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.