Year 1 - Week 45: Seriously, it's a Scantron

Now that school is officially over, this place has gone way too quiet for anyone’s liking. Combined with our lack of new media, we are left with little to do, little to read, and little to watch. Thankfully, I still had a couple chapter’s left of my dad’s book. And luckily, I can only read one chapter at a time because, well, it’s a text book.

Once I finished the chapter, though, there was nothing to really do. I scoured the house for something interesting and found Richie’s game book. Over the year here, I’ve learned a lot of things about Richie. He can’t roll his r’s. He’s a Jets fan. He likes bologna. And these types of games are not his forte. They kept me occupied in the hours before lunch.

After a lovely post-lunch nap, Richie and I headed to the vila for a cold soda. It’s not so much that we wanted soda; we just needed a way to kill an hour of the afternoon. Our effort to get through the afternoon was further aided by a soccer game. Usually, I won’t go to such games – they are usually just opportunities to be on the receiving end of stares – but today, it was worthwhile.

Along with our daily activities rut, we have hit a serious rut in our food choices. Pasta has nearly been taken off the table. We can only eat so much rice and potatoes. But tonight, I felt ambitious. I decided to take another crack at making ravioli. Usually, the first time we cook something, it sucks, and the second time, it’s better. The pattern remained true with ravioli. Better, yes, but it was far from perfect. Richie thought it was okay, but I thought it was mediocre. Our mediocre meal was followed by a mediocre film, “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay”. It had its laughs, but it was not nearly as funny as the original.

I was sleeping a lovely sleep when, at 6:10, somebody decided that it was okay to knock on the door. There are some things I will never get used to here: the constant “estou a pedir milis” from children, the ridiculous music, the fact that people tend to speak in either a whisper or a yell, but not between. But the crazy hour at which people start their days tops the list. I don’t care where I am – 6:10 is not an acceptable hour to be the recipient of a knock on the door.

After dealing with the knock at the door, I crawled back into bed to do some reading. Once the reasonable hour of 7:30 had arrived, I woke up to the rest of the world. The moring on the pario was fairly productive. I got in a lovely workout, topped off by pumping a couple buckets worth of water.

I actually had a class to teach in the afternoon following lunch. I continued preparing my twelfth grade students for their national exams. Apparently, they are going to be putting out a schedule of when these prep sessions will take place, but I really don’t care. They can use all the practice they can get.

The class lasted about an hour. Most of they them did pretty well with the material. It was nice to see them applying the test-taking techniques that I taught them last week.

I had a couple hours of break before we were due to gave a 4:00 meeting. As meetings usually start about 45 minutes late, I brought my iPod, prepared for the worst. Shockingly, the meeting started 4:05. The topic of the meeting was of great importance: the energy situation. It seems that there is actual progress. A date of November 5th was set to buy materials for the hook-up. Quite fantastic. I’ll believe it when I see it.

A couple of us talked after the meeting. There is some concern amongst the teachers that they won’t be able to pay for the materials, pay the bill, etc. I suspect people will find a way. They have waited too many months – hell, too many years – for energy to arrive. Sacrifices, I’m sure, will be made.

For now, though, the energy situation remains out of our control. Once the powers that be flipped the switch, we cooked up our dinner and watched some “Curb Your Enthusiasm” before bed.

I was once again the victim of an early wake-up Tuesday morning. This time the perpetrator was our friend and fellow teacher Ussene, via text message. At least he had the good sense to not knock at the door at an unreasonable hour. The message said that I needed to turn in my twelfth grades okay. I saved my grades onto a flash drive, ran over to the director’s office, and handed in my grades. No work necessary.

The energy was on for most of the morning. It has been on for most of the mornings this week. Strange, to say the least. What’s more strange is that I really haven’t been sure what to do with myself. Internet is too expensive to just mess around on it. All I can really do is charge batteries. Funny what a year will do to you: from not knowing what to do without energy to not knowing what to do with it.

I tried to teach Tuesday afternoon. I really did. I walked over to the class, but no one was there. And when I say no one, I mean no one. I even went back to the classroom ten minutes later, but no one was there, still. Defeated, I gave up.

I finished my dad’s book upon my return It was definitely better the second time around. I guess after all the edits and all the eyes, it should be better. Finishing the book was the beginning of my master plan for the afternoon. I could work out and shower before dinner and have a lovely evening. But no. All of that was ruined by another meeting.

This meeting was ridiculous. Actually, it was beyond ridiculous. There were four points to be covered in the meeting and we barely got through the first one: rules for teachers during testing and how to fill out a scantron form. During the meeting, by Richie’s request, I drew a samurai killing himself, a man jumping off a bridge into a sea of sharks, and a person getting electrocuted. All of these alternatives seemed better than sitting in this meeting.

There is only one way to deal with such torture: sweets. We know that cookies make everything better, but tonight we took a different route – brownies. They weren’t exactly pretty, but damn they were delicious. A cup of butter, a cup of sugar, a cup of flower and cup of cocoa go a long way.

I was up early again on Wednesday, but I was actually up on my own volition. Alexis came over to go for a passear with Richie to the salt fields. Apparently there is a place not so far from here where the tide rolls in and out and leaves plenty of salt. I chose not to embark on this mission. If I want salt, I’ll go to my kitchen.

While Richie and Alexis were out an about, I had myself a lovely morning. I went out for a quick wake-up bike ride around town, followed by a workout. I pumped some water – a nice finish to the workout – showered, and did some laundry. In a place where it’s so easy to do nothing, it felt good to do something.

Richie returned from the salt field looking like a man defeated. He didn’t just look exhausted from what turned out to be a much longer walk than he anticipated. Courtesy of a bad choice in footwear, the skin of his pinky toes was gone. I looked on horrified – and glad that I chose not to go on this little journey.

I took care of lunch. It was the least I could do. Plus Richie was asleep. Could you blame him? I would get my nap in later in the afternoon. Being the day after I took my malaria meds, I knew I was in for a trippy sleep.

One of the biggest downsides of this malaria drug is that when you have really vivid dreams, you can’t really tell if you are awake or asleep. The dream that I had felt so real. I know I was out like a light for at least an ninety minutes, but it wasn’t a restful sleep: it felt like I was constantly on the move. I felt more tired after my nap than I did before it.

I eventually woke out of my post-nap haze. Late in the afternoon, Richie and I met Alexis over in the vila for a soda. If two muzungus isn’t enough to grab your attention, you can only imagine what having three of us together does.

When we got home, I had two missions. The first one was a piece of cake. I wanted to fix our front door. For months, we have struggled to lock and unlock our door from the outside. Today though was the breaking point. After trying for five minutes to lock the door, we gave up. The brilliant minds that installed our door failed to properly align the lock with the catch. That was an easy fix.

The bike however was a different story. There was one small screw that was keeping our newly purchased baggage holder from fitting nicely. I figured, what’s one little screw? Apparently, that one little screw held the entire gearbox in place. Oops. I tried to fix it, but darkness fell before I could get it to fit. Bike: 1 – Lee 0.

Before getting to dinner, our neighbor came over with some minor computer inquiry. He had typed up the list of students taking national exams – an accomplishment in itself. All he needed now was to have it printed. I grabbed a flash drive, headed to the director’s office, and printed off the materials. After eating, Richie and I enjoyed a couple “Seinfeld” episodes before bed.

If nothing else, butchering the bike last night gave me something to do Thursday morning. I’m pretty good at breaking things, but I am also fortunate to have received a fraction of the mechanical skills that my grandfather has. As with the door situation, if something is broken, I can usually fix it.

Such was the case with the bike. After an initial struggle, followed by some help from a teacher whose interest only went so far as wanting to use it, I pretty much figured out how to get the gearbox back in place. I don’t know if it’s perfect – in fact, it probably isn’t – but for what we need, it’s more than functional. It’s not like either of us is going to be hitting the Pyrenees or the Alps any time soon.

As I worked on the bike, Richie made his way over to a funeral. It was never really made clear who had died and it was no one who I had personally dealt with, so I didn’t see much reason to go. It turns out that it was the school librarian, with whom I had spoken exactly zero. As told by Richie, no one really said what he had died from, but apparently he had been sick for a long time.

When you hear something like that – non-descriptive, enduring – there is really only one answer: AIDS. It’s the pink elephant in the room that everybody sees, even acknowledges, but nobody is willing to say “Look, a pink elephant!” In a country where one in six are living with HIV/AIDS, most people want to fight it with exigency, but refuse to declare it as the cause of death. Diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis, or the flu might be the proverbial final nail in the coffin, but they become sick with these diseases only because their systems have been so weakened that they are susceptible to even the weakest of strains.

Upon Richie’s return, we cooked up lunch. Richie noted that he had pretty much bottomed out for the day. I guess a funeral will do that to you. I was supposed to cook lunch, as Richie was responsible for the preparation, but that came to an end when our neighbor came over with a computer question.

It’s a beautiful thing to see, these teachers using computers. But there’s still a long way to go. Our neighbor had a list of names that he wanted to alphabetize. This is an easy task, but it was made a little more complicated by the combination of manually typed numbers and auto-numbering. The intent here was good, but it just shows a lack of experience. All the more reason to continue with more intensive computer classes when we have full time energy.

The afternoon was full of boredom. I tried to read, but I was severely lacking in motivation. Games provided me a brief respite, but I think I spent more time than not just staring into space. This place may kill us.

Our night was, as normal, quiet. Other than a money request from a student – the worst kind of a request, the type we almost always deny – we were uninterrupted both during dinner and “V for Vendetta”, one of the better movies we have watched here.

For not doing anything of substance for the better part of the week, Richie and I both were shocked at the relative speed with which this week has passed. It’s hard to believe that it’s already Friday, considering that the days have been so slow that I can feel my beard growing.

Richie finally had the good sense to not roll out of bed until a later morning hour. Mornings can be awfully long when you wake up at 5:00. Making yourself available to the world at a reasonable hour like 8:00 takes three hours off your morning without even trying.

There was really not much to speak of Friday morning. I know that I did a lot of sitting on the patio, reading ancient magazines and writing tiny letters and numbers into small boxes. But other than that, there wasn’t a lot going on.

Somehow, we got to 11:30 without knowing. Usually, we are beyond prepared for lunch by then, but in some way, it got passed us. Time flies when you are doing nothing.

It goes by even faster when you do something. I got in good lower-body workout (all done on the patio, of course). My neighbors looked on briefly, and I think they tried to talk to me, but I was plugged into my iPod and I really didn’t want to talk to anyone.

We made plans with some of our neighbors to go out tonight, which just gave me good reason to lay down for a little while. I didn’t sleep, but it still felt better than sitting or standing.

By 4:00, we were just waiting for the energy to come on. At 5:00, Richie stated that “we’ll have energy in the next hour”. No less than three minutes later, the energy was on. It almost made me a believer. Almost.

We cooked dinner on the early side and after a couple of episodes of “Seinfeld”, we put on our drinking pants and headed to the villa. It was kind of an awkward group of people to drink with, definitely not our usually crew. They rolled in, very drunk, about an hour after we arrived. But by the time they arrived, we were over it. We finished our beers and left.

I woke up, after a good night’s sleep, feeling pretty terrible. Besides the minor alcohol-induced headache, my entire lower body was really sore. I guess its better to have a small headache and be very sore than have a monster headache and only be a little sore.

In spite of not doing much of anything, the morning passed by pretty quickly. At some point, Richie went out for a bike ride and returned very burnt. It’s not riding right, which pisses me off. At least I have plenty of time to figure out what’s wrong.

The post-lunch boredom was kept to a minimum because of a nap. It was one of those larium-induced “sleeps” where I really wasn’t sure if I was awake or asleep for most of it. I figured since I woke up feeling refreshed, I must have slept at least a little.

Richie roped me in to going to the villa late in the afternoon. After drinking a fair amount last night, I wasn’t really in the mood to drink beers, but what can I do? Someone else is buying. Our trip was made worthwhile when after three beers, our friend busted out a plate of cheese. Success!

The energy came on shortly after we returned home. Because we were cooking beans tonight, we chose to light up charcoal instead of using the stove. The beans (and rice, for that matter) seem to cook better on the charcoal. Of course, once we get twenty-four hour energy, I’ll be damned if I have to light charcoal.

Considering our desperate lack of media, Richie proposed that we watch a movie called “Devon’s Ghost”. It sounded pretty shitty to start with and the fact that it was all overdubbed in Portuguese made it worse. Amazing, it did not reach our low expectations. I’ve seen a lot of bad movies, but this one might sit at the top of the list. A fitting end to the week, for sure.

Year 1 - Week 44: See My CIty Dead

Things are slow. Really slow. But slow can sometimes be good. Slow gives me time to be productive. And on this slow Sunday, I was productive. We have been really slack on cleaning up the house these days. Sure, we’ve cleaned our dishes and pots and pans, but sweeping and mopping have really been pushed to the back. This quiet, slow morning gave me the opportunity to do all those things plus some.

The saddest part of all of this cleaning up was having to put away all of my “cold” weather clothing. For the last couple weeks, it has been hot. It’s not yet intolerable eat, but it’s definitely hot enough that the time has come for fans and not for blankets. Along with my blanket, my sweatshirt, sweat pants and long-sleeve shirt all got packed away, gone until the colder nights return.

Cleaning took almost the entire morning. After lunch, the boredom began. I cracked open a sudoku book to see something very interesting: some strange variations on regular sudoku. I figured, what the hell, I can probably figure this out. I spent the afternoon obsessed with the book. Before I knew it, the afternoon was gone. Dinner had arrived. We ate our chow, watched some “30 Rock” and went to bed, fans blowing cool air on our faces.

Monday was the most important day for many Mozambicans, and it was important for us too. “Dia do Professor” – Teacher’s Day – meant more than just a day off work, a day that we had no reason to teach anyway. Following a small procession from the town square toward the vila, the activities began. Like Sunday, things started slowly – just a beer. But then more people showed up. Our table of six quickly polished off on bottle of terrible scotch. And by ten o’clock, we were on to the second. One would think that bad scotch would get better as you had more of it. Nope. The second bottle was worse than the first.

By 11:30, we were tired, drunk, hungry, and not wanting to drink any more scotch. We returned home for a quick, undercooked lunch. Instead of heading back to the vila, we decided that an hour siesta would be a good idea.

After our naps, we actually wanted to head to the vila, but we were stopped half way there. A group of teachers were drinking and the secondary school, so we joined them for a good while. From there, we went back to the vila to continue to the festa. And once we were done drinking at the vila (again), we went back to the secondary school (again). There was supposed to be a monster party, but after waiting for two hours, we gave up. We don’t know if the party happened, we didn’t really care. We were just happy to be done drinking.

I felt absolutely terrible Tuesday morning. But I wasn’t hung over at all. Not on bit. Aside from the test that I had to proctor for one of our friends, my problems on Tuesday morning were purely mental. I was a wreck and I had to do something about it. So I took my bike and just went. And went. And went. I went until the “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah” album was finished. Eleven kilometers later, I turned around, into the wind, and went home.

Nothing like a twenty-two kilometer bike ride in the African heat to clear your mind. All of the pain that was in my head transferred to my legs. Stretching would have been a good idea. Besides clearing my head and sweating out whatever alcohol was left in my system, the bike ride managed to kill nearly the entire morning.

After lunch, I actually had some work to do. Calling it “some” would even overdo it. I had three classes to teach to my twelfth graders. All of the material was test preparation. In theory, they should already know the vocabulary and structures, so I just wanted to give some lessons on how to take an exam. They seemed to soak up the lesson pretty well.

By the end of the day, my head was completely clear and my leg was absolutely killing me. I limped my way around as Richie and I cooked dinner. After dining, we watched “The Bank Job”, a pretty good film. What started out as a terrible day ended up okay.

I had another productive day Wednesday morning, with a couple of factors at play today. For one, Richie went off to the vila, and never really came back. Apparently, after buying some potatoes, the school director hooked him into having a beer…or four…at 8:30 in the morning. While he was out, I started cleaning up the house. Then a call from our boss came in. He was across the river and wanted to come over. Of course, we were happy to have him over, and it just gave me more reason to clean up more.

Our boss made it to our house before Richie got back. Very impressive, on both counts. He joined us on our patio for a while before they headed out to buy some supplies.

The clean-up didn’t stop once he left. But this clean-up was personal. I finally got sick of my three month old goatee. And while I was at, I shaved my head clean for the first time in nearly a year. Using a clipper is fine and all, but I forgot how glorious a shave with a blade is. Now everything in the house, including me, was squeaky clean.

After relaxing for a bit, Richie and I made a joint market run. During his morning-long booze fest, Richie was informed that meat would be sold in the market today. Sweet! We downed a soda and headed over to the butcher. When we arrived, all we saw was a cow hide spread over a tarp with buckets at its side. Nothing like fresh-killed meat. It should make for a couple good days of eating.

We used about half of our kilo of meat for always delicious cheesesteaks. Once our stomachs were bloated, we watched “Slumdog Millionaire”, a really well-done film.

When the lights went out, I picked up with my regular dark-time activities. For the last week, I’ve been reading my dad’s newest book “Confronting Reality: Ten Issues Threatening to Implode American Society (And How We Can Fix It)”. (Go get it on Amazon!) It’s very exciting for me to read because I read almost every word of the drafts last year. To have a bound form in my hands is pretty cool

The other habit I’ve picked up on this week is taking a couple of minutes to appreciate the stars. As we get ever closer to having full-time energy, I’ve come to realize that I won’t have this Planetarium-like view again. I have to soak it all in while I can, before technology robs me of it.

Richie and I were both up at insanely early hours. Richie is usually up by 5, but I normally refuse to roll out of bed until at least 7:00. But today I was up and at it. Considering that we were both awake, Richie proposed something new: breakfast. It took ten months, but for the first time in Machanga, we had a real breakfast at an appropriate hour.

Even after eating though, there was still so much of the morning left. I ran over to the well to pump some water and put myself to use. Our dish towels were in dire need of a cleaning, and with the pounding sun, it only took ninety minutes to hand-wash and sun-dry them. That killed off most of the morning, but I was still left a little time to relax.

We had a stir fry lunch today, which is always good, but it was especially good to use beef. One of our colleagues keeps an iced over freezer in his house. We passed our beef to him yesterday, assuring ourselves of having good meat today. No need to gamble it like we did last time.

I had a mere one class to teach today to one of my groups of twelfth graders – just more test prep today. After I finished with them, Richie went to their class to watch some presentations. And then the fun began.

We ran over to the vila for a soda. A cold soda. A cold soda courtesy of twenty-four hour energy in the vila! It arrived a couple months left, but as we thought, it arrived just in time for the election. I don’t know how many ballot votes it will win, but it certainly won our vote of approval.

The nights was pretty calm. I put together a packing list for my family’s trip here. I know it’s close now (something like seventy days away)! We cooked up a chili dinner with our remaining beef and watched a couple of episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. And as I have done all week, I had my minutes with the stars and hour with my dad’s book.

So many days here, Mozambique defeats us. One more occasions than I can count, we have days or even mornings where we just want to give up and try again the next today. But today: today was different. Today, we won.

Around 9:30, after eating some bread and cleaning the house, Richie and I headed over to Mambone. We had a couple things to do. Primarily, we wanted to eat some chicken at Zimaima, a restaurant in Mambone. But we also wanted to get a part for our bike and say goodbye to a colleague who is heading home.

We hit the Mambone vila at 10:30. The part we were looking for – a small rack to throw over our back tire – was difficult to come by. But in a rare moment of resilience, we chose not to give up and found it on our third try.

Our reward for our morning’s work was some delicious chicken from Zimaima. It’s so lovely to have someone cook a meal for us. The only downside to Zimaima is that they take forever. But even that couldn’t deter us. The timing was nearly perfect. With just a twenty minute lag-time, we caught our friend who heads back to the states this weekend. He is the first of what will be many friends lost to completed service.

By mid-afternoon, we had purchased our bike part, eaten our chicken, said goodbye to a friend, and even bought bell pepper. A full day of victories, all packed in one five-hour period.

We arrived at the river just as a boat was about to leave. The successes continue. We figured that something would have to go wrong sometime this afternoon, but it just never happened. Once we got back to Machanga, we spent some time attaching the part to our bike. Again, we failed a few times, but after twenty or so minutes, we had it figured out, attached perfectly.

This was way too much success for one day. Something had to go wrong. And it finally did. My grandfather tried to call, but neither of my lines worked. But clearly, resilience runs in the family. He tried Richie’s line and got through with no problem. Another victory.

After all this success today, we rewarded ourselves with a delicious sandwich dinner. Our regular sandwiches were made better by the addition of honey mustard. Honey: good. Mustard: good. Honey mustard: delicious. Following dinner and a shower, we watched some “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, a perfect end to a near perfect day.

Richie was sure that since everything went so right yesterday, things were bound to go wrong today. For him, this may have been true. But things weren’t so bad today. It wasn’t like yesterday. Things just sort of went.

Yesterday was the last official day of school, so things are now especially quiet. Some kids have already found their way off of school grounds. Others are sticking around to take national exams. But the whole, there is not a lot going on. This place is dead.

Quiet doesn’t begin to describe the morning, but it wasn’t too bad. I knocked out another chapter of my dad’s book and played and knocked out a good round KenKen puzzles. Lunch could not come fast enough.

One of the upsides of a lot of quiet is that it makes napping more than possible. For two solid hours after lunch, I was out like a light. Nothing like a nap to kill off a good portion of the afternoon.

After naptime, we made our now-normal run to the market for a soda. These daily soda runs are going to put a major dent into our bottom line. For ten Mets a day, though, a cold soda is so worth it.

With the energy on, we got cracking on dinner. After powering through our stir fry, we decided we wanted to watch something with explosions. We thought that “Stop Loss”, a movie about the Iraq War, would provide such fireworks. Other than a couple scenes here and there, there was nothing. So this is where the day goes wrong. The movie sucked. I mean, really sucked. We wanted our two hours back.

The night and my week ended with another chapter of my dad’s book. It certainly saved my night. And it put a nice end to another week.

Year 1 - Week 43: And Done

We tried. Kind of.

The idea was to leave Vilanculos on Sunday, relax on Monday, and get back to work on Tuesday. I headed out to the market around 7:30 to see if the chapa had arrived, but nothing was there. Maybe it was just late. I returned around 8 and still it had not arrived. This was getting suspicious.

Having gone twice already, Richie relieved me of my duty. He staked out at the chapa stop around 8:30, but the chapa still had not arrived. And it wasn’t going to at all today. Richie called the chapa driver and because of the holiday, he was taking the day off. Reasonable, I guess, but it would have been nice to know earlier.
Prepped to leave…wasn’t meant to be

As other people started to leave, we figured that we could also get home. After all, getting north to Maluvane is easy, and we could probably get a ride from Maluvane to Mambone. But was it worth the risk? A hundred and fifty yards out of the house, Richie said, “I’m not opposed to staying another night”. This sentiment was echoed by Alexis, and then by me. Just like that, we were staying in Vilanculos for another night.

Getting home clearly was not meant to be. Us staying in Vilanculos for the day clearly was. Everything that could go right did. With our newly acquired bicycle, I rode down to the other end of town to order some pizzas for the three of us. Within minutes of the pizzas coming out of the oven, Richie and Alexis walked in. All we wanted this weekend was to eat pizza, and the extra day here gave us the opportunity.

And when in beautiful Vilanculos, you might as well go to the beach. And so we did. The ocean was absolutely fantastic, and to make the day better, a couple of artists came by to sell their work. Usually I’m standoffish with these people, but as we get closer to Christmas, I know that the prices are going to get out of control. I bought a nice painting and Alexis went crazy and got three.

Exhausted from the ocean, we decided to pretty much call it a day. We ran to the market to buy some dinner ingredients. Richie took care of dinner for the night. As it rained outside, we ate dinner and watched some “House”. By 8:30, wiped, we were all in bed.

My forehead was turned into a Braille book by Monday morning. Three nights of sleeping without a bed net did me in. We packed up our things, said our goodbyes (which was a lot less awkward today, since we were actually leaving), and headed out to the vila to catch our ride.

The chapa ride was tolerable, at least for Alexis and me. Richie was squeezed in between us, with one buttcheek on one seat and one on another seat. He also claimed that there was an umbrella poking his ass, but I didn’t see any umbrella.

On our walk back from the river to the our house, we saw a very small monkey run no more than twenty yards in front of us. Super cool.

We were once again happy to be back in Machanga. What a strange feeling. We cooked up some sandwiches, watched the end of season three of “Dexter” and called it a night.
I’ve decided that I like the taste of freedom, but with the sweet taste of freedom comes the bitter taste of boredom. A portion of my morning on Tuesday was trying to resolve a major issue with the GRE. There are only four days in between the GRE and the presidential election. And while we hope that nothing will go wrong, there are security risks. Our director worked vigilantly with the embassy and the GRE people to see what we can do about the situation. In the end, I took the safe way out: moving the test back until February. It probably won’t hurt my situation. While four months is a long time to wait – and as much as I just want to get the test done – it will probably prove beneficial in the long run.

I was back to work on Tuesday. This was it – the grand finale. Two more days of work and I’m done for the year. All I have to do is hand back exams. Once again, luck was one my side. It looks like Year Two is shaping up okay. I was able to get back all six groups of exams back to my students. Goodbye students. I’ll see you next year.

While I waited to hand back exams to one of my classes, I noticed that there was a strange, white-ish blob sitting on one of the windowsills. I wondered if this was the long-lost sticky-tack that I have been trying to find for weeks. I pushed it with my finger, hoping for something solid and sticky. Instead, it was soft and slippery. No, my sticky-tack didn’t melt: it was just a very large, white frog.

I almost didn’t know what to do with myself for the rest of the afternoon. So I sat on the patio and did nothing. Oh Machanga, how you beat me down sometimes.

At some point in the afternoon, I made a run to the market. Now that we have a bicycle, going to the market is nearly a joy. We can leave the house, buy everything we need, and get back home in two minutes. The only downside is now we have to figure out what to do with that extra 50 minutes.

We had hoped that we could watch “I Love You, Man” tonight. This was among our selections from a DVD buying binge in Vilanculos. Unfortunately, Ussene, one of our colleagues, asked us to type up some exams for him. We thought we could bang them out in an hour, but it ended up taking twice as long. So much for a movie tonight. Instead, we cooked up a late dinner and went to bed without watching anything.

Richie and I decided to passear to the vila once the stores opened. We had no expectations. All we really needed were potatoes. Then all of a sudden, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s showed up on a table outside on of our favorite stores. Jack? In Mozambique? We can’t pass up American booze! We washed it down with 2M’s and Manica’s – local brews – and walked back in the dark to cook dinner.

We were going to cook chili tonight, but that was going to require a serious amount of work. Instead, we went with low-maintenance pasta and sauce. After we ate, we finally got around to “I Love You, Man”, which was funny albeit a little predictable. And outside of the midnight wake-up and conversation, I slept a glorious sleep.

I made my regularly scheduled market run on Thursday morning to fend of the now regularly scheduled morning boredom. Our needs were few. With the bicycle, we are not able to go to the market every day with no problem. But there was one notable success. We have been looking for some five-liter oil containers to use as weights and I finally found them. Great success! I also passed off one of my Bruce Springsteen t-shirts to one of the store owners. In our drunken haze, we had this epic conversation about American music that he liked. Springsteen was among the names he mentioned, so I figured he would enjoy this little gift.

After relaxing for a bit, I headed back out to deal with some passport stuff. I recently handed over my passport to the office to have my visa renewed for another year. I have a certified copy of my passport, but we have been told that the copies expire after six months. However, the local notary informed me that as long as the visa was good, the stamp was good. Okay.

We enjoyed a late lunch. With a wide schedule in the afternoon, we are no longer tied to eating lunch before noon. Instead, we can wait until a reasonable hour to enjoy our food. After lunch, Richie headed to a class to cover some lectures for a teacher while I sat on the patio listening to music. Once he got back from class, we filled our new containers with water and sand. We are now the proud owners of two sets of authentically Mozambican weights.

Later in the afternoon, Richie wanted to take the bike out for a ride. But there was a small problem: the back tire went flat. A couple of kids came over to fix it, but by the time it was done, Richie was in no mood to go anywhere. After all, the energy was just about to come on. While he relaxed, I got in an actual workout. It felt good. Very good.

We once again had a late dinner, but this time, the choice was ours. We threw in “The Hangover” while the beans took their time cooking. The movie was funny – outrageous, actually. It made me miss Vegas. By the time we finished dinner around 8:15, we were both toast. The lights weren’t out, but it was close enough to give up for the night.

For having nothing to do on Friday, I had a thoroughly productive. Okay, “productive day” may be a bit exaggerated, but productive afternoon would be a valid statement. The morning was for the most part boring. After waking up to a flurry of text messages concerning my brother’s presence at my beloved San Jose Sharks’ home opener, I rallied myself out of bed...for a couple hours, anyway.

In between waking up and my late morning nap, I continued reading “The Masked Rider” by Neal Peart, the drummer of Rush. It’s not the greatest read. I mean, when you’ve been called “muzungu” for the last year, it’s really hard to sympathize for someone who has been called “white man” for a mere month.

After eating lunch, I thought I would do something reasonable. With our newly made set of weights, I did a solid lower-body workout followed by a brief bike ride to cool down. Other than being ridiculously sore afterward, I felt good. Hell, being sore even felt good.

And, really, is there a better post-workout drink than three beers? I just don’t think so. Richie and I headed to the vila to chill with Medinha, one of our favorite storeowners. She always buys us beers, and on this day, she busted out meat and cheese. Meat and cheese!


Richie and I returned to a lit up house. Nice timing, for sure. After the spectacular meat and cheese platter, we weren’t all that hungry. We didn’t even bother cooking dinner. Instead, we put on “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, not a bad movie, and called it a night.

Boring. Mundane. This was worsened by the fact that almost nobody was around. A lot of teachers are in Beira dealing with university stuff. The people who remained disappeared somewhere, presumably for a political rally. Rarely have I seen this place so dead.

After a workout and a satisfying lunch, I ran over to the market briefly to pick up some items. Nothing special, mainly candles so I can read at night. In truth, though, the market run just broke the monotony of sitting on the porch doing Sudoku. Yea, it was that kind of afternoon.

Our night was pretty regular. We had nothing new-ish to watch, so we watched a couple episodes of “30 Rock” and that was that. Another week down. School year done.

Year 1 - Week 42: One

We were supposed to be back on the road before 8 o’clock on Sunday, like everyone else. The only problem was our car wasn’t anywhere close to Chimoio. Like not even in the same province. It was only a taste of what the rest of the day would be like.

There was an upside to the delay. One of our goals for the weekend was to get to Shop-Rite, where we could get all sorts of luxury items like chocolate. The morning would be perfect. Except it wasn’t. I thought I had a ride out to the market, but that wasn’t meant to be. The car got half way there, picked up some other kids, then turned back to our hostel. Well, I guess that means I have to give up.

There was, however, some consolation. Gigabottle, a little burger and beer place just up the road from the hostel, was already open. Even though it was only 9:30, I was ready for a burger and, apparently, so were three other Volunteers. The only problem was that they were out of hamburgers. Fine, we’ll take hotdogs and three egg sandwiches for the vegetarian in the group. The dogs came out fine, but the place ran out of gas for the burner a quarter of the way through cooking the eggs. I thought I could get a discount on the eggs, but the chefe said no. At least the person working the place got a good laugh out of the attempt.

Okay, we were pretty happy with our hotdogs and cheese sandwiches, a reasonable substitute for egg sandwiches. Things seemed to be coming together. By the time we finished eating, the car had just about arrived to Chimoio.

We were in the same tiny truck that we arrived in. Four seats and thirteen passengers meant nine of us had to be in the back of the truck. And seeing that Richie is white as glue and I’m well beyond bronze, we all knew who would be sitting in the back of the truck for six hours in the midday sun. The ride turned out to be not so bad and a few kilometers down the road toward Machanga, we saw monkeys again, which put smiles on everyone’s faces.

Our arrival nearly coincided with the energy coming on. With the bell pepper that we picked up, we had the perfect missing ingredient for stir fry. After eating dinner and watching a couple episodes of “Dexter”, I caught up with my parents and grandparents.

I was in for a boring morning on Monday. In fact, by the end of this week, I will be in for a lot of boring mornings. Richie was pretty bored too, other than for the 45 minutes he was proctoring an exam. During those 45 minutes, he was especially bored.

I know how bored he was because I had the pleasure of controlling exams for the entire afternoon. I should have had six consecutive periods of test giving, but thanks to the gloriousness that is cancelled class, I was able to combine a couple of classes and be done in four hours. Valeo!

The only problem with giving exams, again, is that I have to correct them. The good news about these exams is that, unlike my midterms, these things are multiple choice. That means that I can correct one forty-question exam in about ninety seconds. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to correct exams today. This is a job that can wait for tomorrow. Going to the villa with Richie for a celebratory soda is a much better option.

Our night was not too bad. We cooked up some chicken sandwiches, watched some “30 Rock” and called it a night.

I woke up Tuesday morning to a strangely empty house. Richie had talked about going across the river to Mambone in search of a phone charger, but I didn’t think he was actually motivated enough to go. It took me a second to realize where he went.

With the house to myself, I was able to be wildly productive. But not with grading papers. I swept and mopped the house, pumped three buckets-worth of water, attempted to clean the stovetop, and washed the dishes from last night.

Having procrastinated enough, and with absolutely nothing left to be cleaned, I decided it was time to grade some papers. Everybody seems to be doing really well – very few failures overall. Once I average their final exam score with their last midterm – which everyone tanked – everyone’s grades should be okay.

Not including thirty minutes for lunch, the grading was incessant. Nearly four hours after I started correcting exams, I was almost done with all the exams from yesterday. I would have finished if my students hadn’t come by and asked me to give their exam early.

After proctoring my last twelfth grade exam, I got right back to correcting exams. I had three-quarters of the exams correcting by the time the energy came on. We ate our dinner and I punched in some grades while we watched some “Dexter”.

I was excited on Wednesday, for Wednesday was my unofficial last day of work. I think the students were even more excited as it was the last day that they would have to deal with me speaking a foreign language to them. But before I could give my last two sets of exams, I had some work to do.

I put off correcting Tuesday’s exams because I wanted something to do this morning. I figured that correcting exams would be a good way to fill the morning, but this class did better than all the others. Less marking meant less time correcting and I was left bored for a good portion of the morning. At least I was all caught up on correcting exams…for an hour, anyway.

After lunch, it was back into the classroom for me. Two more exams. Just two more exams and I’m done for the year. It seemed like these three hours dragged on forever. It may have been because a lot of students used the entire ninety minutes, but I think my anxiety to be done was the main cause. Shockingly, there were no cheaters: not in these classes, not in any classes. I guess after six months of handing out zeros, the students realized they shouldn’t fuck around when I give an exam

I had no intention to work the rest of the afternoon. This would be an afternoon of relaxation. I broke out the Sudoku book for a bit before starting dinner. After dinner, we watched our regular “30 Rock” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.

Now I’m left with quite the challenge. I have a total of sixty exams to correct and then I’m home free, done correcting exams until March. The problem with having nothing to do, though, is that there is nothing to do. It’s not like having nothing to do in America, where you could easily kill a day watching YouTube videos and repeats of SportsCenter. Having nothing to do means staring blankly off our patio, maybe studying, and occasionally stabbing our eyes with pencils to make sure we are awake. For what it is worth, I did absolutely nothing of value today.

The truth is, I should have corrected those last two sets of exams, but what’s the point? I have an entire week to correct them. Going to the market, getting a coke, and throwing around the Frisbee for a bit seemed like much better options for the morning.

Those activities were almost productive. The afternoon was even less so. For hours on end, I sat on my patio and filled out Sudoku grids. It was the kind of afternoon that almost made me just give up for the day.

Once the energy came on, things turned around. I was able to be a little productive with the help of a computer. I spent a bit of time punching in grades to the spreadsheet and applying a curve to my second midterm. With the curve, the students are passing at a reasonable rate. My work done, we cooked up dinner, watched some “Dexter” and closed up shop.

We hit the road early-ish on Friday. We told our Canadian friend Alexis to meet us at the police station at 7:00. We arrived at 6:58 and she was sitting there waiting. Gotta love Western appreciation for being on time. We walked through the bush to the river and crossed over to Mambone. It took a bit of time, but we eventually got a ride out to Maluvane.

This is where things got interesting. Usually, we have pretty good luck catching rides down from Maluvane toward Maputo. But today, nothing was passing through in either direction. We decided that we would take anything heading south. On this day, for us that meant sitting in the cab of a big rig. At least it was comfortable: the cab was tricked out with a bed. And the best part of the ride was that we didn’t have to pay for it.

Considering the pace at which the truck drove, we made really good time. As soon as we got to the crossroads for Vilanculos, we got a ride into town. We arrived by 12:30, a solid five and a half hour trip. Instead of grabbing the key to the house from our local Volunteers, we decided to wait it out in the villa until they arrived. We killed a couple hours passear-ing through town, showing Alexis the ins and outs of Vilanculos. Chillar.

Once the girls got home, we settled into the house, threw on our bathing suits and headed to the ocean. It was a perfect beach day. Not a single cloud sat in the sky, and at low tide, the ocean was striated by sand bars.

We made another run into town to get some ingredients for dinner. One of the downsides of traveling is that it is almost more expensive than eating at home. Cooking just one or two meals in the house though can save hundreds of Meticais. For tonight, we decided on rigatoni with our regular tomato sauce. After eating, the five of us watched “Tropic Thunder”, a not-so-good Ben Stiller outfit.

Alexis got the full Vilanculos treatment on Saturday. She went out to the beach early in the morning. Ten minutes later, he sandals were gone, stolen by some kids. Little bastards. Our only mission today was to get her some new shoes. We walked down to the market to see what we could find but they were charging ridiculous South-African-tourist prices. I refuse to pay 500 Mets for a pair of sandals. That’s just outrageous.

We walked all the way to the other side of town, where we were able to do all of our regular Vilanculos shopping. Alexis found a decent pair of sandals for seventy-five Mets, a much more reasonable price. And on the way we stopped over at another Volunteer’s house. Having seen the houses in Vilanculos, she now understands why we love the place so much.

On our way back to the other side of town, we grew hungry. Lunch time arrived, and we decided to stop at our new favorite place. Just outside of the market, there is a little take-away place that sells the most delicious grease-ball cheeseburgers. For fifty Meticais, we were very, very happy. Passear down thru the market, burgers!!!!

Our food mostly digested, we decided to head out to the beach again, this time to toward a more beachy part of the ocean. Of course, it was beautiful. We walked through a little backpacker’s stop on the way back to the house. While Richie talked to one of our friends who works there, I had a conversation with a man about some artwork that he was selling. It was on of those conversations that made me think “Holy crap, I’m speaking pretty solid Portuguese”.

After being in Mozambique for one full year – the anniversary is today – it made me realize how far we have come. Never could I have imagined having that sort of conversation a year ago. Once other people started to arrive, the reminiscing continued. We laughed a lot about how little we knew then, how much we have know, and how the newly arrived Trainees are going to experience what we had just a year ago.

We made a run back to the villa to pick up some party goods. A little kid tried to sell me a small bottle of rum for three times the regular price. I laughed in his face, asked to see his boss, then yelled at him – in Portuguese – in front of his boss. His boss was with me: he called the kid a thief, rightfully.

On the walk back, I talked to one of the Trainees now living with my minha mãe. Minha mãe has a married couple living with her. If she treats them half as well as she treated me, they should have a great experience.

Our one year party was shockingly timid. At the party, I had another one of those conversations that gave me some confidence. A Japanese Volunteer who has been here for two years, she told me that my Portuguese was really good for having only been here a year. Even a year into this, I still have those days when my Portuguese is terrible. But it’s still nice to have those reaffirmations that I’m doing okay. There must have been just the right amount of rum in me to keep me going well.

I think everyone fell into a food coma from the salsa, cheese dip, and hummus. We didn’t even bother to eat dinner: the snacks were more than sufficient. Around 10:00, we put on our dancing shoes and headed out for a night at AfroBar, where only good things could happen.

Happy One Year, Moz 13! Welcome aboard Moz 14! We can’t wait to meet you all.