Year 1 - Week 31: Bad News Beira

Sundays were always the worst days in training, mostly because I had nothing to occupy my mind. Even at site, Sundays are usually pretty lame. It’s not like we can go bowling in Machanga, so most of our weekends are just sitting around being lazy. But this Sunday was one that I actually looked forward to because it represented the end five days of loneliness. It’s funny how things have changed in just a few months. A couple of months ago, staying just one night alone was torturous. But these five days, although boring as all hell, were tolerable.

This was also by far the most productive day I’ve had alone. In anticipation of my trip to Beira on Monday, and with Simbanhe (our new clothes-washer) out of town, I was left to do laundry by myself for the first time since, umm, training. It turned out to be not so bad. The weather was perfect for sitting outside and it ate up a good chunk of my morning, leaving me just a little time to mess up a whole bunch of Kakuros.

After lunch, one of my colleagues – the person who ran science fair with Richie – asked me to “passear” with him. I hate passear-ing (one thing that we really enjoy is taking Portuguese verbs and adding gerunds to them or making them past tense). Usually, it just means walking around for absolutely no purpose but to kill time. For a change, though, this had a purpose: we had to talk to the chapa driver to arrange seats for tomorrow. We left at 3:00 in the afternoon, but I figured the chapa would get in later than that, so I grabbed my GRE vocab book just in case. Of course, the chapa didn’t arrive until 4:15. It proved to be a productive hour or so of studying.

The chapa driver had no problem saving the six seats for us. What he didn’t know was when he would leave: “any time between an hour from now and 6 AM”. Thanks. We returned home and I packed immediately, although I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be turning the chapa around that quickly. Once the energy flipped on, I cooked and ate quickly, thinking a departure would be more likely. Just as I finished eating, we were given a departure time: 8:30 PM. Ugh.

8:30, of course, turned into 9:30. While we waited, I showed the science fair kids the magic tricks that I had showed other kids earlier in the week. They ate it up with a spoon. We loaded into the chapa at 9:30 and I knew from the onset that I wouldn’t be sleeping. The driver, needing to stay awake after driving down from Beira earlier in the day, blasted Eminem, 50 Cent, Nas, and any other rap he could get his hands on. By the time we reached Inchope (the crossroads for Beira), the driver switched out rap for a three dedication to Michael Jackson.

We arrived in Beira, weary and filth-covered, at 6:15. A chapa picked us up and took us in the general direction of our hotel, although we had to cover the last half-kilometer or so by foot. As we got close, we ran into Richie, who took us in the rest of the way. While the students slept in the hotel, I mostly hung around being lazy, too tired to sleep. After eating, I was a little more alive and actually productive. Along with a couple other Volunteers, I put together some prize packets to be distributed to the science fair participants.

Late in the afternoon, I made my way over the school’s office, on the other side of Beira. I situated myself on a couch, broadband internet connection in hand, and enjoyed the internet for hours on end. I didn’t even bring myself to eat: I was too enamored with talking to family, downloading grad school information, doing all the things I can’t do on my crappy internet connection in Machanga. Around midnight, I was finally spent. I left myself with two jobs for Tuesday: update anti-virus and go to the post office.

Neither of them, agonizingly, would be done. I woke up to a computer that would not stay on for more than two minutes. Just as with humans, viruses spread rampantly in computers here, and a bad one got to mine. I spent the entire day (save for twenty minutes for lunch) trying to figure out how to eliminate this beast of a virus, but it wasn’t meant to be. Adding insult to injury, no one in the ESMABAMA office could take me, as promised, to the post office. From a peak of elation last night, I dropped into an abyss of frustration; it was the kind of day that should be forgotten, although it won’t be forgotten easily. I went to bed, again without dinner, but this time out of frustration and not of business.

I arose early Wednesday morning with hopes of resolving my computer issues again. Virus-scan ran successfully although it failed to eliminate the virus haunting my computer. Out of my control, I tried to let it go. I melted off some of the stress with a hot shower, but the true stress relief didn’t come until I arrived at the post office. Seven packages, from April to June, sat at the post office waiting for me. It took three attempts – papers needing to be stamp, bureaucracy taking up time – but I finally got my hands on my packages, as well as three for Richie. After a day at the top and a day at the bottom, I felt like I was on top again. Even with my computer mostly shot, I was still overjoyed.

The successes continued throughout the day. I managed my documents and pictures to a flash drive, so all was not totally lost. My music still resides on my iPod so I don’t need to worry about that. And following a delicious Italian-made dinner – pasta with real Italian sauce and monster prawns – I returned to my computer, giving it one more shot at salvation. It was not meant to be. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t be knocked off this hill, and crystal-clear phone calls from my brother and dad kept me soaring. All said, I went to bed around 12:30…

Which probably wasn’t the best idea, considering I had to be up at 3:30 to catch the chapa from Beira back to Machanga. One of the people working in the office gave me a ride to the chapa stop, where I was the first one to arrive. I killed some time finishing off the intro to “Rhetoric”. In the process, I was humored by the presence of the word “jejunity,” a word I learned just a few weeks ago. It was a word I had never seen until I started studying for GREs, and by strange coincidence, it appeared in the first book I’ve read since studying.

Typically the chapa would arrive between 4:30 and 5:00, but on this day, it didn’t arrive until 6:00. By that time, nearly 60 people had showed up looking to get back to Machanga. With a maximum capacity of maybe 20 or 25, there were going to be a lot of unhappy people.

Conincidence struck again on a travel day. Around 5:15, Sozinho, our old clothes-washer/best friend showed up at the chapa stop. He greeted me with a traditional handshake, followed by an untraditional hug. And even in my exhausted state, I managed to understand him.

Considering that I was the first one there, one would think that I would have a spot. Ha! People rushed the doors, and I was given little chance. But that little chance was a huge help: the school director was already on the chapa. He grabbed one of my backs, threw it on the seat, and it was “ocupado”. Sweet. My eyes were closed most of the way, but a little girl with a penchant for stepping on my feet kept me awake for the entirety of the trip.


With a box in one hand, a bag in the other, and a backpack over my shoulders, I labored back to school from the villa. I was happy to be back in Machanga, with no obligations, far, far away from Beira. I settled in on the porch, opened up my packages and organized all of the goodies my family sent me. Having nothing to do, I sat down and started catching up on “Newsweek” magazines from March. Old news is good news when it’s in English. Once the energy came on, I cooked up one of the boxes of macaroni and cheese my mom sent me. I’d be damned if I had to eat tomato sauce tonight.

After eating, I headed over to the computer lab to help out a teacher with computer stuff – basic stuff like copying, cutting, and pasting. I told him that he should be included on the tech lessons. What got me, though, was the ease with which I was able to have a reasonable conversation about computers in Portuguese, especially since I could barely string a sentence together earlier in the afternoon. The variability of competence with Portuguese, 10 months into this job, remains the single most frustrating part of life here.

By 8:30, I crawled into bed, saddled up with “Newsweek” and fell asleep within minutes of the energy going off.

I slept through a night in Machanga – with no wake-ups – for the first time in months. And when I mean slept through, I mean it: I woke up at almost 9:00. I guess physical and mental exhaustion will do that to a person. And the best part of waking up at 9:00 is that half the morning is gone. I remember when I was younger that my brother, an early riser, would mock me for sleeping until 9 or 10 or 11 o’clock (“Half of your day is already gone!”), but here, I will be overjoyed if I can make it to those hours.

Also, for the first time in a long time, I failed to clean the house in the morning. I treaded lightly last night, so there was little to be done in the morning. I ran to the market and picked up items that would last me through the weekend. After all, I would be on the road again on Sunday, this time to Vilanculos to pick up computers for some teachers. I returned around 11:15, and by then, it’s time to start thinking about lunch.

After eating, I had little to do in the afternoon, yet it still passed quickly. I knocked off a couple of magazines, running to a shop to by bread in between a “Time” and a “Newsweek”. And the house, once again occupied, earned a good cleaning. Soon enough, 5:30 arrived, and the cooking began. The night was committed to more reading. It’s hard to catch up on news, especially when it’s three months old (and especially when so much of the news is about an economy from which I am so far removed). With some time to spare in the evening, I made myself some cookies, which always go a long way.

My streak of sleeping through the night ended at one. I woke up at 3:30, refreshed and dry-mouthed. Options at 3:30 are limited. I peaked outside to see a crescent moon rising over the trees, but quickly turned back to the sanctuary of my bed. I rolled around for maybe an hour or two before sleeping again until 8:30.

More reading – in fact, only reading – was on the agenda for Saturday. No market run was to be made: just as quickly as I returned to Machanga, I will be heading out again on Sunday. Few dishes were to be washed, a task a took care of early, just to get it out of the way. The rest of my time, before preparing and cooking lunch, was dedicated to “Newsweek”.

What followed after lunch was much more of the same: a couple more magazines knocked out, interspersed with a bit of Kakuro. By the end of the afternoon, my head was pounding – although the number of chocolate chip cookies I ate my account for some of that. I gave my head a chance to relax by cleaning up the house, a job always done before heading out of town. When the pain was gone, I was right back into the magazines.

I cooked another dinner for just me, a task that I hate yet one that I have become accustomed to. There are two nice parts about cooking for one. Firstly, no plate is required. Most of what I cook is spaghetti or rice, and I am just fine eating it right out of the pot. Sounds like college, right? The other nice thing is that I pretty much can do what I want while I eat. The truth is, most nights, Richie and I eat in silence, enjoying – or at least, trying to enjoy – the food that sits in front of us. Being along, I have the ability to read, play music. Or as comedian Jim Gaffigan would probably note, I don’t even have to put on pants.

The week of ups and downs ended on an up-note, I am happy to say. Three of the four computers coming out here with friends and family of Volunteers have arrived in country. The last will arrive on Sunday. I am thrilled at the prospect of teaching teachers how to use these computers. Hopefully, they will learn from my mistakes and update anti-virus in a timely manner.