My master plan for sleeping through a night didn’t work out exactly as planned. Although I fell asleep right away, I was up within hours, once at midnight and again at 4:00 with the rooster. Sadly, it was probably the best night of sleep I’ve had over the last two weeks. I’m starting to think that I’m allergic to something, I just don’t know what. Maybe I’m allergic to Machanga.
I had the opportunity to prove this idea Sunday morning. Having not gone to Mambone on Saturday, we took the opportunity to do some shopping across the river. Of course, within minutes of setting foot on the Mambone side of the river, I stopped sneezing and my eyes stopped leaking. We shopped quickly, knowing that if we wanted to eat delicious chicken, we would have to wait a good 90 minutes for it. The wait was worthwhile (it’s always worth it) and it passed quicker than usual due to the presence of Greg, the Volunteer stationed in Mambone.
One of the nice parts about going to Mambone – aside from chicken, vegetables, cold beer, and everything else someone in Machanga would crave – is that the trip takes up most of the day. What is amazing is the fact that two towns, divided by a swimmable river, are no more than five kilometers apart. By the time we got back, we were ready to start preparing dinner. Preparing dinner took longer than usual because of a ridiculous sunset that took away our attention every few minutes.
After our regular spaghetti dinner, the calls starting coming in: first my grandmother followed by my parents and my brother. It was one of those rare days that California was hotter than Machanga. Small victories. Before going to bed, we said goodbye to Season 3 of “House.”
Another night of sleep, another set of middle of the night wake-ups. I choose to look at the bright side of it. Waking up every four hours allows me to pop more Sudafed than I would get with a regular night’s sleep. It’s like my body knows that it’s time for another pill. I think all of that “House” is starting to wear on me.
My morning was slow. I was giving a test to one class and planned to give busy work to the other classes, so there was little to prepare. With all of that time, I had plenty of opportunity to go on a cleaning binge, taking care of the kitchen, the patio, the dining area and my room, all before 9:30. Richie came back to a clean house, infuriated by the number of cheaters in class. I’ve been lucky: over my first four classes, I only caught four cheaters; Richie had five in his first class. Ouch.
I knew that teaching comparatives, superlatives, and equalities would be a multiple-day lesson. The work was surprisingly good, producing such gems as “Mambone is better than Machanga” (truer words have never been written) and “My sister is as ugly as a chameleon.” I am glad a chose not to rush through that particular lesson – teaching it over two days with a full hour of practice added on – because they would fail it miserably if I pushed it quickly.
As I started walking back from my last class, I was summoned by a teacher asking for some help. He said he needed help explaining a concept, which would be fine if I knew what the content was. He led me through it quickly, and before I knew it, I had twenty students in front of me asking for an explanation. I have no problem teaching math – in fact, I would love to teach math here. The problem is I just don’t have all the technical vocabulary, like “square root,” to teach right now. That didn’t stop me, though, on this day. I powered through it, asking for vocabulary when necessary. By the end, I think the students had a better understanding of the material. Now they want my help every week, which is fine by me. I’m happy to help where I can, and it will be a good learning opportunity for me.
The night was an atypical working night. Richie and I both had to put grades into our computers. And we had no “House” to watch. We were entertained, however, by some students dancing for some donors from Monaco who were here visiting. We improved our night noticeably with cookies and “South Park” and went to bed.
It is one thing to wake up 2 in the morning or 4 in the morning. It’s another thing to wake up at 11:48 PM! The worst part was that I felt refreshed. Terrible. I popped a Sudafed and slept for four more hours before waking up for good. It’s just depressing waking up while it’s still dark outside, knowing that there is absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Once the sun was high enough in the sky to provide light on my patio, I took my regular seat and starting correcting exams. This class did pretty well. There were a couple near-perfect scores, which was very impressive, and very few if any failures. Correcting fifty-five exams took up most of the morning. Within a minute of me finishing, Richie returned from the market. We threw around the Frisbee for a bit with a group of little kids before preparing lunch.
I had three classes to teach before giving one last exam. For the first time during this set of exams, I didn’t have to move anyone, although I did physically turn the head of one student whose eyes wandered to his neighbor’s paper. It drew a good laugh from the class.
In between coming back to the house and having the energy flipped on, Richie and I threw around the Frisbee for a little bit, without the kids this time. We ate delicious garlic bread (which our neighbor enjoyed), watched a little television, and went to sleep. With the help of a pair of Benadryl, I slept – well, through the night.
We made a joint trip to the villa Wednesday morning. It took a couple months, but we once again ran out of charcoal. With energy arriving sometime in July (if everything goes to plan), this might be the last bag of charcoal we have to buy. And we are very thankful for that. Hauling that monster bag of charcoal the few kilometers between the villa and our house is a pain in the ass.
I had an easy teaching day – easy for me and easy for the students. My students got a quick lesson on questions using “is there” and “are there.” Like many things between English and Portuguese, this translated almost word for word. It’s nice for them because it is easy to remember and it’s nice for me because I get a bit of a self-taught Portuguese lesson, as I did with comparisons, superlatives and equalities last week.
The evening was fairly uneventful, save for the energy coming on at 5:00. We cooked up stir fry and spent the better part of the evening watching “Milk,” which was a beautifully done movie.
Teaching on Thursday was even easier than Wednesday. With all the classes having taken the exam, I could start handing the exams back and going over the material. Since the students did pretty well, I didn’t need to go over much material. The only major fireworks came when I had to deal with two of the cheaters. I told each of them that they could admit that they did it and the other person would get the points. Of course, both of them denied doing it, so they both receive zeros. It’s a shame because one of them is a pretty good student and the other not so much. If I had to guess, I could pin it on one of them, but that’s not really fair.
The night was relaxing. Before the energy came on, we tossed around the Frisbee a bit. We made our regular spaghetti, watched South Park, and – exhausted after another poor night’s sleep – went to bed.
Friday finally arrived. Finally. We had plans to go to Vilanculos and Inhassoro over the weekend, but first, we had some business to take care of. As we usually do before we leave, we spent the morning cleaning up the house. I swept and mopped up the house while Richie did dishes. And then something amazing happened – another Muzungu arrived.
It’s strange to be suspicious of other white people. We thought that we were the only show in town. He introduced himself in Portuguese, and we thought we were going to be in for a long Portuguese conversation. Then something even more amazing happened – he started speaking in beautiful English. He is doing some research on the private schools in Sofala and wanted to ask us about our experiences. We told him we had time in the afternoon and he should return at 1:00.
I had to hand back two more sets of tests Friday afternoon. I went over the exam with one of the classes and just handed back the exam to the other. That class did exceptionally well so I didn’t feel obligated to go over the answers. I told them that if they had questions, they could ask me next week. I was done with my school obligations by 12:50.
At 12:58, our new Portuguese friend. How very un-Mozambican. Even he said “how do you like that timing?” Umm, we love it. Thank you so much. We each spoke with him for about 30 minutes. While one spoke, the other got to practice Portuguese with his wife. We both had no problem speaking Portuguese with actually Portuguese people. It’s Mozambican Portuguese that we continue to have our problems.
By 3:00, we were finished with our conversations, packed and ready to go. We stopped in the Mambone villa to pick up some bread for the night and the travel day and caught a chapa to Greg’s house. Greg’s girlfriend made us some delicious rice and fish. By the time we were done eating, we were ready to pass out.
Bus sleeping was just not going to happen. For one, we were essentially sleeping on concrete: all we had was a thin grass mat and blanket on which to lie. Secondly, and more annoyingly, a bar had ridiculously loud, terrible Mozambican music going all night. Between the two of us, we got about 90 minutes of sleep. As if we don’t sleep poorly enough already…
The travel day was quite terrible, as it usually is. We “woke up” at 3:30 to catch a chapa for Vilanculos. Normally, we would just leave from Machanga at a reasonable hour, but we had to get to Vilanculos, get money (hopefully), shop, send off some emails, then head to Inhassoro for a birthday party. As we thought we would be, we were on the road before noon and arrived in Inhassoro before 2:00.
We spent a lot of the afternoon relaxing. Richie napped, I laid down for a bit, but most of my relaxing was done with a knife in hand cutting vegetables, preparing for dinner. Dinner was outrageously good. We had a Mozambican make good Mozambique food, an Italian make some real, fresh pasta, and of course cake. Before dinner, we played some pretty intense volleyball with some Mozambique, beer in hand. Even though we were absolutely exhausted, we still partied hard. At least it should make for a good night’s sleep. Hopefully.
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