Year 1 - Week 29: Custa Muito

Returning to Machanga yesterday was the best travel decision I’ve made in a long time,. After four days of quasi-chaos – between Independence Day and the trip to Vilanculos – I was happy to have a day to recuperate. Within minutes of waking up, my parents called. They had tried to call yesterday, but the network would not cooperate with us.

The morning, to my liking, was peaceful. Nobody came to visit, the neighbors were shockingly quiet, and I was left to sit on the patio, a bit of sun shining through, with my Kakuro book. I wanted to spend the morning with numbers, knowing that a lot of my afternoon would be committed to my GRE word list. Only toward the latter end of the morning did one of our neighbors come by to visit. He’s one of Richie’s ninth grade students. He’s smart, but doesn’t really apply himself, which is frustrating for Richie. We know he’s smart because he’s the only student who has learned Su Doku. I tried to teach him Kakuro, but all he could say was “Custa muito”: literally “it costs a lot,” but figuratively meaning something along the lines of “it takes a lot of effort.”

We put Richie’s food idea into action for lunch. We had our regular scrambled eggs, but we could not care less about the eggs. Lunch was all about the cheese fries. Sprinkled with a little bit of beef jerky, it tasted like America. Those few moments after finishing were both some of the most satisfying moments and some of the saddest moments we’ve had. If only there were more…

Richie headed off to watch a soccer game around mid-afternoon. I had no interest in going, not because I didn’t want to watch, but because I didn’t want to walk the mile to get to the field. I do enough walking as it is; if I don’t have to walk, I’m not going to. Instead, I pulled a chair out to the sun and studied vocab. After memorizing another page of words, I took a small stroll around school, just to get my mind away from the words. Upon my return, I tested myself, and all the words stuck with me. Now I just need to do that another 20 times and I’ll be good to go for the GRE.

Once Richie returned, we threw around the Frisbee for the couple of minutes before energy turned on. Richie took care of dinner while I typed up a physics exam for a teacher. What a royal pain in the ass that turned out to be: way too many subscripts and superscripts and words with “ção,” which requires ridiculous keystrokes. That, along with making edits on a chemistry test, took up the bulk of my night.

With thirty minutes left of energy, we went over to the villa to try to catch the USA-Brazil soccer game, the final of the Confederation Cup. We walked at an American pace to bar, only to find darkness. The generator that powered the only television in the villa ran out of gas. Sigh. As we walked back from the villa, I received a text from a friend: “1-0 USA.” Nice. Must have been a fluke, since Brazil doesn’t give up goals. Before I set foot in the school, hoping to catch the last few minutes of the first half at another teacher’s half, I got another text: “2-0 USA!” What the hell is going on?! I ran to a house with a TV to watch until the power went out.

Somebody pulled some strings and the energy stayed for the entirety of the game. Unfortunately, Machanga had more energy in the second half than the US side did. One minute in, Brazil scored, and you knew then that America was in trouble. If you let a team like Brazil hang around, they will bite. Final score, predictably: 3-2 Brazil. At least I could go to bed disappointed instead of wake up to bad news.

I slept a beautiful sleep until waking up at 4:15. The interruption, though, was brief and I slept until almost 8:00. This week and next week are finals weeks for the school, and I was scheduled to give mine this week on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. My morning wide open, I chilled on the patio with my Kakuro book until lunch time.

Three of my six classes took their exams. This was by far the least painful test day I’ve had here. I only had to move a couple of people and the wandering eyes were kept to a minimum. I think the students were satisfied with the multiple choice exam. I thought it was an easy exam – until I saw I girl wag her head from side to side and then straight down to the exams. The consensus at the end of the day was positive. It wasn’t too easy, it wasn’t too hard, but just “custa muito”.

I returned home to the sight of Richie cooking beans. We turned back to the chili tonight, but restrained ourselves from using cheese. After all, we only have one more packet and we’re not going to waste it too quickly. Richie also took care of typing an exam for a chemistry teacher, leaving me to format it. After eating, I ran to the computer lab to print it, where I was held hostage by a physics teacher. He needed help printing, but needed more time to type up “just two more questions.” In hunting-and-pecking time, that means at least thirty minutes, and there was no way in hell that I was going to wait that long. I took the keyboard, pounded it out in five minutes, formatted the exam and escaped. The rest of the night was spent with an “Economist”.

Before going to sleep, I pulled the blanket out of my bag. For more than six months, that blanket has sat in my suitcase. But the way the wind blew all day, I knew we were in for a cold night. We’ve had cold nights before, but I was just too lazy to take it out of the bag. But I finally broke. I was extraordinarily happy when I woke up at 4:30, shivering. I wrapped myself up and slept for a few more hours before waking up for good.

I had a busy morning ahead of me – 110 exams to correct. If my students were happy to have multiple choice, I was elated. Grading multiple choice exams is so much easier than questions and answers. Even so, I still only finished two-thirds of the exams before lunch. Our lunch was especially delicious today: we saved some of the chili from last night to throw in our eggs. It tasted like a delicious breakfast burrito.

My last set of exams were especially easy to grade. I don’t know why, but the classes on the science track always outperform the letters track. After the first student failed his exam, I had no other failures. Correct answers certainly facilitate grading. I had a little time to relax before giving another exam, which I spent throwing the Frisbee with Richie.

Most of the students in today’s class knocked out the exam quickly. For the most part, students were finished by the end of the first class period. As always, though, one of my best students stuck around until the very end, to discuss the exam. He scored well, as usual, although he didn’t seem satisfied with his 92%. I guess that’s good – he’s driven and expects perfection of himself. But in a system where 50% is passing, 92% is pretty damn amazing.

As Richie took care of dinner last night, I felt obligated to take care of dinner tonight. I made stir fry, with the addition of a few ingredients purchased in Vilanculos: bean sprouts and fake hot dogs. Okay, so it’s not gourmet, but at this point, meat is meat. I helped out a colleague with some computer issues before our nightly watching of “South Park.” Once the lights went out, I lit up the candles to do some reading before going to bed.

I woke up around 3:30 to the sound of rain. Great – another cold day to come ahead. When we woke up for good, Richie and I knew that it would be a day that would need to end with cookies. There were two factors that caused this: for one, Richie was giving exams today, so he knew he would be pissed off by the end of the day; the more important factor is that we are celebrating the beginning of July. We have had this date pegged for a while. We’re on the downside of the year, on the brink of reaching vacation. We know that July will treat us well.

Today was committed to work, my last real work day for a long time. And even this work day wouldn’t be a full day’s work. I had one set of exams to grade, for a class that has done well throughout the year. And this exam was no exception: only one out of 40 students failed, by far the best of my classes. With my work done quickly, I spent the rest of the morning with Kakuro.

I had to face two more classes after lunch, one of which was my big cheating class. I did not look forward to seeing them one bit. But much to my surprise, both my cheating class and the other class were pretty good. Between the two classes, I only had to move four students – four who typically have wandering eyes. When I graded there exams, though, it became evident why so many in that group have cheated: they’re not the brightest bulbs in the room. Even on the multiple choice exam, some students found a way to fail, miserably: I didn’t think it was possible, but at least two managed to “earn” fifteen percent on the exam.

My work day ended once the energy came on. With all of the exams graded, I punched them into my gradesheet, ready to be turned in next week. Richie, on the other hand, had a lot of work to do. Three of his classes took exams and he was not happy when he came back from his classes – too many cheaters. While Richie worked, I took care of dinner. Luckiy, grading for him went quickly, so I stuck him with making the cookie batter. We spent the night with cookies and “South Park.” As soon as those first cookies were eaten, all was forgotten, all was right with the world. I spoke to my sister before turning in to bed for some reading.

The clouds from yesterday stayed around just long enough to cause a bit of trouble. We were really hoping that this rain would be just a one-day thing, but nature has decided otherwise. It’s fuckin freezing – at least to us, now that our bodies are used to heat. It’s kind of ridiculous being bundled up in a long-sleeve shirt, sweatpants and a sweatshirt. This is the kind of weather that makes you want to stay in bed all day.

But there were things, albeit few, to be done today. I made an uneventful quick run to the market early in the morning. Richie came back from his class within minutes of me returning to a locked house, and he was more pissed off than yesterday. As he thought would happen, students from yesterday’s classes told the students from today’s class what the questions were. On his game, Richie changed all of the questions last night. I sat next to him on the patio as he graded, waiting, almost hoping, that someone would get a zero, banking on getting a perfect score using the answers from the last class. It took some time, but it actually happened – quite impressive. Once complete, we knocked off the rest of the cookies from last night, and everything was better.

The rest of the morning was quiet. Grading took up quite some time: by the time he finished, it was already 10:00. We spent the rest of the morning trying to answer questions out of a Mensa book. Put together, Richie and I almost make an intelligent human being. Regardless, it proved to be a nice distraction, especially from studying GRE vocab. I had planned to study for a lot of the day, but why study when there are puzzles to be solved?

After lunch, I ran over to the school to make an announcement to all of my classes. Today would be the last opportunity for any students to take the final. There were just a few absences, maybe five or six out of all of the classes, so you can understand my frustration when only one student showed up. Well, it’s one less that I have to run down next week. Or I could just give them all zeros. We’ll see what kind of mood I am in after the weekend.

We returned to stir fry dinner tonight, which was pretty good. It’s such a quick and easy meal to make that we were left with almost two and half hours to do nothing. We watched an hour of “South Park” before Richie went to read. I cleaned up a little – less that we have to do tomorrow – before folding myself into a magazine.

When we woke up at 4:00, neither of us really wanted to go anywhere. But were committed: Mangunde or bust. The Volunteers in Mangunde were kind enough (and probably crazy enough) to host a Fourth of July party. So for the first time in a long time, we headed northerly. The 4:00 wake up is enough to remind us why we choose to travel south instead of north.

The road out from Machanga was in the best shape that we have seen it. The government is pouring more than a million Meticais into the road and it’s starting to show. It should be lovely until the next rainy season. We got onto the high with no problem, but then bad luck hit: we popped a tire a good ways away from our destination and the driver had no spare. Idiot. The driver eventually got a ride into the next closest town, probably some 60 kilometers away. We decided that if we could get a boleia, we would take it. A few cars passed us by before a red car stopped for us. The exchange that occurred was a little strange: I asked all the questions in Portuguese and all of the responses came back in English. Either way, we got ourselves an awesome ride from a lawyer named Jamal. He spoke fluent English and drove like an American, getting us to the crossroads in amazing time.

We expected to wait a long time at the crossroads for Mangunde. A car was due to pick us up late in the afternoon, but we were fortunate to catch a ride sitting on top of crates of sodas and beers. The drive into Mangunde is beautifully empty: I don’t think we passed a house in the first 15 kilometers of the trip. If it’s possible to have less nothing than the road to Machanga, the road to Mangunde has it. But once we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised. Mangunde is one of the four schools under the ESMABAMA umbrella, which also includes Machanga, Estaquinha, and Barrada. From what we have heard, it is the most developed of the four sites. They are on the same three hour energy cycle that we currently sit on. And paradoxically, they lack reliable phone coverage but have wireless internet.

We arrived at the very tail end of lunch, which proved to be beneficial. The Brazilian Brothers from the church had cooked up a feijoada (beans and shaved pork) that was out of this world. The also had actual beef, the first beef I’ve eaten in a long time. Full of energy after eating, I played a little basketball with Edgar – our Portuguese friend – and some students from the school.

The night was pretty relaxing. The Volunteers’ empragada cooked up some killer food for us and we spent the night drink in hand, catching up with other Volunteers who made their way in to town later in the afternoon. As we are used to, the lights went out at 9:00 and we made our way into bed.

The Fourth of July was celebrated in style. The morning was casual. The host Volunteers took us for a tour of the school grounds, which was significantly larger than the school in Machanga. After walking around for a while, we alternated between drinking and playing Frisbee and football with some kids. Sometimes, we did both at the same time. We ate a lunch full of carbs before more Volunteers, drunk off their asses already, arrived into town.

The Brazilian Brothers took care of dinner for us. The pork that was used in the feijoada was just the beginning: they were going to roast the remainder of the pig, Brazilian barbeque style, for dinner. I’ve never been one to eat pork, but this dinner changed all of that. As they cooked it, a small crew gathered around the barbeque and starting taking samples, direct from barbeque to hand to mouth – no plate necessary. And I was just drunk enough to sample the heart, which wasn’t that bad, and the brain, which I would not recommend to anyone. To wrap up the night, and a pretty good week, we put up a little bonfire and continued catching up with long-lost souls.