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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment