start to put an end to that.
Before we could get integrating, we had some shopping to do. Both of us wanted to buy capulanas, Richie for a pair of shorts, me for a gift. With that task complete, we moved a couple hundred yards away to hit the little hamburger stand. And then the integrating began.
We walked into the market, turned left, and found a table that was in the shade. We ordered a beer and just started talking. The lady selling the beer was a bit surprised that we spoke Portuguese. It is a bit of a novelty. After a couple beers, I broke a deck of cards and a couple kids came over. Here we go. A couple of magic tricks later and the kids were hooked. When a new kid came over, he bet that I couldn’t find his card. Thirty seconds later, I had myself a free Sprite. When an older person came along, I had myself a free beer.
By the end of the day, we were not only feeling good, but we had made some new friends. Sandra, the woman working the bar, is our new best friend in Vilanculos. She and her neighbor Gilda taught us - and got a good laugh out of us learning -- some Chitswa, the local language here. And we met a nice lady, Veronica, who sells vegetables. We are now set: we have a person to sell us beer, a person to sell us eggs, and a person to sell us vegetables. No more fighting for prices for us.
We made a quick stopover at the backpackers’ just to see if anyone was there, but it was suspiciously quiet. We waited it out for an hour, but nothing changed, so we went home. For some reason, we had pizza again. I think the fact that they deliver made it easier to spend money on a relatively expensive dinner.
The fun however didn’t stop after dinner. In fact, it picked up. Being the winter solstice, one of the bosses in the compound we’re staying in decided to have a little bonfire. A group of about 11 of us gathered around the fire, the conversation easily switching between Portuguese and English. All said, we were out until about 11 and for one day, we were well integrated into Vilanculos.
All of that integrating really wiped us out. I slept well again -- dreamless, again -- until about 8:30. We didn’t want to integrate so hard in back to back days, so we thought it best to take the day off. Good thing there’s no pressure on us to do anything.
The morning was slow, calm. It was nice. Before the weather got too blazingly hot, I took the dog out for a walk on the beach. We all need our exercise, including the dog, and we might as well do it next to an azure ocean. After the forty-five minute walk, Richie and I had a quick bite to eat and went back to the backpackers’.
My big task today was to finish “Rule of Four”. I had about 200 pages left, but it was such a quick read that I finished it within just a couple hours. I think I could read that book over and over again. As long as I have a hammock, I can read just about anything, I’m convinced.
We came back to the house for lunch, and once the stores reopened, we headed into town to pick up some items. We didn’t find everything we needed, but I got some stuff that I wanted. I’ll call it a draw. After shopping, we headed to the backpackers’. On our way there, we made a stop at two different tailors. One had finished sewing up the gift I was making for my brother, the other was just starting work on a pair of shorts for Richie. I’m very happy with the way the gift turned out, and I hope my brother and his wife enjoy it.
There was nothing really special at night. After dinner, we watched “Ocean’s 12”. Following another rough day in paradise, we called it a night.
We woke up Wednesday hoping that things would pick up at the little backpackers place. Last year was absolutely insane. It was a standing room only party night after night. But so far this year, it seems that things are very quiet. Maybe the economy affected travel here. Maybe people are just keeping to themselves. Either way, it’s been kind of dull.
There appeared to be more people at the backpackers today, but it still didn’t compare to last year. With few people around hanging out, I committed myself to reading “Not On Our Watch”, a book by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast about Darfur. It was a less than engaging book -- often repetitive with these strange pages-long interjections. I don’t want to call it a time-waster, but that is all it proved to be: a way to waste the day away.
The pace picked up in the afternoon, but only because we forced it to. We left the backpackers, grabbed some lunch, and headed back to Sandra’s place in the market. We were only going to have one or two beers, just to cool down. That plan changed quickly. Along the way, we were both recognized. People only spoke to us in Portuguese. There were no calls of “boss” or “my friend”. And someone even gave me a new nickname: “Senhor de Batuta”, roughly Mr. Clever or Mr. Fraud. I can work with that.
On our way home, we made a stop to get hamburgers, which were quickly followed by dinner. We didn’t do much of anything the rest of the night. We were both pretty exhausted and wanted to save our energy for Christmas eve. We watched “Role Models”, a strange, funny movie and went to sleep.
Before heading over to the backpackers on Thursday, we had some business to take care of. We both really needed to go to the bank. I also needed to make a stop at the hotel where my family is staying to confirm their pick-up from the airport. And finally, there were some things that I needed to grab from another Volunteer’s house. Well, I was able to do two out of three -- and we got rides both to and from the other side of town -- so I would call that a success.
We made a concerted effort to avoid going back to Sandra’s. It’s not that we don’t love Sandra…we just knew that if we ended up there, we wouldn’t make it through the night. From there, we dropped off our things at the house, made a quick egg sandwich, then went to the backpackers to hang around. The pattern repeated itself later in the afternoon -- we dropped some things at the house, made an early dinner, then went back to the backpackers.
The party seemed to pick up a little bit at night. There were definitely more people out, but it still wasn’t the raucous party from last year. Regardless, we made some nice friends from Australia and drank enough for two people each. Well socially lubricated, we headed to the discotequa around midnight and went crazy.
The party continued well into the morning. The sun was rising as I walked back home and by then I was mostly awake. There’s no rest for the weary. After a long night of dancing, I was in dire need of shower. And if I wasn’t awake enough, that finished the job. We mostly just wanted to relax for the day. We headed over to the backpackers and that’s when our bodies gave out. Richie came back home about half an hour. I didn’t have it in me to walk back to the house, so I laid out my capulana and passed out for a couple hours in the shade of a palm tree.
When I woke up, Richie was already back at the backpackers. Very very strange. I woke up feeling absolutely miserable. Richie thought the solution would be a beer. And the truth is that it didn’t hurt -- it just didn’t help much either.
Santa’s gift to me was stomach problems. I guess drinking a half-liter of rum on a mostly empty stomach will do that. How pleasant. Fortunately, this has been about as sick I’ve been the entire year, which says something about healthy I’ve been.
Richie and I ate lunch at the backpackers, and with no reason to stay, we headed home to sleep. Being up for the better part of thirty-six hours will make you tired. Both of us passed out between 4 and 8, hoping that it would be enough to get us through the night.
For better or worse (probably the better), the backpackers was quiet. We went intending to continue the party from last night, but it was quiet tonight. We gave it until 10:30. When things didn’t pick up, we went back home and right to sleep.
I woke up feeling mostly okay. I had one more small bout, but that was it. Otherwise, it was a beautiful, peaceful day. Richie and I made one run to the market late in the morning, and that was it. After a small lunch, I took an extensive afternoon nap, then took the dog for a walk. It was a boring day, but boring was exactly what I wanted.
The twenty-four hour stomach problem proved to be nearly exactly that. I’m just glad it’s gone before my family arrives.
Ah yes. My family. After 11 months of planning and waiting, they are finally arriving tomorrow!! I don’t know if I’ll believe they’re coming until I actually see them in the airport. Needless to say, I’m excited beyond belief. I never thought anyone else in my family would step foot in Africa.
It should be a phenomenal two weeks.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Year 2 - Week 1: Meeting Across The River
Year 2 – Week 1: Meeting Across the River
We have officially reached the downturn – weird. All those weeks of writing “Year 1” on the top of these pieces have finally come to an end. So with a new year, it’s only appropriate that we start this year the way we did last year: with a site delivery. Mambone received its new Volunteer, Garrett, over the weekend and we thought it would be good to introduce ourselves.
The house cleaned up, we headed across the river the grabbed the chapa toward his house. His house is still a bit in disrepair right now, so these days, Garrett is chilling in a colleague’s house. It’s not a terrible thing – the colleague’s house is muito nice. While we were in town, we raided his computer for new media.
We figured that the least we could do for our new friend was buy him some lunch. We took him to Zimaima, where I was able to get my regular half-chicken, and Richie, to spite us non-fish-eaters, got fish. After our delicious lunches, we headed into town to show Garrett what’s going on in Mambone. And just in case he wanted to ever come to Machanga, we decided to show him how to get to the river and therefore Machanga.
By the time we got back to our side of the river, we were sweaty, tired, and dehydrated. Courtesy of the epic rain we got last week, we already had a lot of drinking water prepared. As I sat on our patio, two very little kids came up to the house and said “Estou a pedir agua” – “I am asking for water”. Normally, I will turn down requests because usually they are requests for money. But these kids were too adorable, and their request was all too reasonable, and it was awfully hot. I couldn’t turn them down.
Loaded up on water, I committed the cardinal sin of taking a late afternoon nap. I knew I was setting myself up for trouble later in the night, but I was awfully exhausted. I fell asleep right away. I woke up just in time for dinner, which we followed up with “Boondock Saints”, a fuckin awesome movie.
As anticipated, I struggled to sleep. It was a combination of the nap and the anxiety – good anxiety – of my family arriving in here in two weeks. Whatever it was, I was up late into the night, which pushed me to stay in bed until 8:30 on Monday morning.
With such a late wake-up, you would think that killing off the rest of the morning would be an easy task. But with more and more people peeling out of Machanga, it’s becoming awfully difficult. We can only do so much sitting. o
After lunch, I made a run to the market on two missions. The first was to find bread, which was not a problem. The second was to find a tailor – we have two in Machanga – but neither was around. I want to get a pair of pants turned into a pair of shorts. As long as I get it done before Vilanculos, it will be okay.
I was put to use Monday night when the energy came on. One of the teachers wanted to be able to print from his laptop, so I installed the printer drive to his computer. In addition, the director’s laptop wasn’t printing, which was a little strange. I did everything I could but couldn’t get it to work. Luckily, he has very little to print.
We planned to eat beans on Sunday but I failed massively to soak beans on Sunday. I didn’t make the same mistake twice, so we had beans and pasta for dinner. For entertainment, we watched “Zach and Miri Make a Porno”, one of the more recent Seth Rogan films. I don’t know if I would watch it again, but it was a good laugh.
Exhausted from the day before – and having not napped – I slept well and I slept late. More of our colleagues left today, which is now starting to kill us. It was just an annoyance, but now, since we are pegged here for a bit more time alone, it’s outright frustrating.
We didn’t do much of anything Tuesday morning. I tried to make another run to the market to get my pants done, but the tailors weren’t around. At least I tried. So we went back to sitting.
I wasn’t completely deterred though. They told m the tailor would be back in the afternoon, so after lunch, I went back. And lo and behold, the tailor was there. He dropped what he was doing and took right to my pants. I was happy to be the proud owner of a new pair of very light-weight pair of shorts.
Late in the afternoon, I was cleaning up the house (as it had been a while) when I got a call from Richie. He toldme to come down to the villa to talk to our school director. We – Richie, the school director, and I – want to put up a decent basketball court. The state of the current court is tragic. I know that we can do better than this. Of course, all discussion was conducted over a couple beers.
We came back after our couple beers and cooked up a delicious Mexican food dinner. And with only a little more energy left for the night, we watched a couple episodes of “The Office” before going to sleep.
Whenever I went ended up falling asleep, I didn’t stay asleep for the long. I was up at 4 AM and it was already light outside. Not bright, but light. The best part was that it wasn’t blazing hot: it was a perfect cool. I strolled around the house for a little bit to soak in the nice weather.
I tried to go back to bed, but there was no hope. I was up for good. As it wasn’t sufficiently bright, I lit a candle and read a little more of “Bulfinch’s Mythology”. It’s been an interesting bout with this book. There are times that I really love it. All of the history and origins of certain terminology is fascinating, but hearing of gods and goddesses just isn’t my thing. Whatever. I’ll keep to it. These days, I’ll take anything to keep my mind occupied.
The task that kept my mind the most occupied was repairing my newly made pair of shorts. I didn’t really look at them when they were done, but upon looking at them Wednesday morning, I realized that they were terribly uneven – maybe ¾ of an inch off. My faith lost in the tailor, I took on the task myself. Needle and thread in hand, I shortened the one side to an appropriate matching length. It’s pathetic that my handiwork was superior to the tailor’s. While I was in the spirit, I repaired some holes in one of my shirts.
Within an hour of finishing up the alterations, Garrett came over to hang out. We told him that our doors were open, expecting him to come over at some point, but not within the week. It’s probably for better – he gave us a good way to kill the day. We prepared our standard lunch, which Garrett enjoyed – he says he’ll be cooking potatoes and eggs a lot.
After lunch, we thought we’d show Garrett the other half of his site. In our view, Mambone and Machanga are really one site divided by a river. We walked around the town to show him how different our sides are. He concurred that our site really is in the “armpit of Mozambique”.
Garrett stuck around for most of the afternoon, which was nice. Not getting a lot of visitors, we are happy to have him over whenever. By the time he left, it was nearly 4;00, achingly close to energy time. In the time in between Garrett leaving and the energy coming on, I kicked around a soccer ball with Anjo, this 18 month old kid. I think he’s still scared of us muzungus, so it was nice to see that barrier come down a bit.
With the energy on, we decided to make pizzas. We had some Velveeta left over and we figured we should use it. They say that it should be refrigerated once it’s opened, but that’s a lie. In light of our gluttonous meal, we decided to watch “Supersize Me”. It had the confusing effect of simultaneously making me want a Big Mac and never wanting to eat fast food again.
I thought I had slept better Wednesday night, but I was wrong. I woke up Thursday and pretty much went right back to bed. For almost the entire morning – until 11:00, Richie and I were both catatonic. Most of the morning was spent on the floor – concrete is colder than a bed – tripping on Larium hallucinations.
The trouble with the Larium dreams is that they are absolutely exhausting. But I was still happy to put the morning in the past. After eating lunch and chilling at home, we knew that we needed to get out.
We headed over to the villa to grab a soda and we realized that we really needed to get out of Machanga. If it was possible to climb our walls, we would have. So we decided then and there that we would leave on Saturday instead of Monday.
There was nothing special about dinner. For the first time in a while, we made just pasta without beans. Our entertainment for tonight was “Schindler’s List” With our energy situation, we weren’t able to finish it in one night, so it will be finished tomorrow.
Moving up our travel plans meant I had to get ready. On Friday morning, I organized my packing list and got everything together. I managed to get everything into a small backpack and a computer bag. I can’t believe I managed to get it done.
The rest of the morning, and a lot of the afternoon, was spent cleaning up. Richie and I did a small load of laundry and we each cleaned the house thoroughly. We were packed and ready to go. The only problem was that it was Friday afternoon. We headed to the villa, our surefire way to kill an hour, to say goodbye to Madinha.
Friday night looked a lot like Thursday – a basic dinner (stir fry) and “Schindler’s List”. What a really beautifully done movie. I can’t believe it took me this long to see it.
“Are you up? Let’s go” was how I was greeted on Saturday. Okay, let’s boogie. A last minute thing here and there and we were out of the house by 6:30.
We had hoped to beat our 3 hour 47 minute record, and things looked promising. We got to Mambone in about 45 minutes and got a ride just as we hit the villa. Unfortunately the car was moving slowly, dashing our hopes of breaking the record. We could still make good time.
Then I made one of the stupidest travel choices I’ve made here. We had a car lined up to get to Inhassoro when a group of South Africans came blazing down the EN1. Shockingly, one of them stopped for us. He said that he was going to Vilanculos. I, being greedy, told him that we wanted to get to Vilanculos and that we already had a ride to Inhassoro, thanks anyway. Dumb. In the end, I cost us maybe an hour, plus fifty Meticais each.
The real travel fun began on our in to Vilanculos. We took a chapa in for the last leg as we usually do. I handed fifty Mets to money-collector – a punk 14 year old. He stared at me, and asked me for more money. “What? It costs 15 Mets each”, I said. “This is where you give me money”. He laughed and told me no, no, 50 Meticais. After an extensive argument and Richie and I yelling in three languages – English, Portuguese and the local dialect of Chitswa – we got the right price. Ah, the pleasures of Vilanculos in tourist season.
We dropped our things off and headed off to pizza. Richie told me that only after he had his pizza would I be off the shit list for turning down a free ride. Valid point. We met Meagan, the new Volunteer in Vilanculos for lunch, and I was forgiven.
The rest of the afternoon, into the night was quiet. As it is hotter than 90 degrees here, we decided to take a dip in the ocean, which is now bathwater warm. We ate dinner and watched “Troy”, a sweet war movie. Seeing “Troy” after reading a lot of “Bulfinch’s Mythology“ made it a lot more enjoyable.
And so our week in Vilanculos begins.
We have officially reached the downturn – weird. All those weeks of writing “Year 1” on the top of these pieces have finally come to an end. So with a new year, it’s only appropriate that we start this year the way we did last year: with a site delivery. Mambone received its new Volunteer, Garrett, over the weekend and we thought it would be good to introduce ourselves.
The house cleaned up, we headed across the river the grabbed the chapa toward his house. His house is still a bit in disrepair right now, so these days, Garrett is chilling in a colleague’s house. It’s not a terrible thing – the colleague’s house is muito nice. While we were in town, we raided his computer for new media.
We figured that the least we could do for our new friend was buy him some lunch. We took him to Zimaima, where I was able to get my regular half-chicken, and Richie, to spite us non-fish-eaters, got fish. After our delicious lunches, we headed into town to show Garrett what’s going on in Mambone. And just in case he wanted to ever come to Machanga, we decided to show him how to get to the river and therefore Machanga.
By the time we got back to our side of the river, we were sweaty, tired, and dehydrated. Courtesy of the epic rain we got last week, we already had a lot of drinking water prepared. As I sat on our patio, two very little kids came up to the house and said “Estou a pedir agua” – “I am asking for water”. Normally, I will turn down requests because usually they are requests for money. But these kids were too adorable, and their request was all too reasonable, and it was awfully hot. I couldn’t turn them down.
Loaded up on water, I committed the cardinal sin of taking a late afternoon nap. I knew I was setting myself up for trouble later in the night, but I was awfully exhausted. I fell asleep right away. I woke up just in time for dinner, which we followed up with “Boondock Saints”, a fuckin awesome movie.
As anticipated, I struggled to sleep. It was a combination of the nap and the anxiety – good anxiety – of my family arriving in here in two weeks. Whatever it was, I was up late into the night, which pushed me to stay in bed until 8:30 on Monday morning.
With such a late wake-up, you would think that killing off the rest of the morning would be an easy task. But with more and more people peeling out of Machanga, it’s becoming awfully difficult. We can only do so much sitting. o
After lunch, I made a run to the market on two missions. The first was to find bread, which was not a problem. The second was to find a tailor – we have two in Machanga – but neither was around. I want to get a pair of pants turned into a pair of shorts. As long as I get it done before Vilanculos, it will be okay.
I was put to use Monday night when the energy came on. One of the teachers wanted to be able to print from his laptop, so I installed the printer drive to his computer. In addition, the director’s laptop wasn’t printing, which was a little strange. I did everything I could but couldn’t get it to work. Luckily, he has very little to print.
We planned to eat beans on Sunday but I failed massively to soak beans on Sunday. I didn’t make the same mistake twice, so we had beans and pasta for dinner. For entertainment, we watched “Zach and Miri Make a Porno”, one of the more recent Seth Rogan films. I don’t know if I would watch it again, but it was a good laugh.
Exhausted from the day before – and having not napped – I slept well and I slept late. More of our colleagues left today, which is now starting to kill us. It was just an annoyance, but now, since we are pegged here for a bit more time alone, it’s outright frustrating.
We didn’t do much of anything Tuesday morning. I tried to make another run to the market to get my pants done, but the tailors weren’t around. At least I tried. So we went back to sitting.
I wasn’t completely deterred though. They told m the tailor would be back in the afternoon, so after lunch, I went back. And lo and behold, the tailor was there. He dropped what he was doing and took right to my pants. I was happy to be the proud owner of a new pair of very light-weight pair of shorts.
Late in the afternoon, I was cleaning up the house (as it had been a while) when I got a call from Richie. He toldme to come down to the villa to talk to our school director. We – Richie, the school director, and I – want to put up a decent basketball court. The state of the current court is tragic. I know that we can do better than this. Of course, all discussion was conducted over a couple beers.
We came back after our couple beers and cooked up a delicious Mexican food dinner. And with only a little more energy left for the night, we watched a couple episodes of “The Office” before going to sleep.
Whenever I went ended up falling asleep, I didn’t stay asleep for the long. I was up at 4 AM and it was already light outside. Not bright, but light. The best part was that it wasn’t blazing hot: it was a perfect cool. I strolled around the house for a little bit to soak in the nice weather.
I tried to go back to bed, but there was no hope. I was up for good. As it wasn’t sufficiently bright, I lit a candle and read a little more of “Bulfinch’s Mythology”. It’s been an interesting bout with this book. There are times that I really love it. All of the history and origins of certain terminology is fascinating, but hearing of gods and goddesses just isn’t my thing. Whatever. I’ll keep to it. These days, I’ll take anything to keep my mind occupied.
The task that kept my mind the most occupied was repairing my newly made pair of shorts. I didn’t really look at them when they were done, but upon looking at them Wednesday morning, I realized that they were terribly uneven – maybe ¾ of an inch off. My faith lost in the tailor, I took on the task myself. Needle and thread in hand, I shortened the one side to an appropriate matching length. It’s pathetic that my handiwork was superior to the tailor’s. While I was in the spirit, I repaired some holes in one of my shirts.
Within an hour of finishing up the alterations, Garrett came over to hang out. We told him that our doors were open, expecting him to come over at some point, but not within the week. It’s probably for better – he gave us a good way to kill the day. We prepared our standard lunch, which Garrett enjoyed – he says he’ll be cooking potatoes and eggs a lot.
After lunch, we thought we’d show Garrett the other half of his site. In our view, Mambone and Machanga are really one site divided by a river. We walked around the town to show him how different our sides are. He concurred that our site really is in the “armpit of Mozambique”.
Garrett stuck around for most of the afternoon, which was nice. Not getting a lot of visitors, we are happy to have him over whenever. By the time he left, it was nearly 4;00, achingly close to energy time. In the time in between Garrett leaving and the energy coming on, I kicked around a soccer ball with Anjo, this 18 month old kid. I think he’s still scared of us muzungus, so it was nice to see that barrier come down a bit.
With the energy on, we decided to make pizzas. We had some Velveeta left over and we figured we should use it. They say that it should be refrigerated once it’s opened, but that’s a lie. In light of our gluttonous meal, we decided to watch “Supersize Me”. It had the confusing effect of simultaneously making me want a Big Mac and never wanting to eat fast food again.
I thought I had slept better Wednesday night, but I was wrong. I woke up Thursday and pretty much went right back to bed. For almost the entire morning – until 11:00, Richie and I were both catatonic. Most of the morning was spent on the floor – concrete is colder than a bed – tripping on Larium hallucinations.
The trouble with the Larium dreams is that they are absolutely exhausting. But I was still happy to put the morning in the past. After eating lunch and chilling at home, we knew that we needed to get out.
We headed over to the villa to grab a soda and we realized that we really needed to get out of Machanga. If it was possible to climb our walls, we would have. So we decided then and there that we would leave on Saturday instead of Monday.
There was nothing special about dinner. For the first time in a while, we made just pasta without beans. Our entertainment for tonight was “Schindler’s List” With our energy situation, we weren’t able to finish it in one night, so it will be finished tomorrow.
Moving up our travel plans meant I had to get ready. On Friday morning, I organized my packing list and got everything together. I managed to get everything into a small backpack and a computer bag. I can’t believe I managed to get it done.
The rest of the morning, and a lot of the afternoon, was spent cleaning up. Richie and I did a small load of laundry and we each cleaned the house thoroughly. We were packed and ready to go. The only problem was that it was Friday afternoon. We headed to the villa, our surefire way to kill an hour, to say goodbye to Madinha.
Friday night looked a lot like Thursday – a basic dinner (stir fry) and “Schindler’s List”. What a really beautifully done movie. I can’t believe it took me this long to see it.
“Are you up? Let’s go” was how I was greeted on Saturday. Okay, let’s boogie. A last minute thing here and there and we were out of the house by 6:30.
We had hoped to beat our 3 hour 47 minute record, and things looked promising. We got to Mambone in about 45 minutes and got a ride just as we hit the villa. Unfortunately the car was moving slowly, dashing our hopes of breaking the record. We could still make good time.
Then I made one of the stupidest travel choices I’ve made here. We had a car lined up to get to Inhassoro when a group of South Africans came blazing down the EN1. Shockingly, one of them stopped for us. He said that he was going to Vilanculos. I, being greedy, told him that we wanted to get to Vilanculos and that we already had a ride to Inhassoro, thanks anyway. Dumb. In the end, I cost us maybe an hour, plus fifty Meticais each.
The real travel fun began on our in to Vilanculos. We took a chapa in for the last leg as we usually do. I handed fifty Mets to money-collector – a punk 14 year old. He stared at me, and asked me for more money. “What? It costs 15 Mets each”, I said. “This is where you give me money”. He laughed and told me no, no, 50 Meticais. After an extensive argument and Richie and I yelling in three languages – English, Portuguese and the local dialect of Chitswa – we got the right price. Ah, the pleasures of Vilanculos in tourist season.
We dropped our things off and headed off to pizza. Richie told me that only after he had his pizza would I be off the shit list for turning down a free ride. Valid point. We met Meagan, the new Volunteer in Vilanculos for lunch, and I was forgiven.
The rest of the afternoon, into the night was quiet. As it is hotter than 90 degrees here, we decided to take a dip in the ocean, which is now bathwater warm. We ate dinner and watched “Troy”, a sweet war movie. Seeing “Troy” after reading a lot of “Bulfinch’s Mythology“ made it a lot more enjoyable.
And so our week in Vilanculos begins.
A Year in Machanga: What We Have
And so.
A year has passed since we first arrived in rainy, muddy, fire-engulfed Machanga. It wasn’t a particular good first impression. But slowly, but surely, this place started to grow on us. And now, in spite of its pitfalls – the isolation and loneliness, the lack of constant energy or running water – we have come to really appreciate what we have.
What we have is the real deal. A lot of people talk about “The Peace Corps Experience”, eluding, I think, to how it was in its nascent days: out in the middle of nowhere, just you and your community. Doubtless, we get that here. And I think we can take some pride in the fact when people say, “Oh, you’re getting the real Peace Corps Experience”, we can honestly reply “Yeah, we are”.
What we have is a really awesome community. Or I should say communities. Outside of our school community in Machanga, we have become a part of the big Peace Corps family. Whether a person was in Thailand in 1965 of in Cameroon in 2009, it doesn’t really matter: the only people who truly understand what this whole Peace Corps thing is about are Peace Corps Volunteers. I guess what it comes down to is that it’s pretty cool to be a part of something that is so much bigger than you.
What we have are truly phenomenal friends and family. Put aside the packages and the letters, the phone calls and text messages. Knowing that we have their love and support, even though it may be difficult to have a loved one so far away for so long, is priceless. It makes this term of service easier.
What we have is a new education, the kind you can’t get in a university. It’s a cultural education. Sure, there are a lot of things that we still do in a typically American way. But a lot of what we do – speaking Portuguese, riding in chapas, cooking with charcoal for half of our meals, washing our feet with stones – is Mozambican to its core. We do these things not just to blend in or because we have to, but a lot of times, we do these things because they just work better here.
What we have is a new appreciation for the things we take for granted in America. In a developing country like Mozambique, life is not easier in most ways. The network of roads, despite recent touch-ups, still needs a lot of work. Our energy situation, though no longer difficult to deal with, is not ideal. And man, I could really use a good burrito or some Vietnamese food. There are things that we certainly miss, but these are the things that we will enjoy the most when we are home.
What we have is a Mozambican sense of patience. Things get done here, but they do take a while – twenty-four hour energy, anyone? In the end, we have little control of when the chapa leaves or when our mail will arrive. So we sit. And we wait. And we wait. And hopefully, we have a book or a magazine.
What we have are stories – more stories than we have friends to listen or time to tell. I know that every Thanksgiving from here on out, I will think of Maurice. Our travels in the future will be compared to our travels from this year. And all those little things that we barely think of now will be bigger when we look back on it.
What we have is a year under our belts. What we have is one more to go.
A year has passed since we first arrived in rainy, muddy, fire-engulfed Machanga. It wasn’t a particular good first impression. But slowly, but surely, this place started to grow on us. And now, in spite of its pitfalls – the isolation and loneliness, the lack of constant energy or running water – we have come to really appreciate what we have.
What we have is the real deal. A lot of people talk about “The Peace Corps Experience”, eluding, I think, to how it was in its nascent days: out in the middle of nowhere, just you and your community. Doubtless, we get that here. And I think we can take some pride in the fact when people say, “Oh, you’re getting the real Peace Corps Experience”, we can honestly reply “Yeah, we are”.
What we have is a really awesome community. Or I should say communities. Outside of our school community in Machanga, we have become a part of the big Peace Corps family. Whether a person was in Thailand in 1965 of in Cameroon in 2009, it doesn’t really matter: the only people who truly understand what this whole Peace Corps thing is about are Peace Corps Volunteers. I guess what it comes down to is that it’s pretty cool to be a part of something that is so much bigger than you.
What we have are truly phenomenal friends and family. Put aside the packages and the letters, the phone calls and text messages. Knowing that we have their love and support, even though it may be difficult to have a loved one so far away for so long, is priceless. It makes this term of service easier.
What we have is a new education, the kind you can’t get in a university. It’s a cultural education. Sure, there are a lot of things that we still do in a typically American way. But a lot of what we do – speaking Portuguese, riding in chapas, cooking with charcoal for half of our meals, washing our feet with stones – is Mozambican to its core. We do these things not just to blend in or because we have to, but a lot of times, we do these things because they just work better here.
What we have is a new appreciation for the things we take for granted in America. In a developing country like Mozambique, life is not easier in most ways. The network of roads, despite recent touch-ups, still needs a lot of work. Our energy situation, though no longer difficult to deal with, is not ideal. And man, I could really use a good burrito or some Vietnamese food. There are things that we certainly miss, but these are the things that we will enjoy the most when we are home.
What we have is a Mozambican sense of patience. Things get done here, but they do take a while – twenty-four hour energy, anyone? In the end, we have little control of when the chapa leaves or when our mail will arrive. So we sit. And we wait. And we wait. And hopefully, we have a book or a magazine.
What we have are stories – more stories than we have friends to listen or time to tell. I know that every Thanksgiving from here on out, I will think of Maurice. Our travels in the future will be compared to our travels from this year. And all those little things that we barely think of now will be bigger when we look back on it.
What we have is a year under our belts. What we have is one more to go.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Year 1 - Week 52: Watching the Wheels Go Round and Round
It looked like we were in for more rain again on Sunday. We got a good shower in the wee hours of the morning, but for the most part, the rain held off. Regardless, the damage was done: the road was muddied and full of puddles. I thought that I could take the bike to the market. It wasn’t the best decision I’ve made – I only had to walk it for a couple yards – but I’ve made better choices.
After the market run, the entire morning was spent chilling on the patio. Work for some of the other teachers – the people in charge – is starting to wind down, and other teachers are starting to make their way out of Machanga. Lucky souls. Our time will come soon enough.
It’s truly amazing how the combination of doing nothing plus the heat and humidity can sap the energy. Following lunch, I took a nap that absolutely knocked me out. The heat has made sleeping nearly impossible so naptime has become a necessity. The tragedy of it all is that naptime has made sleeping at night more difficult – quite a sick cycle.
We made an afternoon market run, but this market run was of particular importance. We weren’t just going to grab a soda. My shorts were finally ready to be picked up. When Madinha presented them to me, the reaction was generally positive. I, of course, loved them. Madinha thought the came out well, and it got a laugh out of a couple of people. They were cut absolutely perfectly and Madinha insisted that I wear them home. On the walk home, they got a couple looks, but nothing negative.
Just before dinner, I talked to my mom and dad. As the weeks have wasted away and they have come closer to arriving here in Mozambique, the excitement in their voices has become more apparent. Everything is prepared. All that’s left is the waiting of these last three weeks.
When the lights turned out, we thought that we would be able to go to sleep. The heat wasn’t too intolerable and even the blaring music in the background was not the worst thing in the world. Then the screaming started. “Ussene! Ussene!” We thought that this little four year old kid ran away. Then the banging on the door started. Then more screaming.
By 10:30, we just couldn’t take it anymore. We climbed out of bed to see what the commotion was all about. Ussene locked out his family and went to sleep with a candle still lit, and neither banging nor screaming could wake the little kid up. The neighbors thought about breaking in through windows, but then I remember something. The padre here has broken into his room before and I figured that I could do the same. All it took to break into the house was a screw driver and needle-nose pliers.
The music kept playing, but with the screaming and banging gone, it was peaceful enough to sleep.
I was awake, but I wasn’t well rested by any means. It’s a good thing there was nothing important to do for most of the day. As I sat on the patio, I watched other teachers clean out their yards and I thought I should do the same. Now, cutting the grass here is more than pushing a mower. It requires taking nine-iron-like hacks with a slightly angled off knife. Although it’s not the most effective mode of cutting grass, it’s pretty good exercise, and the yard does look a lot nicer now.
The rest of the morning was pretty slow. I broke out the sudoku book for a little bit before lunch. The late part of my morning was also spent trying to convince some departing friends that they should stop here for a night. By lunch time, I received a text saying they wouldn’t be stopping. It’s sad that we won’t see them again, but it’s understandable. Machanga is in the middle of fuckin nowhere and they have places to go.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do after lunch. I had the ritual nap and the now ritual box-filing and code-breaking. But other than that, nothing happened until the energy came on a full hour early.
We were particularly lazy about dinner tonight. Richie bought a ton of bread, so we thought that we would cook up sandwiches. And we still have all those cans of corned beef that I’m still a little skeptical about (even thought we’ve had it twice, and it’s good). We ate our sandwiches and watched “Match Point”, one of the more recent Woody Allen movies. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t terrible either.
I’m going to entirely skip over Tuesday because I did nothing on Tuesday. My entire day can be summed up with the words su doku and cryptograms.
The only thing that happened Tuesday was that just before I went to sleep, I caught view of an absolutely massive spider. This was not a tiny spider. This was something like a tarantula about the size of my palm. I tried to kill it, but the bastard got away. I then spent the next hour trying to psych myself into falling asleep. This is why we use bed nets.
I was back to being productive on Wednesday. Sozinho has once again departed, albeit temporarily this time, so we are left to our own devices to wash clothes. Once again, washing clothes is a royal pain in the ass. But these days, when there is nothing to do in Machanga, being able to kill almost two hours doing laundry is actually a good thing.
Wednesday was a most excellent day to do laundry. The sun was pounding down ridiculously hard. The news said that it was 32 degrees Celsius. That translates to roughly ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Given the choice, though, I think I’d rather take 32 Celsius. After all, my clothes won’t dry in 32 Fahrenheit.
My laundry was washed and dried before noon. We cooked up some lunch and after that, there was nothing. The heat was absolutely brutal and all we could do was sit there or lay there. But I couldn’t bring myself to nap. With all the sleeping problems I’ve had I night, I figure that I should cut down the napping.
Dinner was whatever. We made Mexican food which is always good, but it doesn’t really matter. Whatever plans we had for the night – not that we had anything of substance – were nixed by a couple colleagues who needed some computer help.
There was not a lot happening Thursday morning. We just sat on our patio, watching the wheels go round and round. Actually, the only wheels we watched go round and round were those of our bike rolling away. I guess it’s good that people are using it. As long as it’s dry, it’s all good, but once the rain is here for good, it will be put away.
Thursday afternoon, however, was quite lovely. After eating lunch, we broke out a couple boxes of terrible wine with one of our colleagues. His English is not too bad and with a little wine, it becomes better, just as our Portuguese gets better with alcohol.
Afternoon drinking turned into night drinking. With the boxes finished, the three of us and one other teacher went over to the villa. Richie and I, pathetically, lost a game of Slamball to a couple Mozambicans. It’s shocking how quickly they can drink. As more people showed up, I broke out the deck of cards and wowed people with some magic. The things that people like here crack me up sometimes.
We were back by 8:15, leaving us just enough time to make dinner and eat before the lights went out. And other than the 3:00 drunken wake-up, it was not a terrible night of sleep.
I woke up Friday feeling pretty good. I guess the advantage of afternoon drinking is that you sleep right through the hangover. It’s a nice upside. I spent a good portion of the day Friday finishing out a book of crossword puzzles. Halfway through finishing, I convinced myself that I could put together a puzzle. I failed in two attempts, but I’m still sure that I can do this. One day, I’ll get it done.
Once again, it was fuckin hot here. Richie, like I did earlier in the week, did laundry today and it, like mine, was dried by lunch. Other than the market run and finishing the crossword book, it was an otherwise useless day.
Our neighbor came over early in the afternoon to see if we had an agenda for the afternoon. Of course, we told him we had nothing planned, but we really didn’t want to drink again. Two afternoons in a row is a little excessive, even by Machanga standards.
Clouds rolled in Friday night and it looked like it was going to rain, but for the entire evening, Machanga stayed dry. Only after we had gone to sleep did it begin to rain.
The clouds seemed to leave as quickly as they came in. For a short part of Saturday morning, there was pure sunshine. The entirety of the phone call with my brother was in daylight. And as if on command, as soon as I got off the phone, the first drops came down.
And then. The deluge. The clouds moved in faster and faster until the sky from horizon to horizon. The rain came down the entire morning. At some times, it was pure downpour. At some times, it was drizzling. But it never entirely stopped. All said, we filled bucket after bucket to the tune of more than one hundred liters.
More of our colleagues left today, leaving the place even more empty, leaving us more lonely. A couple of our colleagues are stuck around and they were as lonely as we were. They replaced our colleagues a couple small flasks of whiskey and a flask of gin and we drank the rainy afternoon away.
The rain stopped for the most part after dinner and our colleagues wanted to get a couple beers. We trudged and sludged our way through the mud to the villa. I almost fell at least twice. And after our couple beers, we were done. It was not a worthwhile trip. But I guess with nothing to do, anything to pass some time until my family gets here is time well spent.
After the market run, the entire morning was spent chilling on the patio. Work for some of the other teachers – the people in charge – is starting to wind down, and other teachers are starting to make their way out of Machanga. Lucky souls. Our time will come soon enough.
It’s truly amazing how the combination of doing nothing plus the heat and humidity can sap the energy. Following lunch, I took a nap that absolutely knocked me out. The heat has made sleeping nearly impossible so naptime has become a necessity. The tragedy of it all is that naptime has made sleeping at night more difficult – quite a sick cycle.
We made an afternoon market run, but this market run was of particular importance. We weren’t just going to grab a soda. My shorts were finally ready to be picked up. When Madinha presented them to me, the reaction was generally positive. I, of course, loved them. Madinha thought the came out well, and it got a laugh out of a couple of people. They were cut absolutely perfectly and Madinha insisted that I wear them home. On the walk home, they got a couple looks, but nothing negative.
Just before dinner, I talked to my mom and dad. As the weeks have wasted away and they have come closer to arriving here in Mozambique, the excitement in their voices has become more apparent. Everything is prepared. All that’s left is the waiting of these last three weeks.
When the lights turned out, we thought that we would be able to go to sleep. The heat wasn’t too intolerable and even the blaring music in the background was not the worst thing in the world. Then the screaming started. “Ussene! Ussene!” We thought that this little four year old kid ran away. Then the banging on the door started. Then more screaming.
By 10:30, we just couldn’t take it anymore. We climbed out of bed to see what the commotion was all about. Ussene locked out his family and went to sleep with a candle still lit, and neither banging nor screaming could wake the little kid up. The neighbors thought about breaking in through windows, but then I remember something. The padre here has broken into his room before and I figured that I could do the same. All it took to break into the house was a screw driver and needle-nose pliers.
The music kept playing, but with the screaming and banging gone, it was peaceful enough to sleep.
I was awake, but I wasn’t well rested by any means. It’s a good thing there was nothing important to do for most of the day. As I sat on the patio, I watched other teachers clean out their yards and I thought I should do the same. Now, cutting the grass here is more than pushing a mower. It requires taking nine-iron-like hacks with a slightly angled off knife. Although it’s not the most effective mode of cutting grass, it’s pretty good exercise, and the yard does look a lot nicer now.
The rest of the morning was pretty slow. I broke out the sudoku book for a little bit before lunch. The late part of my morning was also spent trying to convince some departing friends that they should stop here for a night. By lunch time, I received a text saying they wouldn’t be stopping. It’s sad that we won’t see them again, but it’s understandable. Machanga is in the middle of fuckin nowhere and they have places to go.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do after lunch. I had the ritual nap and the now ritual box-filing and code-breaking. But other than that, nothing happened until the energy came on a full hour early.
We were particularly lazy about dinner tonight. Richie bought a ton of bread, so we thought that we would cook up sandwiches. And we still have all those cans of corned beef that I’m still a little skeptical about (even thought we’ve had it twice, and it’s good). We ate our sandwiches and watched “Match Point”, one of the more recent Woody Allen movies. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t terrible either.
I’m going to entirely skip over Tuesday because I did nothing on Tuesday. My entire day can be summed up with the words su doku and cryptograms.
The only thing that happened Tuesday was that just before I went to sleep, I caught view of an absolutely massive spider. This was not a tiny spider. This was something like a tarantula about the size of my palm. I tried to kill it, but the bastard got away. I then spent the next hour trying to psych myself into falling asleep. This is why we use bed nets.
I was back to being productive on Wednesday. Sozinho has once again departed, albeit temporarily this time, so we are left to our own devices to wash clothes. Once again, washing clothes is a royal pain in the ass. But these days, when there is nothing to do in Machanga, being able to kill almost two hours doing laundry is actually a good thing.
Wednesday was a most excellent day to do laundry. The sun was pounding down ridiculously hard. The news said that it was 32 degrees Celsius. That translates to roughly ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Given the choice, though, I think I’d rather take 32 Celsius. After all, my clothes won’t dry in 32 Fahrenheit.
My laundry was washed and dried before noon. We cooked up some lunch and after that, there was nothing. The heat was absolutely brutal and all we could do was sit there or lay there. But I couldn’t bring myself to nap. With all the sleeping problems I’ve had I night, I figure that I should cut down the napping.
Dinner was whatever. We made Mexican food which is always good, but it doesn’t really matter. Whatever plans we had for the night – not that we had anything of substance – were nixed by a couple colleagues who needed some computer help.
There was not a lot happening Thursday morning. We just sat on our patio, watching the wheels go round and round. Actually, the only wheels we watched go round and round were those of our bike rolling away. I guess it’s good that people are using it. As long as it’s dry, it’s all good, but once the rain is here for good, it will be put away.
Thursday afternoon, however, was quite lovely. After eating lunch, we broke out a couple boxes of terrible wine with one of our colleagues. His English is not too bad and with a little wine, it becomes better, just as our Portuguese gets better with alcohol.
Afternoon drinking turned into night drinking. With the boxes finished, the three of us and one other teacher went over to the villa. Richie and I, pathetically, lost a game of Slamball to a couple Mozambicans. It’s shocking how quickly they can drink. As more people showed up, I broke out the deck of cards and wowed people with some magic. The things that people like here crack me up sometimes.
We were back by 8:15, leaving us just enough time to make dinner and eat before the lights went out. And other than the 3:00 drunken wake-up, it was not a terrible night of sleep.
I woke up Friday feeling pretty good. I guess the advantage of afternoon drinking is that you sleep right through the hangover. It’s a nice upside. I spent a good portion of the day Friday finishing out a book of crossword puzzles. Halfway through finishing, I convinced myself that I could put together a puzzle. I failed in two attempts, but I’m still sure that I can do this. One day, I’ll get it done.
Once again, it was fuckin hot here. Richie, like I did earlier in the week, did laundry today and it, like mine, was dried by lunch. Other than the market run and finishing the crossword book, it was an otherwise useless day.
Our neighbor came over early in the afternoon to see if we had an agenda for the afternoon. Of course, we told him we had nothing planned, but we really didn’t want to drink again. Two afternoons in a row is a little excessive, even by Machanga standards.
Clouds rolled in Friday night and it looked like it was going to rain, but for the entire evening, Machanga stayed dry. Only after we had gone to sleep did it begin to rain.
The clouds seemed to leave as quickly as they came in. For a short part of Saturday morning, there was pure sunshine. The entirety of the phone call with my brother was in daylight. And as if on command, as soon as I got off the phone, the first drops came down.
And then. The deluge. The clouds moved in faster and faster until the sky from horizon to horizon. The rain came down the entire morning. At some times, it was pure downpour. At some times, it was drizzling. But it never entirely stopped. All said, we filled bucket after bucket to the tune of more than one hundred liters.
More of our colleagues left today, leaving the place even more empty, leaving us more lonely. A couple of our colleagues are stuck around and they were as lonely as we were. They replaced our colleagues a couple small flasks of whiskey and a flask of gin and we drank the rainy afternoon away.
The rain stopped for the most part after dinner and our colleagues wanted to get a couple beers. We trudged and sludged our way through the mud to the villa. I almost fell at least twice. And after our couple beers, we were done. It was not a worthwhile trip. But I guess with nothing to do, anything to pass some time until my family gets here is time well spent.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Year 1 - Week 51: Three and Four
If this year’s departure dates are a proper guide for next year, last Thursday was the last Thanksgiving that we will celebrate in Mozambique – weird. Weirder than that is the fact that half the people with whom we celebrated are all but departed. We are hoping to catch some of our Moz12 friends one more time before they leave, but a lot of them are already gone.
This is a time that is both depressing and exciting. It’s depressing because our friends are leaving. Making things more difficult is the fact that there is so little to do these days. Quite frankly, we feel useless right now. At the same time, we are so excited that Moz14 is literally days away from being sent to their sites. And with Moz12 moving out, and Moz14 moving in, it means that we’re the next group out.
Not that we’re necessarily in a rush to leave. We still have a lot of work to do, a lot of little projects we want to get done. But all of that will have to wait until the school year starts up in January. For now, though, we are stuck doing nothing, which is just about what we did on Sunday.
For the last couple days, I’ve read “The Best American Non-Required Reading” of 2008. It’s a collection put together annually by 826 Valencia, which is in my general neighborhood. It’s an interesting collection of fiction and non-fiction writing from 2008. As I think I’ve made clear over the course of the year, literature is not my thing – I’m more of a history/biography kind of person – but this stuff was good. Really good. Can’t put down good. I spent the better part of Sunday, save for a nap, with my face in the book.
Late in the afternoon, we ran over to the villa to get a soda. The soda run on Sunday is always kind of a fishing expedition. For most of the year, the villa has simply shut down on Sunday, but with electricity, there may or my not be something open. Today, we were lucky: we got our cold sodas.
We had but an hour to wait until the energy on. We made chili tonight, which always takes forever to cook, so while the beans cooked, we watched “The Darjeeling Limited”. I saw this in theatres with my best friends and all I could remember from it was that Sweet Lime was drop-dead gorgeous, India is full of bright colors, and it’s pretty funny. I forgot how good of a film it is.
It’s fuckin’ hot here again, making sleep a challenge. One would think that it would cool down after the sun goes down, but by some strange, cruel meteorological twist, the breeze stops at night. Before going to bed, I did a little more reading, but I was distracted by what was outside my window. The sky, at 9:30 at night, was nearly white. A clear sky, nearly no pollution, and a remarkable bright moon will do that. And it’s not even a full moon.
After 1:30 and 5:15 wake-ups, I rolled out of bed around 7:30 for another day lacking commitments. Today begins the second round of national exams, which we thankfully have not been asked to proctor. This left me plenty of time to finish out “Non-Essential”, which I was happy about. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my hands on the 2009 edition when it comes out.
Richie and I made a run to the market around 10 o’clock. Yesterday, while in the villa, I talked to a tailor about getting a pair of shorts made. He wouldn’t give me a price yesterday, so I decided I should come by with the cloth today. I had a baseline for the price – our colleague spends 200 Mets a pair – so I figured the price would be a little higher here, as there are not as many tailors here. I was shocked to here the price: 600 Mets!
If I was shocked, Madinha, or market friend, was irate. She grabbed my cloth, and the shorts I want the new pair modeled after, and said she would take care of it. “This shouldn’t cost more than 80 Mets!” Then, someone else spoke up. “Are you sure they said 600 and not 60?” Fuck. I was sure I heard 600, but I’ve been wrong before, and there’s no reason I couldn’t be wrong again. I went back to the tailor and asked the price again. “Sixty. Six-zero”. It’s lovely to know that after more than year of speaking this language, I still make the most basic errors. Just lovely.
At least my idiocy provided a good laugh for Richie. And it may have been a good sign. “He doesn’t sew that well anyway”, said Madinha. “I’ll take them to Mambone”. It’s out of my hands now.
I got back to reading Sedaris’s book after lunch. I’m committed at this point, and there’s so little left that I felt like I had to finish it. The second half, in my opinion, was much better than the first. It should come as no surprise that the second half is the non-fiction side. With that knocked out, I started reading “Bulfinch’s Mythology”. This should be interesting. I don’t know what will win out: the fact that it’s a history, making this enjoyable, or the fact that it’s basically a history about fiction.
Our preparations for dinner were minimal. For the first time, I made mango salsa, which was quite good. It’s a shame that mangoes have such a weird texture, because they are so delicious, they could be dessert. After dinner, we watched “Choke”, another strange buy funny movie.
I was enjoying an otherwise cool Tuesday morning when I got the call: “be at school at 8:30.” Damnit. Every time I think I’m done with work for the year, they keep dragging me in. Today was pretty simple – I just had to read through the second English exam and make sure there were no errors. Other than a couple minor things, there was nothing really substantial, much better than the first exam.
It would have been nice to get correcting, but the students were still taking the exam when I was reading through it. This exam, along with having less mistakes, was substantially easier than the first exam. I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see how they did.
As late morning rolled in, so did the clouds. A pallid sheet of grey took over the entire sky. And then it started to rain…for the next ten hours. It was a weak but constant rain, hard enough to fill a bucket but light enough to not turn the entire town to mud. We followed what everyone else did and just sat on the patio trying to stay dry.
The cloud cover did a pretty good job of turning the place dark. It was so dark that they had to turn the energy on hours early so the students could read their exams. This benefited us, as we were able to watch a movie before dinner. After dinner, we watched the “House” bonus features, which weren’t so bad. It did its job and filled out our night.
Wednesday was the real work day. Even though grading is a completely monotonous task, it was still something to occupy my time. I plugged in the iPod and graded away until lunch time.
There was a very interesting split between the two groups that took the exam. In one group, nearly everybody passed convincingly. In the other class, less than ten percent passed. In theory, the classes should pass at a relatively similar rate. The only difference that I could see between the two classes was that one of the groups was presided over by an English teacher and one wasn’t. I’m not saying that anything fishy happened, but it is quite the coincidence.
I had to go back to school around 2:00 to finish up grading. Along with the actually correcting, we have to record the grades. It’s a boring task made worse by the fact that we have to everything first in pencil, then overwrite in pen. A twenty minute task is immediately doubled.
The clouds finally cleared out in the afternoon. The puddles thrown around town were enough to draw a ton of frogs and bugs out into the open. It was an invasion. For some reason, I thought buying a new light for a porch would be a good idea. Wrong. Once the lights came on, and the sun went down, the bugs swarmed to the light. Terrible idea all the way around.
Richie had a revolutionary idea for dinner: pizza. While he cooked up out delicious food, I went over to our neighbor’s house to buy beers. We can’t have pizza without beer. After eating, we watched “Napoleon Dynamite”. Yes, even though this movie has been out for years, I had not seen it. Gosh!
Since we managed to get all of our correcting done on Wednesday, I was in for another boring morning on Thursday. I was enjoying a nice relaxing day on the patio when the tenth grade math teacher came over and threw me the twelfth grade math exam. The twelfth grade teacher is in the hospital, likely with malaria, so I became the go-to person for math. He gave me four problems that he couldn’t figure out: “a little practice for you”, as he said.
Two of the problems were a piece of cake, one gave me a little strain, and one – because it had logarithms – I had no idea to do. As I was working on the problems, a student came over to ask me about the logarithm problem. He gave me an example of how logarithms worked and a few minutes later, I had the problem figured out. When the teacher returned, he just laughed. “These problems gave me a headache trying to figure them out”, he said. I’m just happy to help out.
Richie and I had a little time after lunch to relax before heading over to Mambone. Two Volunteers are making their way through the country and they wanted to see Machanga. For the third time this year, we’re going to have visitors! Before we headed over, we went to the villa to talk to Madinha. We figured that she could cook us up a pretty good lunch tomorrow, and she was okay with the idea.
We got to Mambone around 4:30, by far the latest we’ve arrived there. Usually, we’re there by 9 in the morning. Our timing was absolutely perfect: just as they were pulling into the villa, we were also arriving. Having traveled all day, we figured that we should give them a small break, so we got a beer before heading back across the river.
Besides the fact that our house is tiny, we are ill-equipped to take on visitors. We pretty much only have two of everything because people so rarely come here. This is especially evident on the sleeping front – we only have our two beds. So we asked Sozinho to grab a couple mattresses from our neighbors’ houses and we were set up.
We went with a very simple pasta dinner. Cooking for four is a bit of a task in our tiny kitchen, but it was also made easier because we had some extra hands to prepare. After eating, we watched “Bruno”, and when the lights went out, we all settled into the sweatbox.
All of us were up pretty early Friday morning. Even though the day was young, it was still ridiculously hot. For a little while, we avoided the sun in the shade of our patio, but late in the morning, we found the energy to get up and passear through town. The four of us made a big loop through the villa, past the government building and back into the school.
By the time we got back, we were hungry. We told Madinha that we would be over for lunch around 2:00 and without having eaten breakfast, we needed something to hold us over. It would be a rare three-meal day for us.
The food was just enough to keep us hungry for lunch and it’s a good thing we brought our appetites. Madinha brought out all the stops: chicken, fish, matapa, rice and a little salad. For all her trouble, we barely paid her anything – 155 Mets each, and that included a couple drinks each. It was probably the best bang for our buck we’ve had anywhere.
We returned home around 4:00 and started debating the merits of dinner. We had just eaten twice. Would it really make sense to eat again? Sure, why not. After hanging around for a bit, our visitors cooked up some delicious spicy rice. While they cooked, I was made useful once again. There were four different tech problems that I attended to: one laptop wasn’t printing; a “lost” (read: unsaved) document needed to be “found” (read: retyped); the director’s computer needed a media player; and the printer jammed. All four problems were resolved with little effort.
I returned from the tech run just as food was coming out. Richie, who is not a fan of spiciness, ate three bites and gave up. I killed my plate and nearly finished his. The best decision we made, though, was the choice to eat dinner on the patio. As it has become hot again, the house has become ridiculously hot at night. Eating on the patio made dinner enjoyable.
Initially, I had no trouble sleeping. But I woke up at midnight, and was for a long time. I think I finally fell asleep sometime around 3 in the morning, but it wasn’t a good sleep by any means. Our visitors headed out early in the morning, making the wise decision, on our advice, to head south to Mambone before heading north. We would have walked them over but we had plans to head across the river later in the morning. While we waited for some hours to peel away, we cleaned up the house.
We were also hoping that the rain that arrived in the morning – and that caught our visitors on the way out – would leave. But as 10:00 rolled around, the rain was still falling, albeit lightly. Hooded and under an umbrella, we headed out to the river. As we walked the rain picked up and the dirt quickly became mud. It continued to rain hard as we crossed the river. And when we finally settled at Zimaima, the restaurant where we like to eat, it was a full-on downpour.
Our reason for going to Mambone was very specific. We didn’t need to have the delicious chicken, although it was a nice perk. The real cause was to pick up our passports. Our renewed visas had made it all the way to Vilanculos, but we didn’t want to go there to get them, so we told one of the Volunteers there to give them to the chapa driver. She bid us good luck, but we had confidence in him. After all, Greg, our recently departed friend, had entrusted him with his bank card and cash. Of course, we got our passports with no problem.
The rain steadily increased for the better part of the afternoon. We caught a break as it seemed to come to a complete halt as we crossed back to Machanga. We then made our way through the mud, both of us nearly falling many times, until we were back at home. As fate would have it, as soon as we were back in the house, it stopped raining completely.
Between the poor night’s sleep and all the walking, we were both exhausted; we both took late afternoon naps. Fully awake, we cleaned up the patio a bit. The rain always turns our blessed patio to mud. And with a night of beans and little media left to watch, we called it a day.
This is a time that is both depressing and exciting. It’s depressing because our friends are leaving. Making things more difficult is the fact that there is so little to do these days. Quite frankly, we feel useless right now. At the same time, we are so excited that Moz14 is literally days away from being sent to their sites. And with Moz12 moving out, and Moz14 moving in, it means that we’re the next group out.
Not that we’re necessarily in a rush to leave. We still have a lot of work to do, a lot of little projects we want to get done. But all of that will have to wait until the school year starts up in January. For now, though, we are stuck doing nothing, which is just about what we did on Sunday.
For the last couple days, I’ve read “The Best American Non-Required Reading” of 2008. It’s a collection put together annually by 826 Valencia, which is in my general neighborhood. It’s an interesting collection of fiction and non-fiction writing from 2008. As I think I’ve made clear over the course of the year, literature is not my thing – I’m more of a history/biography kind of person – but this stuff was good. Really good. Can’t put down good. I spent the better part of Sunday, save for a nap, with my face in the book.
Late in the afternoon, we ran over to the villa to get a soda. The soda run on Sunday is always kind of a fishing expedition. For most of the year, the villa has simply shut down on Sunday, but with electricity, there may or my not be something open. Today, we were lucky: we got our cold sodas.
We had but an hour to wait until the energy on. We made chili tonight, which always takes forever to cook, so while the beans cooked, we watched “The Darjeeling Limited”. I saw this in theatres with my best friends and all I could remember from it was that Sweet Lime was drop-dead gorgeous, India is full of bright colors, and it’s pretty funny. I forgot how good of a film it is.
It’s fuckin’ hot here again, making sleep a challenge. One would think that it would cool down after the sun goes down, but by some strange, cruel meteorological twist, the breeze stops at night. Before going to bed, I did a little more reading, but I was distracted by what was outside my window. The sky, at 9:30 at night, was nearly white. A clear sky, nearly no pollution, and a remarkable bright moon will do that. And it’s not even a full moon.
After 1:30 and 5:15 wake-ups, I rolled out of bed around 7:30 for another day lacking commitments. Today begins the second round of national exams, which we thankfully have not been asked to proctor. This left me plenty of time to finish out “Non-Essential”, which I was happy about. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my hands on the 2009 edition when it comes out.
Richie and I made a run to the market around 10 o’clock. Yesterday, while in the villa, I talked to a tailor about getting a pair of shorts made. He wouldn’t give me a price yesterday, so I decided I should come by with the cloth today. I had a baseline for the price – our colleague spends 200 Mets a pair – so I figured the price would be a little higher here, as there are not as many tailors here. I was shocked to here the price: 600 Mets!
If I was shocked, Madinha, or market friend, was irate. She grabbed my cloth, and the shorts I want the new pair modeled after, and said she would take care of it. “This shouldn’t cost more than 80 Mets!” Then, someone else spoke up. “Are you sure they said 600 and not 60?” Fuck. I was sure I heard 600, but I’ve been wrong before, and there’s no reason I couldn’t be wrong again. I went back to the tailor and asked the price again. “Sixty. Six-zero”. It’s lovely to know that after more than year of speaking this language, I still make the most basic errors. Just lovely.
At least my idiocy provided a good laugh for Richie. And it may have been a good sign. “He doesn’t sew that well anyway”, said Madinha. “I’ll take them to Mambone”. It’s out of my hands now.
I got back to reading Sedaris’s book after lunch. I’m committed at this point, and there’s so little left that I felt like I had to finish it. The second half, in my opinion, was much better than the first. It should come as no surprise that the second half is the non-fiction side. With that knocked out, I started reading “Bulfinch’s Mythology”. This should be interesting. I don’t know what will win out: the fact that it’s a history, making this enjoyable, or the fact that it’s basically a history about fiction.
Our preparations for dinner were minimal. For the first time, I made mango salsa, which was quite good. It’s a shame that mangoes have such a weird texture, because they are so delicious, they could be dessert. After dinner, we watched “Choke”, another strange buy funny movie.
I was enjoying an otherwise cool Tuesday morning when I got the call: “be at school at 8:30.” Damnit. Every time I think I’m done with work for the year, they keep dragging me in. Today was pretty simple – I just had to read through the second English exam and make sure there were no errors. Other than a couple minor things, there was nothing really substantial, much better than the first exam.
It would have been nice to get correcting, but the students were still taking the exam when I was reading through it. This exam, along with having less mistakes, was substantially easier than the first exam. I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see how they did.
As late morning rolled in, so did the clouds. A pallid sheet of grey took over the entire sky. And then it started to rain…for the next ten hours. It was a weak but constant rain, hard enough to fill a bucket but light enough to not turn the entire town to mud. We followed what everyone else did and just sat on the patio trying to stay dry.
The cloud cover did a pretty good job of turning the place dark. It was so dark that they had to turn the energy on hours early so the students could read their exams. This benefited us, as we were able to watch a movie before dinner. After dinner, we watched the “House” bonus features, which weren’t so bad. It did its job and filled out our night.
Wednesday was the real work day. Even though grading is a completely monotonous task, it was still something to occupy my time. I plugged in the iPod and graded away until lunch time.
There was a very interesting split between the two groups that took the exam. In one group, nearly everybody passed convincingly. In the other class, less than ten percent passed. In theory, the classes should pass at a relatively similar rate. The only difference that I could see between the two classes was that one of the groups was presided over by an English teacher and one wasn’t. I’m not saying that anything fishy happened, but it is quite the coincidence.
I had to go back to school around 2:00 to finish up grading. Along with the actually correcting, we have to record the grades. It’s a boring task made worse by the fact that we have to everything first in pencil, then overwrite in pen. A twenty minute task is immediately doubled.
The clouds finally cleared out in the afternoon. The puddles thrown around town were enough to draw a ton of frogs and bugs out into the open. It was an invasion. For some reason, I thought buying a new light for a porch would be a good idea. Wrong. Once the lights came on, and the sun went down, the bugs swarmed to the light. Terrible idea all the way around.
Richie had a revolutionary idea for dinner: pizza. While he cooked up out delicious food, I went over to our neighbor’s house to buy beers. We can’t have pizza without beer. After eating, we watched “Napoleon Dynamite”. Yes, even though this movie has been out for years, I had not seen it. Gosh!
Since we managed to get all of our correcting done on Wednesday, I was in for another boring morning on Thursday. I was enjoying a nice relaxing day on the patio when the tenth grade math teacher came over and threw me the twelfth grade math exam. The twelfth grade teacher is in the hospital, likely with malaria, so I became the go-to person for math. He gave me four problems that he couldn’t figure out: “a little practice for you”, as he said.
Two of the problems were a piece of cake, one gave me a little strain, and one – because it had logarithms – I had no idea to do. As I was working on the problems, a student came over to ask me about the logarithm problem. He gave me an example of how logarithms worked and a few minutes later, I had the problem figured out. When the teacher returned, he just laughed. “These problems gave me a headache trying to figure them out”, he said. I’m just happy to help out.
Richie and I had a little time after lunch to relax before heading over to Mambone. Two Volunteers are making their way through the country and they wanted to see Machanga. For the third time this year, we’re going to have visitors! Before we headed over, we went to the villa to talk to Madinha. We figured that she could cook us up a pretty good lunch tomorrow, and she was okay with the idea.
We got to Mambone around 4:30, by far the latest we’ve arrived there. Usually, we’re there by 9 in the morning. Our timing was absolutely perfect: just as they were pulling into the villa, we were also arriving. Having traveled all day, we figured that we should give them a small break, so we got a beer before heading back across the river.
Besides the fact that our house is tiny, we are ill-equipped to take on visitors. We pretty much only have two of everything because people so rarely come here. This is especially evident on the sleeping front – we only have our two beds. So we asked Sozinho to grab a couple mattresses from our neighbors’ houses and we were set up.
We went with a very simple pasta dinner. Cooking for four is a bit of a task in our tiny kitchen, but it was also made easier because we had some extra hands to prepare. After eating, we watched “Bruno”, and when the lights went out, we all settled into the sweatbox.
All of us were up pretty early Friday morning. Even though the day was young, it was still ridiculously hot. For a little while, we avoided the sun in the shade of our patio, but late in the morning, we found the energy to get up and passear through town. The four of us made a big loop through the villa, past the government building and back into the school.
By the time we got back, we were hungry. We told Madinha that we would be over for lunch around 2:00 and without having eaten breakfast, we needed something to hold us over. It would be a rare three-meal day for us.
The food was just enough to keep us hungry for lunch and it’s a good thing we brought our appetites. Madinha brought out all the stops: chicken, fish, matapa, rice and a little salad. For all her trouble, we barely paid her anything – 155 Mets each, and that included a couple drinks each. It was probably the best bang for our buck we’ve had anywhere.
We returned home around 4:00 and started debating the merits of dinner. We had just eaten twice. Would it really make sense to eat again? Sure, why not. After hanging around for a bit, our visitors cooked up some delicious spicy rice. While they cooked, I was made useful once again. There were four different tech problems that I attended to: one laptop wasn’t printing; a “lost” (read: unsaved) document needed to be “found” (read: retyped); the director’s computer needed a media player; and the printer jammed. All four problems were resolved with little effort.
I returned from the tech run just as food was coming out. Richie, who is not a fan of spiciness, ate three bites and gave up. I killed my plate and nearly finished his. The best decision we made, though, was the choice to eat dinner on the patio. As it has become hot again, the house has become ridiculously hot at night. Eating on the patio made dinner enjoyable.
Initially, I had no trouble sleeping. But I woke up at midnight, and was for a long time. I think I finally fell asleep sometime around 3 in the morning, but it wasn’t a good sleep by any means. Our visitors headed out early in the morning, making the wise decision, on our advice, to head south to Mambone before heading north. We would have walked them over but we had plans to head across the river later in the morning. While we waited for some hours to peel away, we cleaned up the house.
We were also hoping that the rain that arrived in the morning – and that caught our visitors on the way out – would leave. But as 10:00 rolled around, the rain was still falling, albeit lightly. Hooded and under an umbrella, we headed out to the river. As we walked the rain picked up and the dirt quickly became mud. It continued to rain hard as we crossed the river. And when we finally settled at Zimaima, the restaurant where we like to eat, it was a full-on downpour.
Our reason for going to Mambone was very specific. We didn’t need to have the delicious chicken, although it was a nice perk. The real cause was to pick up our passports. Our renewed visas had made it all the way to Vilanculos, but we didn’t want to go there to get them, so we told one of the Volunteers there to give them to the chapa driver. She bid us good luck, but we had confidence in him. After all, Greg, our recently departed friend, had entrusted him with his bank card and cash. Of course, we got our passports with no problem.
The rain steadily increased for the better part of the afternoon. We caught a break as it seemed to come to a complete halt as we crossed back to Machanga. We then made our way through the mud, both of us nearly falling many times, until we were back at home. As fate would have it, as soon as we were back in the house, it stopped raining completely.
Between the poor night’s sleep and all the walking, we were both exhausted; we both took late afternoon naps. Fully awake, we cleaned up the patio a bit. The rain always turns our blessed patio to mud. And with a night of beans and little media left to watch, we called it a day.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Year 1 - Week 50: The Life, Travels, Death and Digestion of Maurice
This is starting to get miserable. The sky was covered in grey again all day Sunday. There wasn’t even a sign of blue sky. This is what we have to look forward to until about April. Fun.
So once again, we were pretty much left useless for most of the day. We just sat around, laid around, lounged around. We just stayed around the house because going to the villa, trudging through the mud was not an option in the morning.
But we were able to escape the house for a little bit in the afternoon. We went over to Madinha’s store to see if we could get a turkey update. She had talked to someone across the river in Mambone, but it still wasn’t confirmed. We sat around at her bar for a while to see what she should come up with, but nothing turned up while we were there.
However, within minutes of getting home, Richie got a call from Madinha: the bird is ours for a cool 850 Mets. So what if we’re spending 6% of our monthly salary on one night’s dinner. It’s Thanksgiving, and damn it, I (along with many other happy Volunteers) am going to have turkey. We are, as another Volunteer told us, “conquering heroes” of the party.
Just before the energy came on, I went over to the director’s house to talk about the upcoming computer situation. Project eCycle has put together another five (!) laptops for the teachers here. We put together a plan to maximize their usage of them which satisfied everyone here. And I told him that I wanted to do tech classes with each of the forty-five teachers here, to which he agreed.
The night was nothing really to speak of, as usual. We ate our dinner, watched some “Office” and finished a season of “How I Met Your Mother”.
I was slightly concerned that I had not taken my Larium yesterday. I had left it on my plate yesterday but never recalled taking it. I think I just swallowed it with the food. My theory was confirmed Sunday night when I had some ridiculous lucid dreams.
My parents called early Monday morning, but the connection was a little rough. It was still clear enough for me to hear that Cal beat Stanford and that my dad, once again, spent the vast majority of the day sitting in front of the new fifty-two inch flat screen at home. The things I’m missing…
We had blue skies on Monday, which was most lovely. The sun helped dry out Machanga a little bit, making the walk easier than it had been last week. We handed over our 850 Meticais to Madinha, who had someone get our turkey from across the river. She told us to come back in the afternoon to check him out.
In the meantime, we had some waiting to do. Even with the sun out, most of the day was spent on the patio. It’s were damned if we do or damned if we don’t. If it rains, we want to stay dry, and if it’s sunny, we want to stay out of the sun. It kind of sucks. While in the shade, I spent some time reading some short stories by David Sedaris. Years ago, I tried to read a Sedaris book, and I made it fifty pages before I gave up on it. I’ve tried to like his writing, but I find most of it terrible.
After lunch and a short nap, Richie and I headed back to the villa to check out Mo. Yes, we named the turkey Maurice, but we think that Mo is much more appropriate. Mo is large, brown and looks absolutely delicious. It should be an interesting ride down to Vilanculos with a live turkey.
We have quickly come to the end of our new media, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. We have a couple more episodes of “House” and “The Office”. We knocked out a couple tonight after dinner, but we vowed to save some for when we get back from our trip.
Richie and I no longer have to set an alarm to get an early start to our travel day. Richie is up by 5 and recently I’ve been up around 6. It’s great. On Tuesday, we were both up and moving around 5:45. We cleaned up our house, closed up shop, then headed to the villa. Maurice stayed the night at Madinha’s house with a bunch of other birds. By 6:30, he was in our hands and we were off and running.
Maurice was a pretty good traveler. He kept his head up the entire way in spite of being carried upside-down by the feet. In his final days, Maurice will see the best and worst that North Inhambane has to offer: the best being Vilanculos, the worst being Machanga.
After crossing the river – is there anything funnier than a live turkey in a canoe? – we jumped in a chapa to get to Maluvane. The driver said that we would be going directly to Maluvane. He should look up “directly” in a dictionary; the longest stretch we drove without stopping was maybe five kilometers.
The next leg of the trip went a little more smoothly. We didn’t have to wait too long to get a ride down toward Inhassoro. Instead of going all the way to Vilanculos, we thought that staying the night in Inhassoro would be a good move. After all, the Volunteer in Vilanculos has dogs and we don’t want them to kill Maurice. We want to kill Maurice!
Once we arrived in Inhassoro, we untied Maurice and let him stretch out his legs. Being in a chapa is torture enough: being tied up in a chapa is just inhumane. While Maurice walked around, we spent some quality time on the beach.
With everyone in Inhassoro together, we decided to do Mexican night. One of the Volunteers bought a grouper from a kid off the beach, which was cooked perfectly for fish tacos. Paired with mango daiquiris and cervejas, it was a very successful food night.
All of us reconvened for breakfast Wednesday morning. Richie and I cooked up some pretty delicious scrambled eggs for everyone. When you’ve cooked them every day for the last year, you become pretty good.b
After an otherwise relaxing morning, we retied Maurice and loaded him into a truck heading south. Things got interesting when we got to the crossroads. We got a ride in the back of a truck. The driver for the life of him could not keep the car rolling straight. A bought a third of the way down the road, the driver managed to drive on the complete opposite side of the road.
Now, Richie and I have been in some not so great rides, but we have never really been scared in a car…until today. We told the kid collecting money that we wanted out of the car. He said now. We demanded it. He said no. And then we threatened not to pay, and that did the trick. The argument that followed with the now-clearly drunk driver was ridiculous. He thought we were “ninjas”, but we made the right decision.
Three Mozambicans decided to get out of the car with us. Apparently, they thought we made the right decision also. The only problem was we were now in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, within fifteen minutes, two tank-like trucks came by and stopped for us. As a bonus, we didn’t have to pay. It may have taken a little longer than if we had stayed in the first truck, but our safety is more important than speed.
We arrived in Vil in the middle of the afternoon. We dropped off our things at the house and headed into town for a beer. By the time we got back, it started getting dark. We had to get to killing immediately.
From everything we’ve heard, we were supposed to get Maurice drunk before killing him. I know that if I’m about to have my throat slit, I would like a drink or two before. But we didn’t know the first thing about how to make Maurice drink. So after multiple failed efforts, we said “fuck it” and just decided to kill him.
Even without the booze, Maurice did not put up much of a fight. He made one big last-ditch flap, but he otherwise died calmly. From there, we drenched the deceased one in scalding-hot water and I started pulling out feathers. The plucking of this bird was nothing short of tedious, but by the time Maurice was plucked, he looked like something from a supermarket.
But our work was still not done. Once externally cleaned, we had to clean out the inside. We slit open the chest bone and started removing all sorts of cool stuff – intestines, kidneys, a heart and more. I think we did a pretty good job, especially since none of us had done this before.
Since we couldn’t get Maurice to throw down any beer, we thought that we would have a drink for him. After all, this is the last time that we are going to be enjoying each other’s company, so we might as well make the most of it.
Maurice made it through the night okay. Now that the bird is dead, we have no more turkey-related responsibilities other than eating it. One of the out-going Volunteers prepped the turkey while a couple of us ran some errands. Of course, among the errands was getting delicious cheeseburgers.
When afternoon hit, we got back to getting our drink on. The turkey, as it cooked, smelled absolutely delicious. The house smelled like America. And over the course of the day, more Thanksgiving food came out: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, dessert after dessert. All that was missing was football, and even that was possible.
But after three full plates of turkey, potatoes and desserts, I was pretty much done, and everyone else was mostly catatonic. Instead of going out, some people went to bed and a group of eight of us played some cards. Considering the circumstances, this was a pretty remarkable Thanksgiving.
Sleeping was an absolutely struggle Thursday night. Besides the heat and mosquitoes, I was so full from eating that it actually hurt to lie down. This was a good pain.
Nobody slept particularly well Thursday night and nobody decided to stay in town on Friday. We had planned on staying in town but with no one else staying, we decided to go home as well. For the first time, there were two chapas running from Vil to Mambone, one at 9:30 and one an hour later. We took the early chapa home, a ride that was not so bad.
When we got home, we were done. I ate something quickly, but Richie and I were both intent on going to bed. I was absolutely out for about ninety minutes and woke up groggy. After a couple minutes though, I was ready to deal with other people. I went out on the patio and set up shop. Some teachers came by to talk about our trip and I was happy to talk with them.
Even with the naps, we were both seriously exhausted. After dinner, we watched a pair of season finales, one of “House”, one of “The Office”. By the time the lights went, we were more than ready to go to bed.
Other than one strange wake-up at 11:30 at night, I slept like a baby until 7:15 in the morning. I haven’t had a night of sleep that good in a long time. It was one of those nights of sleeps from which you wake up drowsy.
For a little while in the morning, it looked like it was going to rain. There were no shortage of clouds, but soon enough, grey clouds turned to white clouds and white clouds turned to no clouds at all.
As soon as I was awake enough, I realized that we may have made a terrible mistake coming home a day early. Machanga was fucking hot and there’s not a beach anywhere close. Being alone in Vilanculos would not be the worst thing in the world. At least we weren’t the only people doing nothing – by 9:30, a good group of teachers were hanging around under the trees, drinking beer and wine. We decided not to join in.
Sure, drinking would have spruced up our day. It would have made the hour pass. It would have made us social. But the truth is that we wanted no part of drinking or being social. Finally, the morning passed by, and we were ready for lunch.
The afternoon went by in the same way that the morning did: me on the patio, Richie in the house, colleagues drinking underneath the trees. Around 4:00, we were ready to get out of the house. We wandered over to the villa to get a soda. We didn’t even get a chance to order; Madinha just brought us out a beer. Then another. With the second beer, she brought us some food. And when we tried to pay for everything, maybe 100 Mets in all, she wouldn’t let us pay. Nice.
We didn’t have to wait too long for the energy to come on. As we get ever closer to summer, the energy has been coming on later. (And yes, that means we still don’t have 24-hour energy.) We cooked up some sandwiches and mashed potatoes, and after eating we watched “The Big Lebowski”, a very strange but funny film, an odd end to a great Thanksgiving week.
So once again, we were pretty much left useless for most of the day. We just sat around, laid around, lounged around. We just stayed around the house because going to the villa, trudging through the mud was not an option in the morning.
But we were able to escape the house for a little bit in the afternoon. We went over to Madinha’s store to see if we could get a turkey update. She had talked to someone across the river in Mambone, but it still wasn’t confirmed. We sat around at her bar for a while to see what she should come up with, but nothing turned up while we were there.
However, within minutes of getting home, Richie got a call from Madinha: the bird is ours for a cool 850 Mets. So what if we’re spending 6% of our monthly salary on one night’s dinner. It’s Thanksgiving, and damn it, I (along with many other happy Volunteers) am going to have turkey. We are, as another Volunteer told us, “conquering heroes” of the party.
Just before the energy came on, I went over to the director’s house to talk about the upcoming computer situation. Project eCycle has put together another five (!) laptops for the teachers here. We put together a plan to maximize their usage of them which satisfied everyone here. And I told him that I wanted to do tech classes with each of the forty-five teachers here, to which he agreed.
The night was nothing really to speak of, as usual. We ate our dinner, watched some “Office” and finished a season of “How I Met Your Mother”.
I was slightly concerned that I had not taken my Larium yesterday. I had left it on my plate yesterday but never recalled taking it. I think I just swallowed it with the food. My theory was confirmed Sunday night when I had some ridiculous lucid dreams.
My parents called early Monday morning, but the connection was a little rough. It was still clear enough for me to hear that Cal beat Stanford and that my dad, once again, spent the vast majority of the day sitting in front of the new fifty-two inch flat screen at home. The things I’m missing…
We had blue skies on Monday, which was most lovely. The sun helped dry out Machanga a little bit, making the walk easier than it had been last week. We handed over our 850 Meticais to Madinha, who had someone get our turkey from across the river. She told us to come back in the afternoon to check him out.
In the meantime, we had some waiting to do. Even with the sun out, most of the day was spent on the patio. It’s were damned if we do or damned if we don’t. If it rains, we want to stay dry, and if it’s sunny, we want to stay out of the sun. It kind of sucks. While in the shade, I spent some time reading some short stories by David Sedaris. Years ago, I tried to read a Sedaris book, and I made it fifty pages before I gave up on it. I’ve tried to like his writing, but I find most of it terrible.
After lunch and a short nap, Richie and I headed back to the villa to check out Mo. Yes, we named the turkey Maurice, but we think that Mo is much more appropriate. Mo is large, brown and looks absolutely delicious. It should be an interesting ride down to Vilanculos with a live turkey.
We have quickly come to the end of our new media, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. We have a couple more episodes of “House” and “The Office”. We knocked out a couple tonight after dinner, but we vowed to save some for when we get back from our trip.
Richie and I no longer have to set an alarm to get an early start to our travel day. Richie is up by 5 and recently I’ve been up around 6. It’s great. On Tuesday, we were both up and moving around 5:45. We cleaned up our house, closed up shop, then headed to the villa. Maurice stayed the night at Madinha’s house with a bunch of other birds. By 6:30, he was in our hands and we were off and running.
Maurice was a pretty good traveler. He kept his head up the entire way in spite of being carried upside-down by the feet. In his final days, Maurice will see the best and worst that North Inhambane has to offer: the best being Vilanculos, the worst being Machanga.
After crossing the river – is there anything funnier than a live turkey in a canoe? – we jumped in a chapa to get to Maluvane. The driver said that we would be going directly to Maluvane. He should look up “directly” in a dictionary; the longest stretch we drove without stopping was maybe five kilometers.
The next leg of the trip went a little more smoothly. We didn’t have to wait too long to get a ride down toward Inhassoro. Instead of going all the way to Vilanculos, we thought that staying the night in Inhassoro would be a good move. After all, the Volunteer in Vilanculos has dogs and we don’t want them to kill Maurice. We want to kill Maurice!
Once we arrived in Inhassoro, we untied Maurice and let him stretch out his legs. Being in a chapa is torture enough: being tied up in a chapa is just inhumane. While Maurice walked around, we spent some quality time on the beach.
With everyone in Inhassoro together, we decided to do Mexican night. One of the Volunteers bought a grouper from a kid off the beach, which was cooked perfectly for fish tacos. Paired with mango daiquiris and cervejas, it was a very successful food night.
All of us reconvened for breakfast Wednesday morning. Richie and I cooked up some pretty delicious scrambled eggs for everyone. When you’ve cooked them every day for the last year, you become pretty good.b
After an otherwise relaxing morning, we retied Maurice and loaded him into a truck heading south. Things got interesting when we got to the crossroads. We got a ride in the back of a truck. The driver for the life of him could not keep the car rolling straight. A bought a third of the way down the road, the driver managed to drive on the complete opposite side of the road.
Now, Richie and I have been in some not so great rides, but we have never really been scared in a car…until today. We told the kid collecting money that we wanted out of the car. He said now. We demanded it. He said no. And then we threatened not to pay, and that did the trick. The argument that followed with the now-clearly drunk driver was ridiculous. He thought we were “ninjas”, but we made the right decision.
Three Mozambicans decided to get out of the car with us. Apparently, they thought we made the right decision also. The only problem was we were now in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, within fifteen minutes, two tank-like trucks came by and stopped for us. As a bonus, we didn’t have to pay. It may have taken a little longer than if we had stayed in the first truck, but our safety is more important than speed.
We arrived in Vil in the middle of the afternoon. We dropped off our things at the house and headed into town for a beer. By the time we got back, it started getting dark. We had to get to killing immediately.
From everything we’ve heard, we were supposed to get Maurice drunk before killing him. I know that if I’m about to have my throat slit, I would like a drink or two before. But we didn’t know the first thing about how to make Maurice drink. So after multiple failed efforts, we said “fuck it” and just decided to kill him.
Even without the booze, Maurice did not put up much of a fight. He made one big last-ditch flap, but he otherwise died calmly. From there, we drenched the deceased one in scalding-hot water and I started pulling out feathers. The plucking of this bird was nothing short of tedious, but by the time Maurice was plucked, he looked like something from a supermarket.
But our work was still not done. Once externally cleaned, we had to clean out the inside. We slit open the chest bone and started removing all sorts of cool stuff – intestines, kidneys, a heart and more. I think we did a pretty good job, especially since none of us had done this before.
Since we couldn’t get Maurice to throw down any beer, we thought that we would have a drink for him. After all, this is the last time that we are going to be enjoying each other’s company, so we might as well make the most of it.
Maurice made it through the night okay. Now that the bird is dead, we have no more turkey-related responsibilities other than eating it. One of the out-going Volunteers prepped the turkey while a couple of us ran some errands. Of course, among the errands was getting delicious cheeseburgers.
When afternoon hit, we got back to getting our drink on. The turkey, as it cooked, smelled absolutely delicious. The house smelled like America. And over the course of the day, more Thanksgiving food came out: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, dessert after dessert. All that was missing was football, and even that was possible.
But after three full plates of turkey, potatoes and desserts, I was pretty much done, and everyone else was mostly catatonic. Instead of going out, some people went to bed and a group of eight of us played some cards. Considering the circumstances, this was a pretty remarkable Thanksgiving.
Sleeping was an absolutely struggle Thursday night. Besides the heat and mosquitoes, I was so full from eating that it actually hurt to lie down. This was a good pain.
Nobody slept particularly well Thursday night and nobody decided to stay in town on Friday. We had planned on staying in town but with no one else staying, we decided to go home as well. For the first time, there were two chapas running from Vil to Mambone, one at 9:30 and one an hour later. We took the early chapa home, a ride that was not so bad.
When we got home, we were done. I ate something quickly, but Richie and I were both intent on going to bed. I was absolutely out for about ninety minutes and woke up groggy. After a couple minutes though, I was ready to deal with other people. I went out on the patio and set up shop. Some teachers came by to talk about our trip and I was happy to talk with them.
Even with the naps, we were both seriously exhausted. After dinner, we watched a pair of season finales, one of “House”, one of “The Office”. By the time the lights went, we were more than ready to go to bed.
Other than one strange wake-up at 11:30 at night, I slept like a baby until 7:15 in the morning. I haven’t had a night of sleep that good in a long time. It was one of those nights of sleeps from which you wake up drowsy.
For a little while in the morning, it looked like it was going to rain. There were no shortage of clouds, but soon enough, grey clouds turned to white clouds and white clouds turned to no clouds at all.
As soon as I was awake enough, I realized that we may have made a terrible mistake coming home a day early. Machanga was fucking hot and there’s not a beach anywhere close. Being alone in Vilanculos would not be the worst thing in the world. At least we weren’t the only people doing nothing – by 9:30, a good group of teachers were hanging around under the trees, drinking beer and wine. We decided not to join in.
Sure, drinking would have spruced up our day. It would have made the hour pass. It would have made us social. But the truth is that we wanted no part of drinking or being social. Finally, the morning passed by, and we were ready for lunch.
The afternoon went by in the same way that the morning did: me on the patio, Richie in the house, colleagues drinking underneath the trees. Around 4:00, we were ready to get out of the house. We wandered over to the villa to get a soda. We didn’t even get a chance to order; Madinha just brought us out a beer. Then another. With the second beer, she brought us some food. And when we tried to pay for everything, maybe 100 Mets in all, she wouldn’t let us pay. Nice.
We didn’t have to wait too long for the energy to come on. As we get ever closer to summer, the energy has been coming on later. (And yes, that means we still don’t have 24-hour energy.) We cooked up some sandwiches and mashed potatoes, and after eating we watched “The Big Lebowski”, a very strange but funny film, an odd end to a great Thanksgiving week.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Year 1 – Week 49: Meteorological Indecisiveness
The celebratory mood from Mozambique’s epic victory against Tunisia bled over into Sunday morning. As I sat on the patio, I could hear occasional joyous yells of “Moçambique ganhou!” – “Moçambique won!” The radio kept replaying the goal. Callers into the radio made indecipherable calls. It was exciting, even for a non-Mozambican like me.
We had told our school director that we would go out with him and some teachers early in the afternoon. But when early afternoon came around, we just weren’t up for it. Two consecutive day of not-so-light drinking really put us off to drinking a third day in a row.
Plus, going out would mean having to put a shirt on. Summer is here to stay until at least March and the heat has become absolutely brutal in the last couple weeks, to the point that wearing clothes has become a task. So I’m following the lead of the little children who know best: I’m going topless. It’s far more comfortable and as an added bonus, I will have less laundry to do.
There wasn’t much going on in the afternoon, which we were happy about. We blew off the trip to the villa to drink with the director in favor of naps. It was the right decision.
In between dinner and watching “The Office”, I got a pair of family phone calls. The first from my parents was extensive as usual. We finally figured out that the problem with out connection wasn’t on my end, but on America’s end. I feel vindicated. With this information in mind, my grandfather, with whom I haven’t spoken in a while, gave a ring and we caught up. The calls behind me, Richie and I posted up to watch some “How I Met Your Mother” before bed.
The days are hot enough, but at least during the day, we can get out of the house and into the breeze. There’s no escaping at night. Even with the fans, we were left with little choice but to sweat in bed. It’s agonizing.
To make it worse, once we finally do fall asleep, it’s already time to get up. Richie was up 3:00. I made it until 5:00. This is not fun. But what choice do we have? It’s one more hot season. As our colleague told us last year during the training, the only way we know we can make it through this year is because we made it last year.
We were spared from the heat a little bit in the morning. Clouds covered nearly the entire sky and it looked primed to rain. But the rain never came in the morning. But by mid-morning, the clouds were gone. It was back into the heat.
There wasn’t much going on in the morning. There was a lot patio sitting. Richie finished off a book and then went to bed. I think he made it until 9:00. I was happy just to be in a little bit of breeze. Certainly better than being in the sweatbox that is our house.
After lunch, Richie and I headed over to the villa for shopping and sodas. We were completely out of vegetables, so the market run was necessary. And the sodas were even more necessary. By the time we got back, the clouds had started rolling in again. It looked like it was going to rain but the dark clouds yielded by a few drops. Disappointing – we are kind of ready for some rain.
I got in a good workout just before the energy came on. I have been slacking on the workouts these days. The heat has killed my drive. But with the cloud cover, I was able to actually work up a sweat instead of having one forced on me. And the cold shower that came after it was an absolute joy. No joke.
We finally got a good burst of rain once night fell, but it was not nearly enough to fill a bucket. Our day will come. The night was calm. We ate stir fry for dinner, watched a couple episodes of “House” and “The Office” and barely made it till lights out.
The clouds that had threatened rained all day finally came through on their threat. A monstrous wind joined the rain, the first sustained rain we’ve had of the season. The wind, however, was far more important. Typically, the wind blows north-south, managing to avoid all of our windows. But over the entire night, the wind blew east-west, creating a beautiful breeze through the house that made sleeping without a fan possible.
Through the morning, the clouds stuck around. On and off rain made life just miserable enough that it kept us indoors for the most part. Late in the morning, after a reasonable dry period, I decided to go to the market to buy a squeegee. Of course, as soon as I got on the road, it started to rain. I nearly fell twice on the walk over and almost lost one of my shoes in the mud. Oh, rainy season.
At least the market run was successful. I found the squeegee in the first little shop and as a bonus, I found a new pair of travel sandals. Traveling with my lovely leather Rainbows during the rainy season is not a good option. Plastic sandals work much better.
Rain and wind continued to pester us all afternoon. It pretty much paralyzed all action here. Teachers bundled themselves and their children up in jackets and pants. It’s quite the noted change from, well, yesterday. The only interesting thing to happen all afternoon was Sozinho, our long lost friend and clothes-washer, returned to Machanga today. We are very excited to see him. And maybe he’ll do our laundry while he’s here.
Of course, once the energy came on, we were forced into the house for good. Since beans take more than an hour to cook, we decided to throw on an episode of “House” before dinner.
After a couple days of terrible heat and a couple days of cold and rain, the weather gods finally got it right on Wednesday – not to hot, not too cold, no rain, and a little cloud cover. It was truly perfect weather for Mozambique. But with so few people here, and so little to do here, we couldn’t really take advantage of it. It’s not like there’s some stellar beach in Machanga.
Following an otherwise boring morning, we set out for afternoon naps. I almost made it to the hour mark when there was a knock on the door. So close. Some colleagues had a bottle of whiskey and they wanted to know if we wanted to join them. Sure, we would. And for good measure, we brought a long a half-bottle of gin. It’s the least we could do.
The dry stuff went pretty quickly, so what are we to do? Two of our colleagues wanted to go out to the villa to drink. Okay. I brought along a deck of cards so I could introduce a little drinking game.
Now, our colleagues like to drink their beer very slow. Two beers between four people can easily last thirty minutes. This is clearly not the American way. With the drinking game going, four of us killed eight beers in fifteen minutes. This and it kept going. More people joined. Before we knew it, a group of us had put down eighteen beers in about ninety minutes. I would call the game a success. Of course, as soon as the bill came, everyone scurried off, and we were left footing a 550 Met bill. It’s the best twenty-two dollars we’ve spent here.
We were done drinking so early that we still had a good hour of energy before the lights went out. I had prepared salsa earlier in the day, and with some beans from last night, we made delicious Mexican rice bowls. We finished an episode of the “Office” just before the lights went out. Excellent timing.
I woke up Thursday a little dizzy and dehydrated, but it was nothing compared to what Richie was dealing with. His head and stomach were reeling. We know we shouldn’t mix darks and lights. And we know that we shouldn’t mix beer and liquor. Clearly, though, two negatives do not make a positive: beer plus darks plus lights makes for a miserable day.
Richie was out for most of the day. I was pretty useless as well, but I was at least well enough to clean up around the house. Even so, I still spent a good portion of the morning between the porch and my bed.
I was back to a hundred percent by lunch, but Richie was still not feeling great. We returned to our respective areas, me on the patio, Richie in bed. Around 4:00, we headed over to the market to get some groceries and a soda. Sozinho joined us for the walk and carried our groceries back for us. I have to say: having help around the house is really nice. We have little that we have to do, but the things we don’t want to do are happily done by him.
Nothing of interest happened in the evening. We ate a very sad stir fry, but even a sad stir fry is pretty delicious.
Sozinho came over early Friday morning with some good news. He talked to the director at the school that is just a couple hundred yards from us and the director said that Sozinho could attend there. Which means we’re in luck. We have someone to wash our clothes next year.
If there was any downside to the whole Sozinho situation, it’s that he may live with us. We are happy to have him life with us. Yea, our house is small, but we can make it work. During the school year, we’re out of the house most of the day anyway, so it doesn’t matter. He’s going to try to live with another teacher first, but he’ll use us as a last resort. The upside is that the chance of him living here motivated to clean out our house really well.
The rain came to a halt and with that, things got even better. After an otherwise boring morning, Richie and I headed out to the villa with a couple colleagues. One of our colleagues just became a new father, so we thought we’d take him out for a couple drinks. Once again, the drinking game performed well, and we only had to fork out 200 Mets today.
The night was pretty quiet. We pretty much gave up on dinner and opened a can of corn beef. I had my doubts about it the first time around, but it was pretty good. After our not-so-terrible sandwiches, we watched a couple episodes of “House”. Kutner killing himself was sad, but we knew it was going to happen – damn you, Newsweek. And with another cool night, we slept fairly soundly.
Machanga was left grey again. I didn’t know I signed up for Peace Corps – Seattle. No matter the location, we were pretty much left to do nothing. It rained just hard enough to keep us from heading to the market and just light enough that I was able to still sit on the patio. So I sat, and Richie, as is now usual for him, was in bed for a lot of the morning. I can’t blame him: an uncomfortable bed is still better than sitting upright.
One of the worst parts of the rain is that it makes cooking nearly impossible. Regardless, it’s wet, which makes using charcoal a pain in the ass. And either one of two things happens – there’s way too much wind, which burns off the charcoal quickly; or, there is no wind and the charcoal doesn’t burn at all. Today, we had no wind, so I had to provide it myself.
The rain came and went all afternoon, but for a brief window late in the afternoon, the rained stopped. We headed over to the villa for some groceries, but more importantly, we were on a mission. We’ve been trying to find a turkey for the last couple days, but today we brought in Madinha, queen of Machanga. Within an hour, she found us a turkey. We’ll be going to Mambone sometime in the next couple days to get him.
It should be a most excellent Thanksgiving next week.
We had told our school director that we would go out with him and some teachers early in the afternoon. But when early afternoon came around, we just weren’t up for it. Two consecutive day of not-so-light drinking really put us off to drinking a third day in a row.
Plus, going out would mean having to put a shirt on. Summer is here to stay until at least March and the heat has become absolutely brutal in the last couple weeks, to the point that wearing clothes has become a task. So I’m following the lead of the little children who know best: I’m going topless. It’s far more comfortable and as an added bonus, I will have less laundry to do.
There wasn’t much going on in the afternoon, which we were happy about. We blew off the trip to the villa to drink with the director in favor of naps. It was the right decision.
In between dinner and watching “The Office”, I got a pair of family phone calls. The first from my parents was extensive as usual. We finally figured out that the problem with out connection wasn’t on my end, but on America’s end. I feel vindicated. With this information in mind, my grandfather, with whom I haven’t spoken in a while, gave a ring and we caught up. The calls behind me, Richie and I posted up to watch some “How I Met Your Mother” before bed.
The days are hot enough, but at least during the day, we can get out of the house and into the breeze. There’s no escaping at night. Even with the fans, we were left with little choice but to sweat in bed. It’s agonizing.
To make it worse, once we finally do fall asleep, it’s already time to get up. Richie was up 3:00. I made it until 5:00. This is not fun. But what choice do we have? It’s one more hot season. As our colleague told us last year during the training, the only way we know we can make it through this year is because we made it last year.
We were spared from the heat a little bit in the morning. Clouds covered nearly the entire sky and it looked primed to rain. But the rain never came in the morning. But by mid-morning, the clouds were gone. It was back into the heat.
There wasn’t much going on in the morning. There was a lot patio sitting. Richie finished off a book and then went to bed. I think he made it until 9:00. I was happy just to be in a little bit of breeze. Certainly better than being in the sweatbox that is our house.
After lunch, Richie and I headed over to the villa for shopping and sodas. We were completely out of vegetables, so the market run was necessary. And the sodas were even more necessary. By the time we got back, the clouds had started rolling in again. It looked like it was going to rain but the dark clouds yielded by a few drops. Disappointing – we are kind of ready for some rain.
I got in a good workout just before the energy came on. I have been slacking on the workouts these days. The heat has killed my drive. But with the cloud cover, I was able to actually work up a sweat instead of having one forced on me. And the cold shower that came after it was an absolute joy. No joke.
We finally got a good burst of rain once night fell, but it was not nearly enough to fill a bucket. Our day will come. The night was calm. We ate stir fry for dinner, watched a couple episodes of “House” and “The Office” and barely made it till lights out.
The clouds that had threatened rained all day finally came through on their threat. A monstrous wind joined the rain, the first sustained rain we’ve had of the season. The wind, however, was far more important. Typically, the wind blows north-south, managing to avoid all of our windows. But over the entire night, the wind blew east-west, creating a beautiful breeze through the house that made sleeping without a fan possible.
Through the morning, the clouds stuck around. On and off rain made life just miserable enough that it kept us indoors for the most part. Late in the morning, after a reasonable dry period, I decided to go to the market to buy a squeegee. Of course, as soon as I got on the road, it started to rain. I nearly fell twice on the walk over and almost lost one of my shoes in the mud. Oh, rainy season.
At least the market run was successful. I found the squeegee in the first little shop and as a bonus, I found a new pair of travel sandals. Traveling with my lovely leather Rainbows during the rainy season is not a good option. Plastic sandals work much better.
Rain and wind continued to pester us all afternoon. It pretty much paralyzed all action here. Teachers bundled themselves and their children up in jackets and pants. It’s quite the noted change from, well, yesterday. The only interesting thing to happen all afternoon was Sozinho, our long lost friend and clothes-washer, returned to Machanga today. We are very excited to see him. And maybe he’ll do our laundry while he’s here.
Of course, once the energy came on, we were forced into the house for good. Since beans take more than an hour to cook, we decided to throw on an episode of “House” before dinner.
After a couple days of terrible heat and a couple days of cold and rain, the weather gods finally got it right on Wednesday – not to hot, not too cold, no rain, and a little cloud cover. It was truly perfect weather for Mozambique. But with so few people here, and so little to do here, we couldn’t really take advantage of it. It’s not like there’s some stellar beach in Machanga.
Following an otherwise boring morning, we set out for afternoon naps. I almost made it to the hour mark when there was a knock on the door. So close. Some colleagues had a bottle of whiskey and they wanted to know if we wanted to join them. Sure, we would. And for good measure, we brought a long a half-bottle of gin. It’s the least we could do.
The dry stuff went pretty quickly, so what are we to do? Two of our colleagues wanted to go out to the villa to drink. Okay. I brought along a deck of cards so I could introduce a little drinking game.
Now, our colleagues like to drink their beer very slow. Two beers between four people can easily last thirty minutes. This is clearly not the American way. With the drinking game going, four of us killed eight beers in fifteen minutes. This and it kept going. More people joined. Before we knew it, a group of us had put down eighteen beers in about ninety minutes. I would call the game a success. Of course, as soon as the bill came, everyone scurried off, and we were left footing a 550 Met bill. It’s the best twenty-two dollars we’ve spent here.
We were done drinking so early that we still had a good hour of energy before the lights went out. I had prepared salsa earlier in the day, and with some beans from last night, we made delicious Mexican rice bowls. We finished an episode of the “Office” just before the lights went out. Excellent timing.
I woke up Thursday a little dizzy and dehydrated, but it was nothing compared to what Richie was dealing with. His head and stomach were reeling. We know we shouldn’t mix darks and lights. And we know that we shouldn’t mix beer and liquor. Clearly, though, two negatives do not make a positive: beer plus darks plus lights makes for a miserable day.
Richie was out for most of the day. I was pretty useless as well, but I was at least well enough to clean up around the house. Even so, I still spent a good portion of the morning between the porch and my bed.
I was back to a hundred percent by lunch, but Richie was still not feeling great. We returned to our respective areas, me on the patio, Richie in bed. Around 4:00, we headed over to the market to get some groceries and a soda. Sozinho joined us for the walk and carried our groceries back for us. I have to say: having help around the house is really nice. We have little that we have to do, but the things we don’t want to do are happily done by him.
Nothing of interest happened in the evening. We ate a very sad stir fry, but even a sad stir fry is pretty delicious.
Sozinho came over early Friday morning with some good news. He talked to the director at the school that is just a couple hundred yards from us and the director said that Sozinho could attend there. Which means we’re in luck. We have someone to wash our clothes next year.
If there was any downside to the whole Sozinho situation, it’s that he may live with us. We are happy to have him life with us. Yea, our house is small, but we can make it work. During the school year, we’re out of the house most of the day anyway, so it doesn’t matter. He’s going to try to live with another teacher first, but he’ll use us as a last resort. The upside is that the chance of him living here motivated to clean out our house really well.
The rain came to a halt and with that, things got even better. After an otherwise boring morning, Richie and I headed out to the villa with a couple colleagues. One of our colleagues just became a new father, so we thought we’d take him out for a couple drinks. Once again, the drinking game performed well, and we only had to fork out 200 Mets today.
The night was pretty quiet. We pretty much gave up on dinner and opened a can of corn beef. I had my doubts about it the first time around, but it was pretty good. After our not-so-terrible sandwiches, we watched a couple episodes of “House”. Kutner killing himself was sad, but we knew it was going to happen – damn you, Newsweek. And with another cool night, we slept fairly soundly.
Machanga was left grey again. I didn’t know I signed up for Peace Corps – Seattle. No matter the location, we were pretty much left to do nothing. It rained just hard enough to keep us from heading to the market and just light enough that I was able to still sit on the patio. So I sat, and Richie, as is now usual for him, was in bed for a lot of the morning. I can’t blame him: an uncomfortable bed is still better than sitting upright.
One of the worst parts of the rain is that it makes cooking nearly impossible. Regardless, it’s wet, which makes using charcoal a pain in the ass. And either one of two things happens – there’s way too much wind, which burns off the charcoal quickly; or, there is no wind and the charcoal doesn’t burn at all. Today, we had no wind, so I had to provide it myself.
The rain came and went all afternoon, but for a brief window late in the afternoon, the rained stopped. We headed over to the villa for some groceries, but more importantly, we were on a mission. We’ve been trying to find a turkey for the last couple days, but today we brought in Madinha, queen of Machanga. Within an hour, she found us a turkey. We’ll be going to Mambone sometime in the next couple days to get him.
It should be a most excellent Thanksgiving next week.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Year 1 - Week 48: "Here's to the Improbable"
For the amount of libation that was consumed over the course of Saturday, I felt surprisingly good Sunday morning. Not only is Afro Bar good for dancing your concerns away: the resultant sweat is also the best preventative for a hangover.
So since we were feeling okay, and we had an entire flat of beer left from last night, we figured that we should get to work. Combined with delicious pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs, it made for a delicious breakfast.
The rest of our morning was rather calm. We spent some serious time in the ocean, talking to the new Trainees. I mean, if we’re going to talk to them about the pleasures and problems of living in Mozambique, why not do it in the glorious Indian Ocean?
We had initially planned to stay in Vilanculos all day Sunday and return to Machanga on Monday. Instead, we opted to go to Inhassoro and try to get back to Machanga from there tomorrow.
About nine of us – Moz 12s, 13s, and 14s – headed up to Inhassoro. But we didn’t just pile into a chapa and go. We divided into three teams and raced our way up. My team came in last – very sad – but we still got a good ride up to Inhassoro. The guy who took us up went twenty kilometers out of his way to get us to the crossroads.
Inhassoro was (and still is) beautiful. It’s a shame that Inhassoro doesn’t have the amenities that Vilanculos has because I would be just as happy to go there. Inhassoro does have, however, a restaurant right on the beach. It was wonderful, made better by the company, and improved further by the poker game that we got going. It was quite a lovely night.
Almost everyone reconvened for breakfast on Monday. Two of the teachers stationed in Inhassoro had to go to work early in the morning. It’s a shame: they missed out some delicious basil-filled scrambled eggs. After breakfast, it was time for us to get on the road.
That’s when the fun began. We barely waited five minutes before a truck rolled up and we got in. As if that wasn’t good enough, before we got out of the first truck, we had a ride from the Inhassoro crossroads to Pambarra. The second ride was even more fun. Having sixteen other people in the back made it interesting. The real kicker was trying to figure out why the driver kept passing people, then throwing it in reverse to pick up more people. It took us three times to catch on, but we finally realized that the car had no functioning brakes.
We managed to survive that boleia and before we even got out of the truck, another truck was waiting for us. This truck, with an additional seventeen people, thankfully had brakes. We made good time to Mambone and did some shopping before crossing the river back to Machanga.
Between all the traveling and the unbearable heat, we were pretty exhausted by the time we got home. We didn’t really bother to unpack: both of us put our things down, ate something, flipped on a fan, an took a nap.
Rejuvenated enough to make it through the night, but not keep us awake past ten, we got cooking when the energy came on. We made delicious chicken sandwiches, watched some episodes of season five of “The Office” and called it a very successful long weekend.
We usually return from our trips on Sunday so we can get back to work on Monday. But, as Monday was the last day of national exams, we wanted to avoid work on Monday. But that didn’t mean that we would be free on Tuesday.
The work we had on Tuesday was just as mind-numbing as proctoring. Even though the kids used proper scantron exams, they still had to be corrected by hand – by two different people. At least I could listen to music while correcting. Richie and I were tapped to correct Geography exams. From my loose count, about two-thirds of the students failed. I expect worse for English.
After lunch and a nap, I went on a mission. Yesterday, I talked to the padre here about getting some material for a gutter and he happily provided it this morning. This afternoon provided us an opportunity to get to work. We have an idea, but it’s going to take some other materials and a ladder to execute.
The materials were no problem. We went over to the market to buy some screws and some sodas. With the sun nearly down, we decided to put off the work until later in the week. The energy came on a little early, allowing us to get startecd on dinner – and squeeze in some good TV before bed.
I struggled to fall asleep. The larium was messing with me, but it also managed to inspire me. It yielded this poem a lovely forty line poem.
With the “Ode to Larium” out of my head and onto paper, I slept beautifully until the phone rang. My parents called around 7:00 but the connection never really, uh, connected. It gave me enough time to wake up before the connection came through. It’s been ten days or two weeks since I talked with my family, so it was good to catch up. It’s less than fifty days until they visit, so things are getting exciting.
We had to head back to work Wednesday morning. Our colleague said that we had to go in and we kinda did. We spent an hour erasing pencil marks. And that was it. The rest of our day, we had to ourselves.
Our house has been in dire shape of recent – especially bad since we didn’t clean that well upon our return – so we decided that we would spend the morning cleaning up this house. This wasn’t just a sweep-up, mop-up, then give-up job. This was a full cleaning-under-the-bed, hand-in-the-“toilet” job. A clean house is a happy house.
I would have liked to put our gutter up today, but it was so fuckin’ hot today that it made the tin material into something scorching. So instead we gave up on the afternoon. I read some magazines and napped. Richie read a book and napped. Another rough afternoon in Machanga.
We walked over to the villa late in the afternoon to pick up some tomatoes and to grab a coke. Medinha, our market friend, has a new fridge that is pumping and the cokes are almost too cold to drink. We choose to suffer through it.
The energy came on as regularly scheduled; now that the sun is setting later, the energy is coming on closer to 6:00. I diced up some veggies while Richie put the beans on the stove. I did not do a good job on the chili last time, so I went out to avenge myself. I’d say I succeeded. We plowed through our food while we watched “The Office” and “House”.
I have a very simple rule that I have lived by pretty well for the last year: unless I am traveling, if the sun is not up, neither am I. It’s so easy to live by, that I have succeeded in living by it every single day. Until today. At 4:52 AM, I was awake and feeling good.
The sun wasn’t even close to out but it was still a little light outside. As a bonus, it wasn’t scalding hot outside. This is why Mozambicans wake up before dawn to do things: they hate the heat just as much as we do. Some people use this time for walking, some use it for throwing a hoe. Today, this time was used, sadly by me, to wash clothes.
Starting so early does have it’s disadvantages. I was done washing clothes by 6:30. What the hell am I supposed to do for another five hours in the morning? The answer is simple – go back to sleep. Except one of my best friends from home complicated things (thanks, Joe). Of course, I’m willing to trade half an hour of sleep to talk to a buddy.
But as soon as I was off the phone, I was back into bed for another ninety minutes. That got us to 10:30, a reasonable enough hour to greet the day. However, the sun wasn’t really out: it was covered in post-apocalyptic grey-brown clouds. On and off for the last week, we’ve had weather like this for the last week. Between the imminent rainy season and the burning of fields, it’s made for an ugly sky.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the afternoon. Even though the sun wasn’t out, it was still terribly hot. I spent the afternoon swapping time between bed, which has a fan, and the porch, which has a breeze. Late in the afternoon one of Richie’s students came over. This particular student loves the sound of his own voice, and that was my cue for throwing on the iPod and playing the ignoring game.
Much like yesterday’s massive cleaning session, I figured that if I might as well be productive if I had nothing in particular to do. With massive preparation needed for Mexican food night, I got to it.
The little bit of left over beans from last night, put together with some homemade salsa, chicken, rice, Velveeta and fresh tortillas made for a delicious meal. It made me want a burrito from Cotixan or Roberto’s (one more year…). We ended the night with some “Office” and “House”.
I was up early again on Friday. It’s not that I’m sleep deprived; it’s just so hot that staying in bed without a fan is not possible anymore. And just like yesterday, I was right back to doing laundry, but today was a task: sheets and pillowcases. I have no problem washing clothing, but sheets are a real pain in the ass. I’m quite sure that when I am done with them, they are not clean. They are just less dirty.
The only upside to washing sheets is that it takes time. And I have no shortage of that right now. Sheet-washing took up a good portion of the early morning, leaving me in good position to nap in the late morning before lunch.
While he was at the market, Richie bought a frozen chicken. He claims that he blacked out when he made the purchase, but I’m sure he was conscious at the time. Regardless, we borrowed a little grill from our neighbor and cooked a scrumptious barbecue chicken lunch.
Having accomplished something in the morning, I felt good about not doing much of substance for the entire afternoon. The patio provided good shade and I was happy to soak it in. Every time we think it can’t possibly get hotter, it does. And we think this knowing that the hot season has only just begun. Now we are left waiting for the rain, if for no other reason to provide us some shelter from the sun.
Friday was the last day of the first round of exams. Tenth and twelfth grades finished on Monday, while fifth and seventh grades had three days of exams to close out the week. The relief amongst the teachers was palpable and we decided that we would contrinute to the celebration with a couple small bottles of rum.
It was all a part of the master plan: drink in the late afternoon, eat dinner, watch TV, then go out to the villa for beers. I executed steps one, two and three perfectly. But by the time 9:00 rolled around, I was exhausted. Richie went out. I gave up.
Saturday was all about build-up. Mozambique had a big soccer game against Tunisia in the afternoon, which meant we had to wait nearly nine hours for the thing to start. So we did a lot of sitting in the morning.
After lunch and a nap, Richie and I headed over to the school director’s house. By the time we arrived, he already had his generator rolling, cooling down the beers in the fridge. The game was scheduled for a 3:00 start. Before the game started, one of the teachers raised his cup and said “Here’s to the improbable”.
Most of the teachers wrote off Mozambique from the start. In their collective memory, they could not remember a time that Mozambique had ever beaten Tunisia. But from the outset, Mozambique looked like the dominant. They outshot Tunisia in the first half and controlled the ball for sixty percent of time. But it was for naught: despite some great chances, it was still 0-0 at the half.
The Mambas continued their domination in the second half. They grazed a post midway through the half. Then it happened. In the 84th minute, a pass went through the middle. The initial shot was saved, but the rebound came right back to the shooter. And then the ball was in the back of the night. Every Mozambican in the room (I think there were seventeen) jumped out of their chairs.
The improbable happened. Mozambique 1 – Tunisia 0. After dinner, we went out to the villa to continue the celebration. You have to celebrate when the improbable happens.
So since we were feeling okay, and we had an entire flat of beer left from last night, we figured that we should get to work. Combined with delicious pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs, it made for a delicious breakfast.
The rest of our morning was rather calm. We spent some serious time in the ocean, talking to the new Trainees. I mean, if we’re going to talk to them about the pleasures and problems of living in Mozambique, why not do it in the glorious Indian Ocean?
We had initially planned to stay in Vilanculos all day Sunday and return to Machanga on Monday. Instead, we opted to go to Inhassoro and try to get back to Machanga from there tomorrow.
About nine of us – Moz 12s, 13s, and 14s – headed up to Inhassoro. But we didn’t just pile into a chapa and go. We divided into three teams and raced our way up. My team came in last – very sad – but we still got a good ride up to Inhassoro. The guy who took us up went twenty kilometers out of his way to get us to the crossroads.
Inhassoro was (and still is) beautiful. It’s a shame that Inhassoro doesn’t have the amenities that Vilanculos has because I would be just as happy to go there. Inhassoro does have, however, a restaurant right on the beach. It was wonderful, made better by the company, and improved further by the poker game that we got going. It was quite a lovely night.
Almost everyone reconvened for breakfast on Monday. Two of the teachers stationed in Inhassoro had to go to work early in the morning. It’s a shame: they missed out some delicious basil-filled scrambled eggs. After breakfast, it was time for us to get on the road.
That’s when the fun began. We barely waited five minutes before a truck rolled up and we got in. As if that wasn’t good enough, before we got out of the first truck, we had a ride from the Inhassoro crossroads to Pambarra. The second ride was even more fun. Having sixteen other people in the back made it interesting. The real kicker was trying to figure out why the driver kept passing people, then throwing it in reverse to pick up more people. It took us three times to catch on, but we finally realized that the car had no functioning brakes.
We managed to survive that boleia and before we even got out of the truck, another truck was waiting for us. This truck, with an additional seventeen people, thankfully had brakes. We made good time to Mambone and did some shopping before crossing the river back to Machanga.
Between all the traveling and the unbearable heat, we were pretty exhausted by the time we got home. We didn’t really bother to unpack: both of us put our things down, ate something, flipped on a fan, an took a nap.
Rejuvenated enough to make it through the night, but not keep us awake past ten, we got cooking when the energy came on. We made delicious chicken sandwiches, watched some episodes of season five of “The Office” and called it a very successful long weekend.
We usually return from our trips on Sunday so we can get back to work on Monday. But, as Monday was the last day of national exams, we wanted to avoid work on Monday. But that didn’t mean that we would be free on Tuesday.
The work we had on Tuesday was just as mind-numbing as proctoring. Even though the kids used proper scantron exams, they still had to be corrected by hand – by two different people. At least I could listen to music while correcting. Richie and I were tapped to correct Geography exams. From my loose count, about two-thirds of the students failed. I expect worse for English.
After lunch and a nap, I went on a mission. Yesterday, I talked to the padre here about getting some material for a gutter and he happily provided it this morning. This afternoon provided us an opportunity to get to work. We have an idea, but it’s going to take some other materials and a ladder to execute.
The materials were no problem. We went over to the market to buy some screws and some sodas. With the sun nearly down, we decided to put off the work until later in the week. The energy came on a little early, allowing us to get startecd on dinner – and squeeze in some good TV before bed.
I struggled to fall asleep. The larium was messing with me, but it also managed to inspire me. It yielded this poem a lovely forty line poem.
With the “Ode to Larium” out of my head and onto paper, I slept beautifully until the phone rang. My parents called around 7:00 but the connection never really, uh, connected. It gave me enough time to wake up before the connection came through. It’s been ten days or two weeks since I talked with my family, so it was good to catch up. It’s less than fifty days until they visit, so things are getting exciting.
We had to head back to work Wednesday morning. Our colleague said that we had to go in and we kinda did. We spent an hour erasing pencil marks. And that was it. The rest of our day, we had to ourselves.
Our house has been in dire shape of recent – especially bad since we didn’t clean that well upon our return – so we decided that we would spend the morning cleaning up this house. This wasn’t just a sweep-up, mop-up, then give-up job. This was a full cleaning-under-the-bed, hand-in-the-“toilet” job. A clean house is a happy house.
I would have liked to put our gutter up today, but it was so fuckin’ hot today that it made the tin material into something scorching. So instead we gave up on the afternoon. I read some magazines and napped. Richie read a book and napped. Another rough afternoon in Machanga.
We walked over to the villa late in the afternoon to pick up some tomatoes and to grab a coke. Medinha, our market friend, has a new fridge that is pumping and the cokes are almost too cold to drink. We choose to suffer through it.
The energy came on as regularly scheduled; now that the sun is setting later, the energy is coming on closer to 6:00. I diced up some veggies while Richie put the beans on the stove. I did not do a good job on the chili last time, so I went out to avenge myself. I’d say I succeeded. We plowed through our food while we watched “The Office” and “House”.
I have a very simple rule that I have lived by pretty well for the last year: unless I am traveling, if the sun is not up, neither am I. It’s so easy to live by, that I have succeeded in living by it every single day. Until today. At 4:52 AM, I was awake and feeling good.
The sun wasn’t even close to out but it was still a little light outside. As a bonus, it wasn’t scalding hot outside. This is why Mozambicans wake up before dawn to do things: they hate the heat just as much as we do. Some people use this time for walking, some use it for throwing a hoe. Today, this time was used, sadly by me, to wash clothes.
Starting so early does have it’s disadvantages. I was done washing clothes by 6:30. What the hell am I supposed to do for another five hours in the morning? The answer is simple – go back to sleep. Except one of my best friends from home complicated things (thanks, Joe). Of course, I’m willing to trade half an hour of sleep to talk to a buddy.
But as soon as I was off the phone, I was back into bed for another ninety minutes. That got us to 10:30, a reasonable enough hour to greet the day. However, the sun wasn’t really out: it was covered in post-apocalyptic grey-brown clouds. On and off for the last week, we’ve had weather like this for the last week. Between the imminent rainy season and the burning of fields, it’s made for an ugly sky.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the afternoon. Even though the sun wasn’t out, it was still terribly hot. I spent the afternoon swapping time between bed, which has a fan, and the porch, which has a breeze. Late in the afternoon one of Richie’s students came over. This particular student loves the sound of his own voice, and that was my cue for throwing on the iPod and playing the ignoring game.
Much like yesterday’s massive cleaning session, I figured that if I might as well be productive if I had nothing in particular to do. With massive preparation needed for Mexican food night, I got to it.
The little bit of left over beans from last night, put together with some homemade salsa, chicken, rice, Velveeta and fresh tortillas made for a delicious meal. It made me want a burrito from Cotixan or Roberto’s (one more year…). We ended the night with some “Office” and “House”.
I was up early again on Friday. It’s not that I’m sleep deprived; it’s just so hot that staying in bed without a fan is not possible anymore. And just like yesterday, I was right back to doing laundry, but today was a task: sheets and pillowcases. I have no problem washing clothing, but sheets are a real pain in the ass. I’m quite sure that when I am done with them, they are not clean. They are just less dirty.
The only upside to washing sheets is that it takes time. And I have no shortage of that right now. Sheet-washing took up a good portion of the early morning, leaving me in good position to nap in the late morning before lunch.
While he was at the market, Richie bought a frozen chicken. He claims that he blacked out when he made the purchase, but I’m sure he was conscious at the time. Regardless, we borrowed a little grill from our neighbor and cooked a scrumptious barbecue chicken lunch.
Having accomplished something in the morning, I felt good about not doing much of substance for the entire afternoon. The patio provided good shade and I was happy to soak it in. Every time we think it can’t possibly get hotter, it does. And we think this knowing that the hot season has only just begun. Now we are left waiting for the rain, if for no other reason to provide us some shelter from the sun.
Friday was the last day of the first round of exams. Tenth and twelfth grades finished on Monday, while fifth and seventh grades had three days of exams to close out the week. The relief amongst the teachers was palpable and we decided that we would contrinute to the celebration with a couple small bottles of rum.
It was all a part of the master plan: drink in the late afternoon, eat dinner, watch TV, then go out to the villa for beers. I executed steps one, two and three perfectly. But by the time 9:00 rolled around, I was exhausted. Richie went out. I gave up.
Saturday was all about build-up. Mozambique had a big soccer game against Tunisia in the afternoon, which meant we had to wait nearly nine hours for the thing to start. So we did a lot of sitting in the morning.
After lunch and a nap, Richie and I headed over to the school director’s house. By the time we arrived, he already had his generator rolling, cooling down the beers in the fridge. The game was scheduled for a 3:00 start. Before the game started, one of the teachers raised his cup and said “Here’s to the improbable”.
Most of the teachers wrote off Mozambique from the start. In their collective memory, they could not remember a time that Mozambique had ever beaten Tunisia. But from the outset, Mozambique looked like the dominant. They outshot Tunisia in the first half and controlled the ball for sixty percent of time. But it was for naught: despite some great chances, it was still 0-0 at the half.
The Mambas continued their domination in the second half. They grazed a post midway through the half. Then it happened. In the 84th minute, a pass went through the middle. The initial shot was saved, but the rebound came right back to the shooter. And then the ball was in the back of the night. Every Mozambican in the room (I think there were seventeen) jumped out of their chairs.
The improbable happened. Mozambique 1 – Tunisia 0. After dinner, we went out to the villa to continue the celebration. You have to celebrate when the improbable happens.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Year 1 - Week 47: Setting New Records
This is the fifth week in a row that we’ve stayed in Machanga. Even a year after being here, our breaking point is usually four weeks. Needless to say, we’re going a little insane. And we can’t wait to get out of here this weekend.
Our day, like most of last week, was pretty quiet. At least we had some things to keep us entertained. We both buried ourselves in magazines. Over the course of the day, I powered through a pair of Newsweeks and a Time. On of my old hockey buddies is now writing for Newsweek, which I find awesome. But, really, I should learn to spread out my reading a bit more.
The only eventful thing in the afternoon was Richie and I – along with a couple of kids and another teacher – trying to repair our bike for good. I don’t know if it will ever be perfect. I think the roads and the kids do a fair amount of damage to it. Whatever we did to it today, it’s running a bit better now
All that really matter on Sunday was we had for dinner. With the arrival of Velveeta, we were really hoping to do pizzas last night, but the bread shortage put a dent in that plan. However, there was no shortage of bread today, and therefore, no shortage of pizza tonight. We thought it would be a good idea to have pasta beforehand and make it a full-blown Italian night. It seemed like a good idea, but we were full half way through the pizza.
We fought through the food – a tough fight, but we both came out victorious – and watched a bit of “How I Met Your Mother”. In the meantime, my mother tried to give me a ring, but there was no luck. My parents will just have to wait till the morning.
Other than the 2:20 AM run (make that sprint…), I slept through the night well. I was awakened by a sports report – another Yankees win, three in a row. And once I was truly awake, my parents were able to get through. It’s been a couple weeks, so it was lovely to catch up.
Monday looked a lot like Sunday. Instead of going to the “light reading” of Newsweek, I jumped into an Economist. That took up a fair portion of my morning. The rest of my morning was spent doing mind games.
After our regular lunch (albeit with freshly imported cheese and bacon bits!), we had a very brief, boring meeting about national exams. Testing begins tomorrow and we need to be ready to proctor exams. I’m really hoping the director will spare us.
I killed the last hour or so of the afternoon turning peanuts into peanut powder. Seriously. The ambitiousness snuck back up on me and I thought I could do a sorta Thai peanut sauce. Ambitiousness failed me. It was awful We bombed it out with teriyaki sauce and it turned out okay. We capped our night with some “House” and “How I Met Your Mother”.
Richie and I have been dreading Tuesday for the last couple days. National exams started Tuesday which meant that we had to get off our patio and go to school with the chance that we might have to work. No, really. Our school director told all the teachers that we had to be at the school at 7:15 because we may – may! – have to proctor exams during the day.
Richie got off lucky – no controlling for him. I, on the other hand, was not so lucky. I was pegged by one of the assistant directors to proctor exams in the afternoon. This sucked for two reasons: not only would I have to stand bored for two-plus hours, but I would have to wait all day to be bored in the classroom.
As such, the morning was boring. It’s not even worth describing. Basically, it’s what I’ve done for the last couple weeks – sit on the patio, feet up. Today, however this earned me a compliment from my neighbor: “Your feet are so clean. I could put bread on your feet and eat it.” That might just be the greatest compliment a Mozambican can offer a muzungu, whose white feet show dirt so beautiful.
If the morning was boring, then the afternoon was terrible. I walked over to the school mid-afternoon and walked to my assigned room. Students filed in, sat down, and filled out their scantron forms. And then I stood there. For two amazingly boring hours. There is no knife sharp enough nor no gun big enough that could take the away the pain from today.
The only upside of proctoring exams late in the afternoon was that it brought us that much closer to energy. In fact, the energy was already on when I got back home. Most excellent.
Richie was on top of things tonight. He started dinner late, but nothing harmful to our regular nightly schedule. While the beans cooked, we watched an episode of “House” and after dinner, we watched “How I Met Your Mother”. Oh, TV, thank you for salvaging this day.
Once again, I dreaded waking up on Wednesday for fear of having to proctor exams. Richie and I stood in the room and listened as other teachers were called to serve. Phew! Spared today.
But what do we do now? We figured that we could be bored and do nothing or be bored and do something. We chose to be bored and do something; we volunteered our service to correct, or do whatever the director wanted us to do.
In this case, that meant we had to “tramcar” exams. “Trancar” means “to lock”. What could possibly be locked on exams? We found out: taking a red pen and putting lines through every unused space in exam books. Very exciting, huh? Either way, it took an hour out of our day.
I had some actual work to do in the afternoon. The students took their English exam today. I was left to read through the exam and make sure it was clean. Now, even with the exams that I write, I catch mistakes. This, however, was a bloodbath. Some words were missing, some answers misspelled, some questions didn’t have particularly good answers. After consulting with some other teachers, we found that of the sixty questions, five had problems and one was scientifically inaccurate.
So after my strenuous, forty-five minutes of work, I was back to the patio, “Economist in hand”. Usually – and this is going to sound sick – I love the obituaries in the “Economist”. But today I was disappointed. It’s hard for me to feel sympathetic toward a free-climber – as in no ropes – who dies by (wait for it…) falling.
Our night was pretty typical – sandwiches, “House” and “How I Met Your Mother”. And of course, another fascinating text conversation with my brother, this time on the topic of winter fruit.
One other note: today is one of my best friend’s, Ryan’s, birthday. He has the strange distinction of not only being the oldest of my closest friends, but he is also the only of my closest friends whose birthday I will miss three times while in country. So buddy, even though I can’t be there with you, I still raise my cup of scotch to you.
I thought that Thursday was going to be a light work day again. I could not have been more wrong. I got tapped to “tramcar” exams once again, followed by back to back exams period, with just a brief break for lunch. Making things worse, Richie – who had yet to work a single minute this week (other than the time we volunteered for) – only got hit with controlling one exam. This was supposed to be my day off.
Thursday was the breaking point. Five weeks of staying in Machanga will do that, but standing there for five hours to control exams definitely redefined “boring”.
By 3:00, following the second exam, I thought I was off the hook for the day. Once again, I thought wrong. “No, no, you have to go correct English exams”. Are you fuckin’ kidding me? I just worked eight straight hours and now I had to work another two, reading pathetic “essays”.
5:00 could not come soon enough and I’m pretty sure that if he wasn’t actually laughing, Richie was laughing on the inside. There was some silver lining, though, to this dark cloud of day: we wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow because we were going to Vilanculos. With this in mind, we happily ate dinner and watched some “House” before bed.
I feel like getting out of Machanga on Friday was a beautiful disappearing act. We left school at exactly 6:30, long after most teachers were awake but just before they were due to congregate for their proctoring assignments. We didn’t need to be so covert – I told our director that we would be gone – but it still felt sneaky.
Whatever bad luck I had yesterday was clearly not contagious. We waited exactly zero minutes to get a canoe across the river. And once across, we didn’t even make it to the villa to catch a car out to Maluvane; the car met us just before the town. The only downside of that leg of the trip was that the kid collecting money tried to overcharge us (by a measly five Mets), but Richie got it out of him.
Our luck continued all the way down. Within five minutes of getting to Maluvane, we had a car going down to Pambarra. But not just any car. First off, the car waited for us to walk over to him. Lourenço, the very nice driver, said in English, “I saw two white guys, I knew you were going south”. Secondly, this car was awesome: the guy had air conditioning, nice leather seats and a GPS. I enjoyed these benefits while Richie was stuck in the back of the car. But even that wasn’t too bad – he had a mattress in back laid out for his kids. This was a perfect ride.
Lourenço dropped us off at Pambarra for the cost of a coke. He didn’t even ask for it. I offered – I figured it was the least I could do if we weren’t going to pay for the ride. We barely made it out of the car before we had another free ride heading into Vilanculos. Today was just our day. All said, we set a new record for the Machanga-Vilanculos trip: Three hours and fifty-seven minutes. This accomplishment should be up there with being the first to climb Everest and breaking the four minute mile.
We almost didn’t know what to do with ourselves once we got to Vil. We got to town so early that the chapa that goes leaves from Vilanculos to Mambone was still in town. We could have gone back to Mambone and probably returned to Vilanculos. Instead, we decided that our better option was to drop off our stuff and do some shopping.
While we were in the villa, we made a pit stop at the little hamburger shack that has brought us so much joy. We were happy with our burgers, even though they didn’t have cheese. But for one man from South Africa, it was a less than pleasurable experience. He walked in to this little hole in the wall place, and just stood there, waiting to be waited on. But that’s not how things work: you place your order, then wait. And he only spoke English, which did not help his cause. In the end, he just stammered off in a furor.
Tourists, usually from neighboring South Africa, sometimes make life for us Volunteers a little difficult. For one, they generally don’t know the prices of things. So when muzungus try to buy anything in the market, the little market kids will mark up everything by 100 percent or more. Not knowing better, the tourists will pay it, which leaves us fighting tooth and claw for every Metical. They also put a dent into our reputation. We have a cultivated sense of patience that a lot of tourists lack. We know we’re going to wait and we deal with it. But impatient tourists often make us look bad.
The rest of our day was very relaxing. The ocean was a little cold but it felt wonderful under the scorching Mozambican sun. And each of us spent a fair amount of time in hammocks. Another rough day in Vilanculos.
We knew that this was going to be an expensive weekend, so instead of buying dinner tonight, we cooked our own dinner. A lot of money will be spent on beer so only spending sixty Mets between the two of us is a steal.
Needless to say, we were very happy to be in Vilanculos. And we were even happier on Saturday. The Trainees from Moz 14 are on site visit and there is a veritable crew heading up to the Vilanculos area. Another Volunteer arrived late morning and we met her in the villa to do some beer purchasing.
So what do we do with five cases of beer and at least four hours until the Trainees arrive? All of us thought the same thing: start. And so we did. A lot of beers later, everyone else arrived and the party really started.
I think the Trainees were really happy to escape Namaacha for a couple days. I remember last year that I was ready to get out for a while. It was such a good pick-me-up for me and I’m sure it will work wonders for them.
This was really exciting for us because we got to meet a lot of the new group. They are a really good group. Everyone seems to be getting through training okay. I think that they were really happy to express whatever concerns they had and were even happier to know that we went through the same shit last year.
And whatever concerns we couldn’t alleviate, we left to Afro Bar. When in doubt, go to Afro Bar and dance your worries away.
Our day, like most of last week, was pretty quiet. At least we had some things to keep us entertained. We both buried ourselves in magazines. Over the course of the day, I powered through a pair of Newsweeks and a Time. On of my old hockey buddies is now writing for Newsweek, which I find awesome. But, really, I should learn to spread out my reading a bit more.
The only eventful thing in the afternoon was Richie and I – along with a couple of kids and another teacher – trying to repair our bike for good. I don’t know if it will ever be perfect. I think the roads and the kids do a fair amount of damage to it. Whatever we did to it today, it’s running a bit better now
All that really matter on Sunday was we had for dinner. With the arrival of Velveeta, we were really hoping to do pizzas last night, but the bread shortage put a dent in that plan. However, there was no shortage of bread today, and therefore, no shortage of pizza tonight. We thought it would be a good idea to have pasta beforehand and make it a full-blown Italian night. It seemed like a good idea, but we were full half way through the pizza.
We fought through the food – a tough fight, but we both came out victorious – and watched a bit of “How I Met Your Mother”. In the meantime, my mother tried to give me a ring, but there was no luck. My parents will just have to wait till the morning.
Other than the 2:20 AM run (make that sprint…), I slept through the night well. I was awakened by a sports report – another Yankees win, three in a row. And once I was truly awake, my parents were able to get through. It’s been a couple weeks, so it was lovely to catch up.
Monday looked a lot like Sunday. Instead of going to the “light reading” of Newsweek, I jumped into an Economist. That took up a fair portion of my morning. The rest of my morning was spent doing mind games.
After our regular lunch (albeit with freshly imported cheese and bacon bits!), we had a very brief, boring meeting about national exams. Testing begins tomorrow and we need to be ready to proctor exams. I’m really hoping the director will spare us.
I killed the last hour or so of the afternoon turning peanuts into peanut powder. Seriously. The ambitiousness snuck back up on me and I thought I could do a sorta Thai peanut sauce. Ambitiousness failed me. It was awful We bombed it out with teriyaki sauce and it turned out okay. We capped our night with some “House” and “How I Met Your Mother”.
Richie and I have been dreading Tuesday for the last couple days. National exams started Tuesday which meant that we had to get off our patio and go to school with the chance that we might have to work. No, really. Our school director told all the teachers that we had to be at the school at 7:15 because we may – may! – have to proctor exams during the day.
Richie got off lucky – no controlling for him. I, on the other hand, was not so lucky. I was pegged by one of the assistant directors to proctor exams in the afternoon. This sucked for two reasons: not only would I have to stand bored for two-plus hours, but I would have to wait all day to be bored in the classroom.
As such, the morning was boring. It’s not even worth describing. Basically, it’s what I’ve done for the last couple weeks – sit on the patio, feet up. Today, however this earned me a compliment from my neighbor: “Your feet are so clean. I could put bread on your feet and eat it.” That might just be the greatest compliment a Mozambican can offer a muzungu, whose white feet show dirt so beautiful.
If the morning was boring, then the afternoon was terrible. I walked over to the school mid-afternoon and walked to my assigned room. Students filed in, sat down, and filled out their scantron forms. And then I stood there. For two amazingly boring hours. There is no knife sharp enough nor no gun big enough that could take the away the pain from today.
The only upside of proctoring exams late in the afternoon was that it brought us that much closer to energy. In fact, the energy was already on when I got back home. Most excellent.
Richie was on top of things tonight. He started dinner late, but nothing harmful to our regular nightly schedule. While the beans cooked, we watched an episode of “House” and after dinner, we watched “How I Met Your Mother”. Oh, TV, thank you for salvaging this day.
Once again, I dreaded waking up on Wednesday for fear of having to proctor exams. Richie and I stood in the room and listened as other teachers were called to serve. Phew! Spared today.
But what do we do now? We figured that we could be bored and do nothing or be bored and do something. We chose to be bored and do something; we volunteered our service to correct, or do whatever the director wanted us to do.
In this case, that meant we had to “tramcar” exams. “Trancar” means “to lock”. What could possibly be locked on exams? We found out: taking a red pen and putting lines through every unused space in exam books. Very exciting, huh? Either way, it took an hour out of our day.
I had some actual work to do in the afternoon. The students took their English exam today. I was left to read through the exam and make sure it was clean. Now, even with the exams that I write, I catch mistakes. This, however, was a bloodbath. Some words were missing, some answers misspelled, some questions didn’t have particularly good answers. After consulting with some other teachers, we found that of the sixty questions, five had problems and one was scientifically inaccurate.
So after my strenuous, forty-five minutes of work, I was back to the patio, “Economist in hand”. Usually – and this is going to sound sick – I love the obituaries in the “Economist”. But today I was disappointed. It’s hard for me to feel sympathetic toward a free-climber – as in no ropes – who dies by (wait for it…) falling.
Our night was pretty typical – sandwiches, “House” and “How I Met Your Mother”. And of course, another fascinating text conversation with my brother, this time on the topic of winter fruit.
One other note: today is one of my best friend’s, Ryan’s, birthday. He has the strange distinction of not only being the oldest of my closest friends, but he is also the only of my closest friends whose birthday I will miss three times while in country. So buddy, even though I can’t be there with you, I still raise my cup of scotch to you.
I thought that Thursday was going to be a light work day again. I could not have been more wrong. I got tapped to “tramcar” exams once again, followed by back to back exams period, with just a brief break for lunch. Making things worse, Richie – who had yet to work a single minute this week (other than the time we volunteered for) – only got hit with controlling one exam. This was supposed to be my day off.
Thursday was the breaking point. Five weeks of staying in Machanga will do that, but standing there for five hours to control exams definitely redefined “boring”.
By 3:00, following the second exam, I thought I was off the hook for the day. Once again, I thought wrong. “No, no, you have to go correct English exams”. Are you fuckin’ kidding me? I just worked eight straight hours and now I had to work another two, reading pathetic “essays”.
5:00 could not come soon enough and I’m pretty sure that if he wasn’t actually laughing, Richie was laughing on the inside. There was some silver lining, though, to this dark cloud of day: we wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow because we were going to Vilanculos. With this in mind, we happily ate dinner and watched some “House” before bed.
I feel like getting out of Machanga on Friday was a beautiful disappearing act. We left school at exactly 6:30, long after most teachers were awake but just before they were due to congregate for their proctoring assignments. We didn’t need to be so covert – I told our director that we would be gone – but it still felt sneaky.
Whatever bad luck I had yesterday was clearly not contagious. We waited exactly zero minutes to get a canoe across the river. And once across, we didn’t even make it to the villa to catch a car out to Maluvane; the car met us just before the town. The only downside of that leg of the trip was that the kid collecting money tried to overcharge us (by a measly five Mets), but Richie got it out of him.
Our luck continued all the way down. Within five minutes of getting to Maluvane, we had a car going down to Pambarra. But not just any car. First off, the car waited for us to walk over to him. Lourenço, the very nice driver, said in English, “I saw two white guys, I knew you were going south”. Secondly, this car was awesome: the guy had air conditioning, nice leather seats and a GPS. I enjoyed these benefits while Richie was stuck in the back of the car. But even that wasn’t too bad – he had a mattress in back laid out for his kids. This was a perfect ride.
Lourenço dropped us off at Pambarra for the cost of a coke. He didn’t even ask for it. I offered – I figured it was the least I could do if we weren’t going to pay for the ride. We barely made it out of the car before we had another free ride heading into Vilanculos. Today was just our day. All said, we set a new record for the Machanga-Vilanculos trip: Three hours and fifty-seven minutes. This accomplishment should be up there with being the first to climb Everest and breaking the four minute mile.
We almost didn’t know what to do with ourselves once we got to Vil. We got to town so early that the chapa that goes leaves from Vilanculos to Mambone was still in town. We could have gone back to Mambone and probably returned to Vilanculos. Instead, we decided that our better option was to drop off our stuff and do some shopping.
While we were in the villa, we made a pit stop at the little hamburger shack that has brought us so much joy. We were happy with our burgers, even though they didn’t have cheese. But for one man from South Africa, it was a less than pleasurable experience. He walked in to this little hole in the wall place, and just stood there, waiting to be waited on. But that’s not how things work: you place your order, then wait. And he only spoke English, which did not help his cause. In the end, he just stammered off in a furor.
Tourists, usually from neighboring South Africa, sometimes make life for us Volunteers a little difficult. For one, they generally don’t know the prices of things. So when muzungus try to buy anything in the market, the little market kids will mark up everything by 100 percent or more. Not knowing better, the tourists will pay it, which leaves us fighting tooth and claw for every Metical. They also put a dent into our reputation. We have a cultivated sense of patience that a lot of tourists lack. We know we’re going to wait and we deal with it. But impatient tourists often make us look bad.
The rest of our day was very relaxing. The ocean was a little cold but it felt wonderful under the scorching Mozambican sun. And each of us spent a fair amount of time in hammocks. Another rough day in Vilanculos.
We knew that this was going to be an expensive weekend, so instead of buying dinner tonight, we cooked our own dinner. A lot of money will be spent on beer so only spending sixty Mets between the two of us is a steal.
Needless to say, we were very happy to be in Vilanculos. And we were even happier on Saturday. The Trainees from Moz 14 are on site visit and there is a veritable crew heading up to the Vilanculos area. Another Volunteer arrived late morning and we met her in the villa to do some beer purchasing.
So what do we do with five cases of beer and at least four hours until the Trainees arrive? All of us thought the same thing: start. And so we did. A lot of beers later, everyone else arrived and the party really started.
I think the Trainees were really happy to escape Namaacha for a couple days. I remember last year that I was ready to get out for a while. It was such a good pick-me-up for me and I’m sure it will work wonders for them.
This was really exciting for us because we got to meet a lot of the new group. They are a really good group. Everyone seems to be getting through training okay. I think that they were really happy to express whatever concerns they had and were even happier to know that we went through the same shit last year.
And whatever concerns we couldn’t alleviate, we left to Afro Bar. When in doubt, go to Afro Bar and dance your worries away.
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