Year 1 - Week 28: "Before you go to sleep..."

Richie discovered the secret to not waking up at 2:30 in the morning: staying up drinking until 3. I was long asleep by the time he returned and I was out to the point that I didn’t hear him stumble in. I was out cold until 8:30 and Richie was dead until 9.

It’s not just the sleep that was beautiful. Waking up late came with its own gifts. Having a morning that is only three hours long is much more manageable than a morning that starts at 5 AM. And waking up at 9 meant we only had two wait two hours to start preparing lunch. Needless to say, we were very happy.

Along with putting lunch together, Richie cleaned up and soaked some beans in advance of making chili tonight. The first go around was good enough to deserve another shot and tonight is the night. After lunch, the afternoon was productive. I sat on the patio in numbers and words, switching between copying GRE word lists and finishing Kakuro puzzles.

The chili that we made was a step up from what we made the last time, at least in my book. We threw in a can of salsa, which gave it some serious kick. I was very happy with the level of spiciness; Richie sweated it out. We spent the better part of our time with energy getting through most of “Blood Diamond.” It’s cool to watch here because almost all the parts filmed in the city were filmed in Maputo. We can pull out little things like license plates and mCel posters, telltale signs of Mozambique. My parents called late-night, just before our energy went out.

But my night didn’t end there. I’ve decided to try something new that could benefit me in many ways. Once the power went out, I spent the next hour in bed reading by candlelight. I figure that not only will this help me improve my vocabulary – I noticed at least 20 GRE vocab words while reading “The Economist” – but a later bed time may mean I can sleep later.

My master plan worked, although not as brilliantly as I had anticipated. I slept solidly until 4 (!), the latest I’ve made it without the help of alcohol. I rolled around for a bit before going back to sleep until 8:30. The rest of the morning was spent on the patio, between Su Doku and plotting out the types of questions for my final exam.

As we have closed in on the waning weeks of the trimester, our work loads have rapidly decreased. I have moved into review mode, getting my students as prepared as they can be without giving them the answers to the exam. Only one of my three classes today received new material, and it’s only because they were a week behind due to the holidays a couple of weeks ago. The reviews went pretty well. The students definitely do better at multiple choice than they do at having to write full answers; it should produce some encourage results.

After a few days of doing without – or more accurately, after a few days of trying to avoid it – we turned back to spaghetti and tomato sauce. And garlic bread made a glorious return. It was good, but it’s definitely worn on us. It’s more about the bread than the pasta at this point. We finished off “Blood Diamond” and snuck in an episode of “South Park” before the lights when out. Once the lights went out, the candles were lit. I read for an hour before going to bed.

I made it straight through to 4:00 again, but I woke up totally refreshed. Well what the hell am I supposed to do now? I relit the candles and knocked out another hour in “The Economist” before squirming around in bed for a couple more hours.

There was little to be done in the morning. I took care of the dishes and swept the inside of the house before “lesson planning” – writing the lyrics to “Beautiful Boy” on giant paper. I have a little more flexibility to do fun things with my eleventh graders for a multitude of reasons – more hours per week, no national exam, another year with them next year. And I know from teaching in San Diego that people tend to enjoy listening to music, even if it’s something they’ve never heard.

The plan went off pretty well. I had an easy day in the classroom and the kids got a nice break from constantly hearing my voice as the only English that they hear. When I came back from school, I was locked out of the house. Thanks, Richie. He came back within minutes of me getting to the door, so the petty crime was forgivable.

When the energy flipped on, I was asked to reproduce a planning form that teachers have to plan out. I told the person who asked me that I would need tens. I assume that he thought that meant ten minutes Mozambican time because he was shocked when I actually was done in ten minutes. While I dealt with the computer lab, Richie cooked dinner. The rest of the night was pretty standard: dinner, “South Park” and bed.

Wednesday was my last day of classes for the trimester, which is amazing since the trimester doesn’t officially end for another two weeks. But that is how things work here: test prep a few weeks out from the end, give the exam the second to last week, and return it the last week of the trimester. Normally, I’d go to the end of the week, but Mozambican Independence Day is tomorrow, which means school will be cancelled officially on Thursday and unofficially on Friday. With just two classes of test prep to give, I had the morning to myself.

I expected to be out of my classes quickly. These two groups of kids do not like to ask questions, so I gave them the information for the exam, asked if there were any questions (to which of course they said, “no questions, teacher”), and left. The only problem with leaving my first class early is that I had about an hour until the next class.

I filled the void by taking in a French class, which was interesting, but not for the reasons you would think. It was interesting because of how little the teacher – who happens to be one of our best friends here – actually did. He gave the exercises to a student to write on the board, during which time he sat under a tree. He continued to sit there as students copied down the material. Once they finished, he gave a 10-minute explanation on the material – the imperative form of verbs, not exactly a difficult topic – then left again while students did the exercises. It was amazing to watch. For the entire 90-minute class, he was in the room for maybe 15 minutes. More than anything, it made me realize that even though I do so little in the classroom, it’s still a hell of a lot more than the students here usually get. Even just walking around the classroom to help students with their exercise is different for them.

The afternoon was short. I prepped dinner before the energy came on. We shifted around our food schedule to have potato pancakes tonight, knowing that we had a long, long night of drinking ahead of us. Our neighbor came over with three terrible bottles of table wine, all of which went before we arrived in the villa. Then the beers came, followed by a terrible bottle of brandy. Mixing two types of alcohol usually spells trouble; mixing three is just stupid. By the end of the night, my world was spinning.

I was not happy in the morning. Not happy at all. My head was pounding and the yelling coming from our neighbor’s house was not helping one bit. I spent the vast majority of the morning in bed, torn between sleeping and reading. Just before lunch, I started to feel better. Judging the level of my headaches was simple: at 9, my head couldn’t stand the sight of anything; by 10, looking at a Kakuro puzzle hurt my head; and by 11:30, I was finishing them with little trouble.

Despite resting for the entire morning and eating a decent lunch, neither Richie nor I was right for the afternoon. Our neighbors helped our cause by bringing over some food – freshly killed chicken! – but even as we approached our normal dinner time, neither of us was in the mood for anything…except cookies. So for Mozambican Independence Day, we stayed in the house, watched “South Park” and ate cookies. And we could not have been happier.

While we stayed in, the rest of the country was partying. When I woke up at 3:00, the music was still pumping out of the barracas. Considering that just about every teacher was out, it became quite clear earlier in the evening that there would be no school on Friday, opening up a window of opportunity for me to make a quick trip to Vilanculos.

All in all, the transportation was pretty smooth. The toughest part of this trip was getting out of Machanga. Apparently, all of the drinking got to the boat people also because there was only one boat running across the river. Once I got to Mambone, though, things went by beautiful. I got a car going to the crossroads before I even hit the villa. And within minutes of getting to the crossroads, a car – with Greg and his girlfriend – arrived, offering a free ride all the way to Vilanculos. Excellent.

The only downside to the whole day was that I arrived during the two-hour lunch break for businesses, so everything was closed. I killed the time at a Volunteer’s house, just catching up. Once businesses opened, however, everything went smoothly. I got all of my shopping done in one store – a rarity – and my photocopies of my exams were done at a reasonable speed and price.

The rarities didn’t stop there. Usually when I go to Vilanculos, there are two common factors – Richie is there, and there is always a party. But this time, Richie stayed behind, wanting to experience Machanga alone, and everyone was quite tired from the holiday weekend. Instead of the typical party, we ate pizza and watched “Angels and Demons.” It was a good deviation from the norm.

I trucked out early on Saturday, committed to finishing up some last-minute shopping. Chocolate, which was hard to come by everywhere else in town, was readily available in the villa, and vegetables are always cheaper outside at the market than inside the grocery stores. Stocked up, I got on the chapa, which made decent time, and hauled back to Machanga.

Just as I was about to reach the school, I ran into Richie and some other teachers, who were heading over to watch a soccer game. Exhausted, I had no interest in going. The keys exchanged, I continued home for an afternoon of relaxation and reading.

For a change, we actually looked forward to dinner. One of the new items I found in Vilanculos was cheddar cheese sauce. This could be a game-changer for us in the interval before we get full-time energy (and therefore, the ability to refrigerate real cheese). We made spaghetti sauce, but more importantly, we made garlic cheese bread which was AMAZING! Then the ideas starting flowing in – cheese fries, improvements to the chili. We were very happy. After dinner, we watched one episode of “South Park” and I spoke to my brother before closing my eyes on another week.