It’s truly amazing what a difference a couple hundred kilometers and a beach make. Doing nothing in Vilanculos is so much different than doing nothing in Machanga because Machanga, despite its coastal location, is lacking swimmable ocean.
The location change also apparently changed my sleeping habits for the better. I slept until nearly 8:00 and for the first time in months, I couldn’t recall any dreams. Maybe it’s Machanga and not the Larium that’s driving me crazy.
What little time we had left in the morning, we used to finish “Troy”. Due to calls from one of my best friends and my grandfather, we didn’t have the chance to finish it last night. And with twenty-four hour energy in Vilanculos (the rich get richer), we have the power to watch movies whenever we want.
But why watch movies when there is beautiful weather to be had? Following lunch, Richie and I relocated to the backpackers’ lodge that we like. Located on the beach and with two unused hammocks, we each took some time to read. I got sucked into “Rule of Four”, a novel I read years ago. That’s right, a novel. This one is special, though, because it is full of history and that’s what got me good.
I spent almost the entire day in that hammock. I really can’t think of a better way to spend a day. Returning around 5:00, I was back home in time to cook dinner. We just did a simple and sauce dish. Richie watched some “30 Rock” while I spent some time on the phone with my parents. Amazingly, this was probably the last time I’ll talk to them before I see them face to face. It’s so close now.
We had a relatively busy and productive Monday. One of the things that Peace Corps really stresses is “community integration”. As this is our community for this week or so, we thought it would be best to integrate ourselves. This is a fairly simple task, given a lot of time, but it is made especially difficult because of the location and time of year. These days, Vilanculos is full of muzungus and to most people, we appear to be just two more South Africans. Our goal today was to start to put an end to that.
Before we could get integrating, we had some shopping to do. Both of us wanted to buy capulanas, Richie for a pair of shorts, me for a gift. With that task complete, we moved a couple hundred yards away to hit the little hamburger stand. And then the integrating began.
We walked into the market, turned left, and found a table that was in the shade. We ordered a beer and just started talking. The lady selling the beer was a bit surprised that we spoke Portuguese. It is a bit of a novelty. After a couple beers, I broke a deck of cards and a couple kids came over. Here we go. A couple of magic tricks later and the kids were hooked. When a new kid came over, he bet that I couldn’t find his card. Thirty seconds later, I had myself a free Sprite. When an older person came along, I had myself a free beer.
By the end of the day, we were not only feeling good, but we had made some new friends. Sandra, the woman working the bar, is our new best friend in Vilanculos. She and her neighbor Gilda taught us - and got a good laugh out of us learning -- some Chitswa, the local language here. And we met a nice lady, Veronica, who sells vegetables. We are now set: we have a person to sell us beer, a person to sell us eggs, and a person to sell us vegetables. No more fighting for prices for us.
We made a quick stopover at the backpackers’ just to see if anyone was there, but it was suspiciously quiet. We waited it out for an hour, but nothing changed, so we went home. For some reason, we had pizza again. I think the fact that they deliver made it easier to spend money on a relatively expensive dinner.
The fun however didn’t stop after dinner. In fact, it picked up. Being the winter solstice, one of the bosses in the compound we’re staying in decided to have a little bonfire. A group of about 11 of us gathered around the fire, the conversation easily switching between Portuguese and English. All said, we were out until about 11 and for one day, we were well integrated into Vilanculos.
All of that integrating really wiped us out. I slept well again -- dreamless, again -- until about 8:30. We didn’t want to integrate so hard in back to back days, so we thought it best to take the day off. Good thing there’s no pressure on us to do anything.
The morning was slow, calm. It was nice. Before the weather got too blazingly hot, I took the dog out for a walk on the beach. We all need our exercise, including the dog, and we might as well do it next to an azure ocean. After the forty-five minute walk, Richie and I had a quick bite to eat and went back to the backpackers’.
My big task today was to finish “Rule of Four”. I had about 200 pages left, but it was such a quick read that I finished it within just a couple hours. I think I could read that book over and over again. As long as I have a hammock, I can read just about anything, I’m convinced.
We came back to the house for lunch, and once the stores reopened, we headed into town to pick up some items. We didn’t find everything we needed, but I got some stuff that I wanted. I’ll call it a draw. After shopping, we headed to the backpackers’. On our way there, we made a stop at two different tailors. One had finished sewing up the gift I was making for my brother, the other was just starting work on a pair of shorts for Richie. I’m very happy with the way the gift turned out, and I hope my brother and his wife enjoy it.
There was nothing really special at night. After dinner, we watched “Ocean’s 12”. Following another rough day in paradise, we called it a night.
We woke up Wednesday hoping that things would pick up at the little backpackers place. Last year was absolutely insane. It was a standing room only party night after night. But so far this year, it seems that things are very quiet. Maybe the economy affected travel here. Maybe people are just keeping to themselves. Either way, it’s been kind of dull.
There appeared to be more people at the backpackers today, but it still didn’t compare to last year. With few people around hanging out, I committed myself to reading “Not On Our Watch”, a book by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast about Darfur. It was a less than engaging book -- often repetitive with these strange pages-long interjections. I don’t want to call it a time-waster, but that is all it proved to be: a way to waste the day away.
The pace picked up in the afternoon, but only because we forced it to. We left the backpackers, grabbed some lunch, and headed back to Sandra’s place in the market. We were only going to have one or two beers, just to cool down. That plan changed quickly. Along the way, we were both recognized. People only spoke to us in Portuguese. There were no calls of “boss” or “my friend”. And someone even gave me a new nickname: “Senhor de Batuta”, roughly Mr. Clever or Mr. Fraud. I can work with that.
On our way home, we made a stop to get hamburgers, which were quickly followed by dinner. We didn’t do much of anything the rest of the night. We were both pretty exhausted and wanted to save our energy for Christmas eve. We watched “Role Models”, a strange, funny movie and went to sleep.
Before heading over to the backpackers on Thursday, we had some business to take care of. We both really needed to go to the bank. I also needed to make a stop at the hotel where my family is staying to confirm their pick-up from the airport. And finally, there were some things that I needed to grab from another Volunteer’s house. Well, I was able to do two out of three -- and we got rides both to and from the other side of town -- so I would call that a success.
We made a concerted effort to avoid going back to Sandra’s. It’s not that we don’t love Sandra…we just knew that if we ended up there, we wouldn’t make it through the night. From there, we dropped off our things at the house, made a quick egg sandwich, then went to the backpackers to hang around. The pattern repeated itself later in the afternoon -- we dropped some things at the house, made an early dinner, then went back to the backpackers.
The party seemed to pick up a little bit at night. There were definitely more people out, but it still wasn’t the raucous party from last year. Regardless, we made some nice friends from Australia and drank enough for two people each. Well socially lubricated, we headed to the discotequa around midnight and went crazy.
The party continued well into the morning. The sun was rising as I walked back home and by then I was mostly awake. There’s no rest for the weary. After a long night of dancing, I was in dire need of shower. And if I wasn’t awake enough, that finished the job. We mostly just wanted to relax for the day. We headed over to the backpackers and that’s when our bodies gave out. Richie came back home about half an hour. I didn’t have it in me to walk back to the house, so I laid out my capulana and passed out for a couple hours in the shade of a palm tree.
When I woke up, Richie was already back at the backpackers. Very very strange. I woke up feeling absolutely miserable. Richie thought the solution would be a beer. And the truth is that it didn’t hurt -- it just didn’t help much either.
Santa’s gift to me was stomach problems. I guess drinking a half-liter of rum on a mostly empty stomach will do that. How pleasant. Fortunately, this has been about as sick I’ve been the entire year, which says something about healthy I’ve been.
Richie and I ate lunch at the backpackers, and with no reason to stay, we headed home to sleep. Being up for the better part of thirty-six hours will make you tired. Both of us passed out between 4 and 8, hoping that it would be enough to get us through the night.
For better or worse (probably the better), the backpackers was quiet. We went intending to continue the party from last night, but it was quiet tonight. We gave it until 10:30. When things didn’t pick up, we went back home and right to sleep.
I woke up feeling mostly okay. I had one more small bout, but that was it. Otherwise, it was a beautiful, peaceful day. Richie and I made one run to the market late in the morning, and that was it. After a small lunch, I took an extensive afternoon nap, then took the dog for a walk. It was a boring day, but boring was exactly what I wanted.
The twenty-four hour stomach problem proved to be nearly exactly that. I’m just glad it’s gone before my family arrives.
Ah yes. My family. After 11 months of planning and waiting, they are finally arriving tomorrow!! I don’t know if I’ll believe they’re coming until I actually see them in the airport. Needless to say, I’m excited beyond belief. I never thought anyone else in my family would step foot in Africa.
It should be a phenomenal two weeks.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Year 2 - Week 1: Meeting Across The River
Year 2 – Week 1: Meeting Across the River
We have officially reached the downturn – weird. All those weeks of writing “Year 1” on the top of these pieces have finally come to an end. So with a new year, it’s only appropriate that we start this year the way we did last year: with a site delivery. Mambone received its new Volunteer, Garrett, over the weekend and we thought it would be good to introduce ourselves.
The house cleaned up, we headed across the river the grabbed the chapa toward his house. His house is still a bit in disrepair right now, so these days, Garrett is chilling in a colleague’s house. It’s not a terrible thing – the colleague’s house is muito nice. While we were in town, we raided his computer for new media.
We figured that the least we could do for our new friend was buy him some lunch. We took him to Zimaima, where I was able to get my regular half-chicken, and Richie, to spite us non-fish-eaters, got fish. After our delicious lunches, we headed into town to show Garrett what’s going on in Mambone. And just in case he wanted to ever come to Machanga, we decided to show him how to get to the river and therefore Machanga.
By the time we got back to our side of the river, we were sweaty, tired, and dehydrated. Courtesy of the epic rain we got last week, we already had a lot of drinking water prepared. As I sat on our patio, two very little kids came up to the house and said “Estou a pedir agua” – “I am asking for water”. Normally, I will turn down requests because usually they are requests for money. But these kids were too adorable, and their request was all too reasonable, and it was awfully hot. I couldn’t turn them down.
Loaded up on water, I committed the cardinal sin of taking a late afternoon nap. I knew I was setting myself up for trouble later in the night, but I was awfully exhausted. I fell asleep right away. I woke up just in time for dinner, which we followed up with “Boondock Saints”, a fuckin awesome movie.
As anticipated, I struggled to sleep. It was a combination of the nap and the anxiety – good anxiety – of my family arriving in here in two weeks. Whatever it was, I was up late into the night, which pushed me to stay in bed until 8:30 on Monday morning.
With such a late wake-up, you would think that killing off the rest of the morning would be an easy task. But with more and more people peeling out of Machanga, it’s becoming awfully difficult. We can only do so much sitting. o
After lunch, I made a run to the market on two missions. The first was to find bread, which was not a problem. The second was to find a tailor – we have two in Machanga – but neither was around. I want to get a pair of pants turned into a pair of shorts. As long as I get it done before Vilanculos, it will be okay.
I was put to use Monday night when the energy came on. One of the teachers wanted to be able to print from his laptop, so I installed the printer drive to his computer. In addition, the director’s laptop wasn’t printing, which was a little strange. I did everything I could but couldn’t get it to work. Luckily, he has very little to print.
We planned to eat beans on Sunday but I failed massively to soak beans on Sunday. I didn’t make the same mistake twice, so we had beans and pasta for dinner. For entertainment, we watched “Zach and Miri Make a Porno”, one of the more recent Seth Rogan films. I don’t know if I would watch it again, but it was a good laugh.
Exhausted from the day before – and having not napped – I slept well and I slept late. More of our colleagues left today, which is now starting to kill us. It was just an annoyance, but now, since we are pegged here for a bit more time alone, it’s outright frustrating.
We didn’t do much of anything Tuesday morning. I tried to make another run to the market to get my pants done, but the tailors weren’t around. At least I tried. So we went back to sitting.
I wasn’t completely deterred though. They told m the tailor would be back in the afternoon, so after lunch, I went back. And lo and behold, the tailor was there. He dropped what he was doing and took right to my pants. I was happy to be the proud owner of a new pair of very light-weight pair of shorts.
Late in the afternoon, I was cleaning up the house (as it had been a while) when I got a call from Richie. He toldme to come down to the villa to talk to our school director. We – Richie, the school director, and I – want to put up a decent basketball court. The state of the current court is tragic. I know that we can do better than this. Of course, all discussion was conducted over a couple beers.
We came back after our couple beers and cooked up a delicious Mexican food dinner. And with only a little more energy left for the night, we watched a couple episodes of “The Office” before going to sleep.
Whenever I went ended up falling asleep, I didn’t stay asleep for the long. I was up at 4 AM and it was already light outside. Not bright, but light. The best part was that it wasn’t blazing hot: it was a perfect cool. I strolled around the house for a little bit to soak in the nice weather.
I tried to go back to bed, but there was no hope. I was up for good. As it wasn’t sufficiently bright, I lit a candle and read a little more of “Bulfinch’s Mythology”. It’s been an interesting bout with this book. There are times that I really love it. All of the history and origins of certain terminology is fascinating, but hearing of gods and goddesses just isn’t my thing. Whatever. I’ll keep to it. These days, I’ll take anything to keep my mind occupied.
The task that kept my mind the most occupied was repairing my newly made pair of shorts. I didn’t really look at them when they were done, but upon looking at them Wednesday morning, I realized that they were terribly uneven – maybe ¾ of an inch off. My faith lost in the tailor, I took on the task myself. Needle and thread in hand, I shortened the one side to an appropriate matching length. It’s pathetic that my handiwork was superior to the tailor’s. While I was in the spirit, I repaired some holes in one of my shirts.
Within an hour of finishing up the alterations, Garrett came over to hang out. We told him that our doors were open, expecting him to come over at some point, but not within the week. It’s probably for better – he gave us a good way to kill the day. We prepared our standard lunch, which Garrett enjoyed – he says he’ll be cooking potatoes and eggs a lot.
After lunch, we thought we’d show Garrett the other half of his site. In our view, Mambone and Machanga are really one site divided by a river. We walked around the town to show him how different our sides are. He concurred that our site really is in the “armpit of Mozambique”.
Garrett stuck around for most of the afternoon, which was nice. Not getting a lot of visitors, we are happy to have him over whenever. By the time he left, it was nearly 4;00, achingly close to energy time. In the time in between Garrett leaving and the energy coming on, I kicked around a soccer ball with Anjo, this 18 month old kid. I think he’s still scared of us muzungus, so it was nice to see that barrier come down a bit.
With the energy on, we decided to make pizzas. We had some Velveeta left over and we figured we should use it. They say that it should be refrigerated once it’s opened, but that’s a lie. In light of our gluttonous meal, we decided to watch “Supersize Me”. It had the confusing effect of simultaneously making me want a Big Mac and never wanting to eat fast food again.
I thought I had slept better Wednesday night, but I was wrong. I woke up Thursday and pretty much went right back to bed. For almost the entire morning – until 11:00, Richie and I were both catatonic. Most of the morning was spent on the floor – concrete is colder than a bed – tripping on Larium hallucinations.
The trouble with the Larium dreams is that they are absolutely exhausting. But I was still happy to put the morning in the past. After eating lunch and chilling at home, we knew that we needed to get out.
We headed over to the villa to grab a soda and we realized that we really needed to get out of Machanga. If it was possible to climb our walls, we would have. So we decided then and there that we would leave on Saturday instead of Monday.
There was nothing special about dinner. For the first time in a while, we made just pasta without beans. Our entertainment for tonight was “Schindler’s List” With our energy situation, we weren’t able to finish it in one night, so it will be finished tomorrow.
Moving up our travel plans meant I had to get ready. On Friday morning, I organized my packing list and got everything together. I managed to get everything into a small backpack and a computer bag. I can’t believe I managed to get it done.
The rest of the morning, and a lot of the afternoon, was spent cleaning up. Richie and I did a small load of laundry and we each cleaned the house thoroughly. We were packed and ready to go. The only problem was that it was Friday afternoon. We headed to the villa, our surefire way to kill an hour, to say goodbye to Madinha.
Friday night looked a lot like Thursday – a basic dinner (stir fry) and “Schindler’s List”. What a really beautifully done movie. I can’t believe it took me this long to see it.
“Are you up? Let’s go” was how I was greeted on Saturday. Okay, let’s boogie. A last minute thing here and there and we were out of the house by 6:30.
We had hoped to beat our 3 hour 47 minute record, and things looked promising. We got to Mambone in about 45 minutes and got a ride just as we hit the villa. Unfortunately the car was moving slowly, dashing our hopes of breaking the record. We could still make good time.
Then I made one of the stupidest travel choices I’ve made here. We had a car lined up to get to Inhassoro when a group of South Africans came blazing down the EN1. Shockingly, one of them stopped for us. He said that he was going to Vilanculos. I, being greedy, told him that we wanted to get to Vilanculos and that we already had a ride to Inhassoro, thanks anyway. Dumb. In the end, I cost us maybe an hour, plus fifty Meticais each.
The real travel fun began on our in to Vilanculos. We took a chapa in for the last leg as we usually do. I handed fifty Mets to money-collector – a punk 14 year old. He stared at me, and asked me for more money. “What? It costs 15 Mets each”, I said. “This is where you give me money”. He laughed and told me no, no, 50 Meticais. After an extensive argument and Richie and I yelling in three languages – English, Portuguese and the local dialect of Chitswa – we got the right price. Ah, the pleasures of Vilanculos in tourist season.
We dropped our things off and headed off to pizza. Richie told me that only after he had his pizza would I be off the shit list for turning down a free ride. Valid point. We met Meagan, the new Volunteer in Vilanculos for lunch, and I was forgiven.
The rest of the afternoon, into the night was quiet. As it is hotter than 90 degrees here, we decided to take a dip in the ocean, which is now bathwater warm. We ate dinner and watched “Troy”, a sweet war movie. Seeing “Troy” after reading a lot of “Bulfinch’s Mythology“ made it a lot more enjoyable.
And so our week in Vilanculos begins.
We have officially reached the downturn – weird. All those weeks of writing “Year 1” on the top of these pieces have finally come to an end. So with a new year, it’s only appropriate that we start this year the way we did last year: with a site delivery. Mambone received its new Volunteer, Garrett, over the weekend and we thought it would be good to introduce ourselves.
The house cleaned up, we headed across the river the grabbed the chapa toward his house. His house is still a bit in disrepair right now, so these days, Garrett is chilling in a colleague’s house. It’s not a terrible thing – the colleague’s house is muito nice. While we were in town, we raided his computer for new media.
We figured that the least we could do for our new friend was buy him some lunch. We took him to Zimaima, where I was able to get my regular half-chicken, and Richie, to spite us non-fish-eaters, got fish. After our delicious lunches, we headed into town to show Garrett what’s going on in Mambone. And just in case he wanted to ever come to Machanga, we decided to show him how to get to the river and therefore Machanga.
By the time we got back to our side of the river, we were sweaty, tired, and dehydrated. Courtesy of the epic rain we got last week, we already had a lot of drinking water prepared. As I sat on our patio, two very little kids came up to the house and said “Estou a pedir agua” – “I am asking for water”. Normally, I will turn down requests because usually they are requests for money. But these kids were too adorable, and their request was all too reasonable, and it was awfully hot. I couldn’t turn them down.
Loaded up on water, I committed the cardinal sin of taking a late afternoon nap. I knew I was setting myself up for trouble later in the night, but I was awfully exhausted. I fell asleep right away. I woke up just in time for dinner, which we followed up with “Boondock Saints”, a fuckin awesome movie.
As anticipated, I struggled to sleep. It was a combination of the nap and the anxiety – good anxiety – of my family arriving in here in two weeks. Whatever it was, I was up late into the night, which pushed me to stay in bed until 8:30 on Monday morning.
With such a late wake-up, you would think that killing off the rest of the morning would be an easy task. But with more and more people peeling out of Machanga, it’s becoming awfully difficult. We can only do so much sitting. o
After lunch, I made a run to the market on two missions. The first was to find bread, which was not a problem. The second was to find a tailor – we have two in Machanga – but neither was around. I want to get a pair of pants turned into a pair of shorts. As long as I get it done before Vilanculos, it will be okay.
I was put to use Monday night when the energy came on. One of the teachers wanted to be able to print from his laptop, so I installed the printer drive to his computer. In addition, the director’s laptop wasn’t printing, which was a little strange. I did everything I could but couldn’t get it to work. Luckily, he has very little to print.
We planned to eat beans on Sunday but I failed massively to soak beans on Sunday. I didn’t make the same mistake twice, so we had beans and pasta for dinner. For entertainment, we watched “Zach and Miri Make a Porno”, one of the more recent Seth Rogan films. I don’t know if I would watch it again, but it was a good laugh.
Exhausted from the day before – and having not napped – I slept well and I slept late. More of our colleagues left today, which is now starting to kill us. It was just an annoyance, but now, since we are pegged here for a bit more time alone, it’s outright frustrating.
We didn’t do much of anything Tuesday morning. I tried to make another run to the market to get my pants done, but the tailors weren’t around. At least I tried. So we went back to sitting.
I wasn’t completely deterred though. They told m the tailor would be back in the afternoon, so after lunch, I went back. And lo and behold, the tailor was there. He dropped what he was doing and took right to my pants. I was happy to be the proud owner of a new pair of very light-weight pair of shorts.
Late in the afternoon, I was cleaning up the house (as it had been a while) when I got a call from Richie. He toldme to come down to the villa to talk to our school director. We – Richie, the school director, and I – want to put up a decent basketball court. The state of the current court is tragic. I know that we can do better than this. Of course, all discussion was conducted over a couple beers.
We came back after our couple beers and cooked up a delicious Mexican food dinner. And with only a little more energy left for the night, we watched a couple episodes of “The Office” before going to sleep.
Whenever I went ended up falling asleep, I didn’t stay asleep for the long. I was up at 4 AM and it was already light outside. Not bright, but light. The best part was that it wasn’t blazing hot: it was a perfect cool. I strolled around the house for a little bit to soak in the nice weather.
I tried to go back to bed, but there was no hope. I was up for good. As it wasn’t sufficiently bright, I lit a candle and read a little more of “Bulfinch’s Mythology”. It’s been an interesting bout with this book. There are times that I really love it. All of the history and origins of certain terminology is fascinating, but hearing of gods and goddesses just isn’t my thing. Whatever. I’ll keep to it. These days, I’ll take anything to keep my mind occupied.
The task that kept my mind the most occupied was repairing my newly made pair of shorts. I didn’t really look at them when they were done, but upon looking at them Wednesday morning, I realized that they were terribly uneven – maybe ¾ of an inch off. My faith lost in the tailor, I took on the task myself. Needle and thread in hand, I shortened the one side to an appropriate matching length. It’s pathetic that my handiwork was superior to the tailor’s. While I was in the spirit, I repaired some holes in one of my shirts.
Within an hour of finishing up the alterations, Garrett came over to hang out. We told him that our doors were open, expecting him to come over at some point, but not within the week. It’s probably for better – he gave us a good way to kill the day. We prepared our standard lunch, which Garrett enjoyed – he says he’ll be cooking potatoes and eggs a lot.
After lunch, we thought we’d show Garrett the other half of his site. In our view, Mambone and Machanga are really one site divided by a river. We walked around the town to show him how different our sides are. He concurred that our site really is in the “armpit of Mozambique”.
Garrett stuck around for most of the afternoon, which was nice. Not getting a lot of visitors, we are happy to have him over whenever. By the time he left, it was nearly 4;00, achingly close to energy time. In the time in between Garrett leaving and the energy coming on, I kicked around a soccer ball with Anjo, this 18 month old kid. I think he’s still scared of us muzungus, so it was nice to see that barrier come down a bit.
With the energy on, we decided to make pizzas. We had some Velveeta left over and we figured we should use it. They say that it should be refrigerated once it’s opened, but that’s a lie. In light of our gluttonous meal, we decided to watch “Supersize Me”. It had the confusing effect of simultaneously making me want a Big Mac and never wanting to eat fast food again.
I thought I had slept better Wednesday night, but I was wrong. I woke up Thursday and pretty much went right back to bed. For almost the entire morning – until 11:00, Richie and I were both catatonic. Most of the morning was spent on the floor – concrete is colder than a bed – tripping on Larium hallucinations.
The trouble with the Larium dreams is that they are absolutely exhausting. But I was still happy to put the morning in the past. After eating lunch and chilling at home, we knew that we needed to get out.
We headed over to the villa to grab a soda and we realized that we really needed to get out of Machanga. If it was possible to climb our walls, we would have. So we decided then and there that we would leave on Saturday instead of Monday.
There was nothing special about dinner. For the first time in a while, we made just pasta without beans. Our entertainment for tonight was “Schindler’s List” With our energy situation, we weren’t able to finish it in one night, so it will be finished tomorrow.
Moving up our travel plans meant I had to get ready. On Friday morning, I organized my packing list and got everything together. I managed to get everything into a small backpack and a computer bag. I can’t believe I managed to get it done.
The rest of the morning, and a lot of the afternoon, was spent cleaning up. Richie and I did a small load of laundry and we each cleaned the house thoroughly. We were packed and ready to go. The only problem was that it was Friday afternoon. We headed to the villa, our surefire way to kill an hour, to say goodbye to Madinha.
Friday night looked a lot like Thursday – a basic dinner (stir fry) and “Schindler’s List”. What a really beautifully done movie. I can’t believe it took me this long to see it.
“Are you up? Let’s go” was how I was greeted on Saturday. Okay, let’s boogie. A last minute thing here and there and we were out of the house by 6:30.
We had hoped to beat our 3 hour 47 minute record, and things looked promising. We got to Mambone in about 45 minutes and got a ride just as we hit the villa. Unfortunately the car was moving slowly, dashing our hopes of breaking the record. We could still make good time.
Then I made one of the stupidest travel choices I’ve made here. We had a car lined up to get to Inhassoro when a group of South Africans came blazing down the EN1. Shockingly, one of them stopped for us. He said that he was going to Vilanculos. I, being greedy, told him that we wanted to get to Vilanculos and that we already had a ride to Inhassoro, thanks anyway. Dumb. In the end, I cost us maybe an hour, plus fifty Meticais each.
The real travel fun began on our in to Vilanculos. We took a chapa in for the last leg as we usually do. I handed fifty Mets to money-collector – a punk 14 year old. He stared at me, and asked me for more money. “What? It costs 15 Mets each”, I said. “This is where you give me money”. He laughed and told me no, no, 50 Meticais. After an extensive argument and Richie and I yelling in three languages – English, Portuguese and the local dialect of Chitswa – we got the right price. Ah, the pleasures of Vilanculos in tourist season.
We dropped our things off and headed off to pizza. Richie told me that only after he had his pizza would I be off the shit list for turning down a free ride. Valid point. We met Meagan, the new Volunteer in Vilanculos for lunch, and I was forgiven.
The rest of the afternoon, into the night was quiet. As it is hotter than 90 degrees here, we decided to take a dip in the ocean, which is now bathwater warm. We ate dinner and watched “Troy”, a sweet war movie. Seeing “Troy” after reading a lot of “Bulfinch’s Mythology“ made it a lot more enjoyable.
And so our week in Vilanculos begins.
A Year in Machanga: What We Have
And so.
A year has passed since we first arrived in rainy, muddy, fire-engulfed Machanga. It wasn’t a particular good first impression. But slowly, but surely, this place started to grow on us. And now, in spite of its pitfalls – the isolation and loneliness, the lack of constant energy or running water – we have come to really appreciate what we have.
What we have is the real deal. A lot of people talk about “The Peace Corps Experience”, eluding, I think, to how it was in its nascent days: out in the middle of nowhere, just you and your community. Doubtless, we get that here. And I think we can take some pride in the fact when people say, “Oh, you’re getting the real Peace Corps Experience”, we can honestly reply “Yeah, we are”.
What we have is a really awesome community. Or I should say communities. Outside of our school community in Machanga, we have become a part of the big Peace Corps family. Whether a person was in Thailand in 1965 of in Cameroon in 2009, it doesn’t really matter: the only people who truly understand what this whole Peace Corps thing is about are Peace Corps Volunteers. I guess what it comes down to is that it’s pretty cool to be a part of something that is so much bigger than you.
What we have are truly phenomenal friends and family. Put aside the packages and the letters, the phone calls and text messages. Knowing that we have their love and support, even though it may be difficult to have a loved one so far away for so long, is priceless. It makes this term of service easier.
What we have is a new education, the kind you can’t get in a university. It’s a cultural education. Sure, there are a lot of things that we still do in a typically American way. But a lot of what we do – speaking Portuguese, riding in chapas, cooking with charcoal for half of our meals, washing our feet with stones – is Mozambican to its core. We do these things not just to blend in or because we have to, but a lot of times, we do these things because they just work better here.
What we have is a new appreciation for the things we take for granted in America. In a developing country like Mozambique, life is not easier in most ways. The network of roads, despite recent touch-ups, still needs a lot of work. Our energy situation, though no longer difficult to deal with, is not ideal. And man, I could really use a good burrito or some Vietnamese food. There are things that we certainly miss, but these are the things that we will enjoy the most when we are home.
What we have is a Mozambican sense of patience. Things get done here, but they do take a while – twenty-four hour energy, anyone? In the end, we have little control of when the chapa leaves or when our mail will arrive. So we sit. And we wait. And we wait. And hopefully, we have a book or a magazine.
What we have are stories – more stories than we have friends to listen or time to tell. I know that every Thanksgiving from here on out, I will think of Maurice. Our travels in the future will be compared to our travels from this year. And all those little things that we barely think of now will be bigger when we look back on it.
What we have is a year under our belts. What we have is one more to go.
A year has passed since we first arrived in rainy, muddy, fire-engulfed Machanga. It wasn’t a particular good first impression. But slowly, but surely, this place started to grow on us. And now, in spite of its pitfalls – the isolation and loneliness, the lack of constant energy or running water – we have come to really appreciate what we have.
What we have is the real deal. A lot of people talk about “The Peace Corps Experience”, eluding, I think, to how it was in its nascent days: out in the middle of nowhere, just you and your community. Doubtless, we get that here. And I think we can take some pride in the fact when people say, “Oh, you’re getting the real Peace Corps Experience”, we can honestly reply “Yeah, we are”.
What we have is a really awesome community. Or I should say communities. Outside of our school community in Machanga, we have become a part of the big Peace Corps family. Whether a person was in Thailand in 1965 of in Cameroon in 2009, it doesn’t really matter: the only people who truly understand what this whole Peace Corps thing is about are Peace Corps Volunteers. I guess what it comes down to is that it’s pretty cool to be a part of something that is so much bigger than you.
What we have are truly phenomenal friends and family. Put aside the packages and the letters, the phone calls and text messages. Knowing that we have their love and support, even though it may be difficult to have a loved one so far away for so long, is priceless. It makes this term of service easier.
What we have is a new education, the kind you can’t get in a university. It’s a cultural education. Sure, there are a lot of things that we still do in a typically American way. But a lot of what we do – speaking Portuguese, riding in chapas, cooking with charcoal for half of our meals, washing our feet with stones – is Mozambican to its core. We do these things not just to blend in or because we have to, but a lot of times, we do these things because they just work better here.
What we have is a new appreciation for the things we take for granted in America. In a developing country like Mozambique, life is not easier in most ways. The network of roads, despite recent touch-ups, still needs a lot of work. Our energy situation, though no longer difficult to deal with, is not ideal. And man, I could really use a good burrito or some Vietnamese food. There are things that we certainly miss, but these are the things that we will enjoy the most when we are home.
What we have is a Mozambican sense of patience. Things get done here, but they do take a while – twenty-four hour energy, anyone? In the end, we have little control of when the chapa leaves or when our mail will arrive. So we sit. And we wait. And we wait. And hopefully, we have a book or a magazine.
What we have are stories – more stories than we have friends to listen or time to tell. I know that every Thanksgiving from here on out, I will think of Maurice. Our travels in the future will be compared to our travels from this year. And all those little things that we barely think of now will be bigger when we look back on it.
What we have is a year under our belts. What we have is one more to go.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Year 1 - Week 52: Watching the Wheels Go Round and Round
It looked like we were in for more rain again on Sunday. We got a good shower in the wee hours of the morning, but for the most part, the rain held off. Regardless, the damage was done: the road was muddied and full of puddles. I thought that I could take the bike to the market. It wasn’t the best decision I’ve made – I only had to walk it for a couple yards – but I’ve made better choices.
After the market run, the entire morning was spent chilling on the patio. Work for some of the other teachers – the people in charge – is starting to wind down, and other teachers are starting to make their way out of Machanga. Lucky souls. Our time will come soon enough.
It’s truly amazing how the combination of doing nothing plus the heat and humidity can sap the energy. Following lunch, I took a nap that absolutely knocked me out. The heat has made sleeping nearly impossible so naptime has become a necessity. The tragedy of it all is that naptime has made sleeping at night more difficult – quite a sick cycle.
We made an afternoon market run, but this market run was of particular importance. We weren’t just going to grab a soda. My shorts were finally ready to be picked up. When Madinha presented them to me, the reaction was generally positive. I, of course, loved them. Madinha thought the came out well, and it got a laugh out of a couple of people. They were cut absolutely perfectly and Madinha insisted that I wear them home. On the walk home, they got a couple looks, but nothing negative.
Just before dinner, I talked to my mom and dad. As the weeks have wasted away and they have come closer to arriving here in Mozambique, the excitement in their voices has become more apparent. Everything is prepared. All that’s left is the waiting of these last three weeks.
When the lights turned out, we thought that we would be able to go to sleep. The heat wasn’t too intolerable and even the blaring music in the background was not the worst thing in the world. Then the screaming started. “Ussene! Ussene!” We thought that this little four year old kid ran away. Then the banging on the door started. Then more screaming.
By 10:30, we just couldn’t take it anymore. We climbed out of bed to see what the commotion was all about. Ussene locked out his family and went to sleep with a candle still lit, and neither banging nor screaming could wake the little kid up. The neighbors thought about breaking in through windows, but then I remember something. The padre here has broken into his room before and I figured that I could do the same. All it took to break into the house was a screw driver and needle-nose pliers.
The music kept playing, but with the screaming and banging gone, it was peaceful enough to sleep.
I was awake, but I wasn’t well rested by any means. It’s a good thing there was nothing important to do for most of the day. As I sat on the patio, I watched other teachers clean out their yards and I thought I should do the same. Now, cutting the grass here is more than pushing a mower. It requires taking nine-iron-like hacks with a slightly angled off knife. Although it’s not the most effective mode of cutting grass, it’s pretty good exercise, and the yard does look a lot nicer now.
The rest of the morning was pretty slow. I broke out the sudoku book for a little bit before lunch. The late part of my morning was also spent trying to convince some departing friends that they should stop here for a night. By lunch time, I received a text saying they wouldn’t be stopping. It’s sad that we won’t see them again, but it’s understandable. Machanga is in the middle of fuckin nowhere and they have places to go.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do after lunch. I had the ritual nap and the now ritual box-filing and code-breaking. But other than that, nothing happened until the energy came on a full hour early.
We were particularly lazy about dinner tonight. Richie bought a ton of bread, so we thought that we would cook up sandwiches. And we still have all those cans of corned beef that I’m still a little skeptical about (even thought we’ve had it twice, and it’s good). We ate our sandwiches and watched “Match Point”, one of the more recent Woody Allen movies. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t terrible either.
I’m going to entirely skip over Tuesday because I did nothing on Tuesday. My entire day can be summed up with the words su doku and cryptograms.
The only thing that happened Tuesday was that just before I went to sleep, I caught view of an absolutely massive spider. This was not a tiny spider. This was something like a tarantula about the size of my palm. I tried to kill it, but the bastard got away. I then spent the next hour trying to psych myself into falling asleep. This is why we use bed nets.
I was back to being productive on Wednesday. Sozinho has once again departed, albeit temporarily this time, so we are left to our own devices to wash clothes. Once again, washing clothes is a royal pain in the ass. But these days, when there is nothing to do in Machanga, being able to kill almost two hours doing laundry is actually a good thing.
Wednesday was a most excellent day to do laundry. The sun was pounding down ridiculously hard. The news said that it was 32 degrees Celsius. That translates to roughly ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Given the choice, though, I think I’d rather take 32 Celsius. After all, my clothes won’t dry in 32 Fahrenheit.
My laundry was washed and dried before noon. We cooked up some lunch and after that, there was nothing. The heat was absolutely brutal and all we could do was sit there or lay there. But I couldn’t bring myself to nap. With all the sleeping problems I’ve had I night, I figure that I should cut down the napping.
Dinner was whatever. We made Mexican food which is always good, but it doesn’t really matter. Whatever plans we had for the night – not that we had anything of substance – were nixed by a couple colleagues who needed some computer help.
There was not a lot happening Thursday morning. We just sat on our patio, watching the wheels go round and round. Actually, the only wheels we watched go round and round were those of our bike rolling away. I guess it’s good that people are using it. As long as it’s dry, it’s all good, but once the rain is here for good, it will be put away.
Thursday afternoon, however, was quite lovely. After eating lunch, we broke out a couple boxes of terrible wine with one of our colleagues. His English is not too bad and with a little wine, it becomes better, just as our Portuguese gets better with alcohol.
Afternoon drinking turned into night drinking. With the boxes finished, the three of us and one other teacher went over to the villa. Richie and I, pathetically, lost a game of Slamball to a couple Mozambicans. It’s shocking how quickly they can drink. As more people showed up, I broke out the deck of cards and wowed people with some magic. The things that people like here crack me up sometimes.
We were back by 8:15, leaving us just enough time to make dinner and eat before the lights went out. And other than the 3:00 drunken wake-up, it was not a terrible night of sleep.
I woke up Friday feeling pretty good. I guess the advantage of afternoon drinking is that you sleep right through the hangover. It’s a nice upside. I spent a good portion of the day Friday finishing out a book of crossword puzzles. Halfway through finishing, I convinced myself that I could put together a puzzle. I failed in two attempts, but I’m still sure that I can do this. One day, I’ll get it done.
Once again, it was fuckin hot here. Richie, like I did earlier in the week, did laundry today and it, like mine, was dried by lunch. Other than the market run and finishing the crossword book, it was an otherwise useless day.
Our neighbor came over early in the afternoon to see if we had an agenda for the afternoon. Of course, we told him we had nothing planned, but we really didn’t want to drink again. Two afternoons in a row is a little excessive, even by Machanga standards.
Clouds rolled in Friday night and it looked like it was going to rain, but for the entire evening, Machanga stayed dry. Only after we had gone to sleep did it begin to rain.
The clouds seemed to leave as quickly as they came in. For a short part of Saturday morning, there was pure sunshine. The entirety of the phone call with my brother was in daylight. And as if on command, as soon as I got off the phone, the first drops came down.
And then. The deluge. The clouds moved in faster and faster until the sky from horizon to horizon. The rain came down the entire morning. At some times, it was pure downpour. At some times, it was drizzling. But it never entirely stopped. All said, we filled bucket after bucket to the tune of more than one hundred liters.
More of our colleagues left today, leaving the place even more empty, leaving us more lonely. A couple of our colleagues are stuck around and they were as lonely as we were. They replaced our colleagues a couple small flasks of whiskey and a flask of gin and we drank the rainy afternoon away.
The rain stopped for the most part after dinner and our colleagues wanted to get a couple beers. We trudged and sludged our way through the mud to the villa. I almost fell at least twice. And after our couple beers, we were done. It was not a worthwhile trip. But I guess with nothing to do, anything to pass some time until my family gets here is time well spent.
After the market run, the entire morning was spent chilling on the patio. Work for some of the other teachers – the people in charge – is starting to wind down, and other teachers are starting to make their way out of Machanga. Lucky souls. Our time will come soon enough.
It’s truly amazing how the combination of doing nothing plus the heat and humidity can sap the energy. Following lunch, I took a nap that absolutely knocked me out. The heat has made sleeping nearly impossible so naptime has become a necessity. The tragedy of it all is that naptime has made sleeping at night more difficult – quite a sick cycle.
We made an afternoon market run, but this market run was of particular importance. We weren’t just going to grab a soda. My shorts were finally ready to be picked up. When Madinha presented them to me, the reaction was generally positive. I, of course, loved them. Madinha thought the came out well, and it got a laugh out of a couple of people. They were cut absolutely perfectly and Madinha insisted that I wear them home. On the walk home, they got a couple looks, but nothing negative.
Just before dinner, I talked to my mom and dad. As the weeks have wasted away and they have come closer to arriving here in Mozambique, the excitement in their voices has become more apparent. Everything is prepared. All that’s left is the waiting of these last three weeks.
When the lights turned out, we thought that we would be able to go to sleep. The heat wasn’t too intolerable and even the blaring music in the background was not the worst thing in the world. Then the screaming started. “Ussene! Ussene!” We thought that this little four year old kid ran away. Then the banging on the door started. Then more screaming.
By 10:30, we just couldn’t take it anymore. We climbed out of bed to see what the commotion was all about. Ussene locked out his family and went to sleep with a candle still lit, and neither banging nor screaming could wake the little kid up. The neighbors thought about breaking in through windows, but then I remember something. The padre here has broken into his room before and I figured that I could do the same. All it took to break into the house was a screw driver and needle-nose pliers.
The music kept playing, but with the screaming and banging gone, it was peaceful enough to sleep.
I was awake, but I wasn’t well rested by any means. It’s a good thing there was nothing important to do for most of the day. As I sat on the patio, I watched other teachers clean out their yards and I thought I should do the same. Now, cutting the grass here is more than pushing a mower. It requires taking nine-iron-like hacks with a slightly angled off knife. Although it’s not the most effective mode of cutting grass, it’s pretty good exercise, and the yard does look a lot nicer now.
The rest of the morning was pretty slow. I broke out the sudoku book for a little bit before lunch. The late part of my morning was also spent trying to convince some departing friends that they should stop here for a night. By lunch time, I received a text saying they wouldn’t be stopping. It’s sad that we won’t see them again, but it’s understandable. Machanga is in the middle of fuckin nowhere and they have places to go.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do after lunch. I had the ritual nap and the now ritual box-filing and code-breaking. But other than that, nothing happened until the energy came on a full hour early.
We were particularly lazy about dinner tonight. Richie bought a ton of bread, so we thought that we would cook up sandwiches. And we still have all those cans of corned beef that I’m still a little skeptical about (even thought we’ve had it twice, and it’s good). We ate our sandwiches and watched “Match Point”, one of the more recent Woody Allen movies. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t terrible either.
I’m going to entirely skip over Tuesday because I did nothing on Tuesday. My entire day can be summed up with the words su doku and cryptograms.
The only thing that happened Tuesday was that just before I went to sleep, I caught view of an absolutely massive spider. This was not a tiny spider. This was something like a tarantula about the size of my palm. I tried to kill it, but the bastard got away. I then spent the next hour trying to psych myself into falling asleep. This is why we use bed nets.
I was back to being productive on Wednesday. Sozinho has once again departed, albeit temporarily this time, so we are left to our own devices to wash clothes. Once again, washing clothes is a royal pain in the ass. But these days, when there is nothing to do in Machanga, being able to kill almost two hours doing laundry is actually a good thing.
Wednesday was a most excellent day to do laundry. The sun was pounding down ridiculously hard. The news said that it was 32 degrees Celsius. That translates to roughly ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Given the choice, though, I think I’d rather take 32 Celsius. After all, my clothes won’t dry in 32 Fahrenheit.
My laundry was washed and dried before noon. We cooked up some lunch and after that, there was nothing. The heat was absolutely brutal and all we could do was sit there or lay there. But I couldn’t bring myself to nap. With all the sleeping problems I’ve had I night, I figure that I should cut down the napping.
Dinner was whatever. We made Mexican food which is always good, but it doesn’t really matter. Whatever plans we had for the night – not that we had anything of substance – were nixed by a couple colleagues who needed some computer help.
There was not a lot happening Thursday morning. We just sat on our patio, watching the wheels go round and round. Actually, the only wheels we watched go round and round were those of our bike rolling away. I guess it’s good that people are using it. As long as it’s dry, it’s all good, but once the rain is here for good, it will be put away.
Thursday afternoon, however, was quite lovely. After eating lunch, we broke out a couple boxes of terrible wine with one of our colleagues. His English is not too bad and with a little wine, it becomes better, just as our Portuguese gets better with alcohol.
Afternoon drinking turned into night drinking. With the boxes finished, the three of us and one other teacher went over to the villa. Richie and I, pathetically, lost a game of Slamball to a couple Mozambicans. It’s shocking how quickly they can drink. As more people showed up, I broke out the deck of cards and wowed people with some magic. The things that people like here crack me up sometimes.
We were back by 8:15, leaving us just enough time to make dinner and eat before the lights went out. And other than the 3:00 drunken wake-up, it was not a terrible night of sleep.
I woke up Friday feeling pretty good. I guess the advantage of afternoon drinking is that you sleep right through the hangover. It’s a nice upside. I spent a good portion of the day Friday finishing out a book of crossword puzzles. Halfway through finishing, I convinced myself that I could put together a puzzle. I failed in two attempts, but I’m still sure that I can do this. One day, I’ll get it done.
Once again, it was fuckin hot here. Richie, like I did earlier in the week, did laundry today and it, like mine, was dried by lunch. Other than the market run and finishing the crossword book, it was an otherwise useless day.
Our neighbor came over early in the afternoon to see if we had an agenda for the afternoon. Of course, we told him we had nothing planned, but we really didn’t want to drink again. Two afternoons in a row is a little excessive, even by Machanga standards.
Clouds rolled in Friday night and it looked like it was going to rain, but for the entire evening, Machanga stayed dry. Only after we had gone to sleep did it begin to rain.
The clouds seemed to leave as quickly as they came in. For a short part of Saturday morning, there was pure sunshine. The entirety of the phone call with my brother was in daylight. And as if on command, as soon as I got off the phone, the first drops came down.
And then. The deluge. The clouds moved in faster and faster until the sky from horizon to horizon. The rain came down the entire morning. At some times, it was pure downpour. At some times, it was drizzling. But it never entirely stopped. All said, we filled bucket after bucket to the tune of more than one hundred liters.
More of our colleagues left today, leaving the place even more empty, leaving us more lonely. A couple of our colleagues are stuck around and they were as lonely as we were. They replaced our colleagues a couple small flasks of whiskey and a flask of gin and we drank the rainy afternoon away.
The rain stopped for the most part after dinner and our colleagues wanted to get a couple beers. We trudged and sludged our way through the mud to the villa. I almost fell at least twice. And after our couple beers, we were done. It was not a worthwhile trip. But I guess with nothing to do, anything to pass some time until my family gets here is time well spent.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Year 1 - Week 51: Three and Four
If this year’s departure dates are a proper guide for next year, last Thursday was the last Thanksgiving that we will celebrate in Mozambique – weird. Weirder than that is the fact that half the people with whom we celebrated are all but departed. We are hoping to catch some of our Moz12 friends one more time before they leave, but a lot of them are already gone.
This is a time that is both depressing and exciting. It’s depressing because our friends are leaving. Making things more difficult is the fact that there is so little to do these days. Quite frankly, we feel useless right now. At the same time, we are so excited that Moz14 is literally days away from being sent to their sites. And with Moz12 moving out, and Moz14 moving in, it means that we’re the next group out.
Not that we’re necessarily in a rush to leave. We still have a lot of work to do, a lot of little projects we want to get done. But all of that will have to wait until the school year starts up in January. For now, though, we are stuck doing nothing, which is just about what we did on Sunday.
For the last couple days, I’ve read “The Best American Non-Required Reading” of 2008. It’s a collection put together annually by 826 Valencia, which is in my general neighborhood. It’s an interesting collection of fiction and non-fiction writing from 2008. As I think I’ve made clear over the course of the year, literature is not my thing – I’m more of a history/biography kind of person – but this stuff was good. Really good. Can’t put down good. I spent the better part of Sunday, save for a nap, with my face in the book.
Late in the afternoon, we ran over to the villa to get a soda. The soda run on Sunday is always kind of a fishing expedition. For most of the year, the villa has simply shut down on Sunday, but with electricity, there may or my not be something open. Today, we were lucky: we got our cold sodas.
We had but an hour to wait until the energy on. We made chili tonight, which always takes forever to cook, so while the beans cooked, we watched “The Darjeeling Limited”. I saw this in theatres with my best friends and all I could remember from it was that Sweet Lime was drop-dead gorgeous, India is full of bright colors, and it’s pretty funny. I forgot how good of a film it is.
It’s fuckin’ hot here again, making sleep a challenge. One would think that it would cool down after the sun goes down, but by some strange, cruel meteorological twist, the breeze stops at night. Before going to bed, I did a little more reading, but I was distracted by what was outside my window. The sky, at 9:30 at night, was nearly white. A clear sky, nearly no pollution, and a remarkable bright moon will do that. And it’s not even a full moon.
After 1:30 and 5:15 wake-ups, I rolled out of bed around 7:30 for another day lacking commitments. Today begins the second round of national exams, which we thankfully have not been asked to proctor. This left me plenty of time to finish out “Non-Essential”, which I was happy about. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my hands on the 2009 edition when it comes out.
Richie and I made a run to the market around 10 o’clock. Yesterday, while in the villa, I talked to a tailor about getting a pair of shorts made. He wouldn’t give me a price yesterday, so I decided I should come by with the cloth today. I had a baseline for the price – our colleague spends 200 Mets a pair – so I figured the price would be a little higher here, as there are not as many tailors here. I was shocked to here the price: 600 Mets!
If I was shocked, Madinha, or market friend, was irate. She grabbed my cloth, and the shorts I want the new pair modeled after, and said she would take care of it. “This shouldn’t cost more than 80 Mets!” Then, someone else spoke up. “Are you sure they said 600 and not 60?” Fuck. I was sure I heard 600, but I’ve been wrong before, and there’s no reason I couldn’t be wrong again. I went back to the tailor and asked the price again. “Sixty. Six-zero”. It’s lovely to know that after more than year of speaking this language, I still make the most basic errors. Just lovely.
At least my idiocy provided a good laugh for Richie. And it may have been a good sign. “He doesn’t sew that well anyway”, said Madinha. “I’ll take them to Mambone”. It’s out of my hands now.
I got back to reading Sedaris’s book after lunch. I’m committed at this point, and there’s so little left that I felt like I had to finish it. The second half, in my opinion, was much better than the first. It should come as no surprise that the second half is the non-fiction side. With that knocked out, I started reading “Bulfinch’s Mythology”. This should be interesting. I don’t know what will win out: the fact that it’s a history, making this enjoyable, or the fact that it’s basically a history about fiction.
Our preparations for dinner were minimal. For the first time, I made mango salsa, which was quite good. It’s a shame that mangoes have such a weird texture, because they are so delicious, they could be dessert. After dinner, we watched “Choke”, another strange buy funny movie.
I was enjoying an otherwise cool Tuesday morning when I got the call: “be at school at 8:30.” Damnit. Every time I think I’m done with work for the year, they keep dragging me in. Today was pretty simple – I just had to read through the second English exam and make sure there were no errors. Other than a couple minor things, there was nothing really substantial, much better than the first exam.
It would have been nice to get correcting, but the students were still taking the exam when I was reading through it. This exam, along with having less mistakes, was substantially easier than the first exam. I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see how they did.
As late morning rolled in, so did the clouds. A pallid sheet of grey took over the entire sky. And then it started to rain…for the next ten hours. It was a weak but constant rain, hard enough to fill a bucket but light enough to not turn the entire town to mud. We followed what everyone else did and just sat on the patio trying to stay dry.
The cloud cover did a pretty good job of turning the place dark. It was so dark that they had to turn the energy on hours early so the students could read their exams. This benefited us, as we were able to watch a movie before dinner. After dinner, we watched the “House” bonus features, which weren’t so bad. It did its job and filled out our night.
Wednesday was the real work day. Even though grading is a completely monotonous task, it was still something to occupy my time. I plugged in the iPod and graded away until lunch time.
There was a very interesting split between the two groups that took the exam. In one group, nearly everybody passed convincingly. In the other class, less than ten percent passed. In theory, the classes should pass at a relatively similar rate. The only difference that I could see between the two classes was that one of the groups was presided over by an English teacher and one wasn’t. I’m not saying that anything fishy happened, but it is quite the coincidence.
I had to go back to school around 2:00 to finish up grading. Along with the actually correcting, we have to record the grades. It’s a boring task made worse by the fact that we have to everything first in pencil, then overwrite in pen. A twenty minute task is immediately doubled.
The clouds finally cleared out in the afternoon. The puddles thrown around town were enough to draw a ton of frogs and bugs out into the open. It was an invasion. For some reason, I thought buying a new light for a porch would be a good idea. Wrong. Once the lights came on, and the sun went down, the bugs swarmed to the light. Terrible idea all the way around.
Richie had a revolutionary idea for dinner: pizza. While he cooked up out delicious food, I went over to our neighbor’s house to buy beers. We can’t have pizza without beer. After eating, we watched “Napoleon Dynamite”. Yes, even though this movie has been out for years, I had not seen it. Gosh!
Since we managed to get all of our correcting done on Wednesday, I was in for another boring morning on Thursday. I was enjoying a nice relaxing day on the patio when the tenth grade math teacher came over and threw me the twelfth grade math exam. The twelfth grade teacher is in the hospital, likely with malaria, so I became the go-to person for math. He gave me four problems that he couldn’t figure out: “a little practice for you”, as he said.
Two of the problems were a piece of cake, one gave me a little strain, and one – because it had logarithms – I had no idea to do. As I was working on the problems, a student came over to ask me about the logarithm problem. He gave me an example of how logarithms worked and a few minutes later, I had the problem figured out. When the teacher returned, he just laughed. “These problems gave me a headache trying to figure them out”, he said. I’m just happy to help out.
Richie and I had a little time after lunch to relax before heading over to Mambone. Two Volunteers are making their way through the country and they wanted to see Machanga. For the third time this year, we’re going to have visitors! Before we headed over, we went to the villa to talk to Madinha. We figured that she could cook us up a pretty good lunch tomorrow, and she was okay with the idea.
We got to Mambone around 4:30, by far the latest we’ve arrived there. Usually, we’re there by 9 in the morning. Our timing was absolutely perfect: just as they were pulling into the villa, we were also arriving. Having traveled all day, we figured that we should give them a small break, so we got a beer before heading back across the river.
Besides the fact that our house is tiny, we are ill-equipped to take on visitors. We pretty much only have two of everything because people so rarely come here. This is especially evident on the sleeping front – we only have our two beds. So we asked Sozinho to grab a couple mattresses from our neighbors’ houses and we were set up.
We went with a very simple pasta dinner. Cooking for four is a bit of a task in our tiny kitchen, but it was also made easier because we had some extra hands to prepare. After eating, we watched “Bruno”, and when the lights went out, we all settled into the sweatbox.
All of us were up pretty early Friday morning. Even though the day was young, it was still ridiculously hot. For a little while, we avoided the sun in the shade of our patio, but late in the morning, we found the energy to get up and passear through town. The four of us made a big loop through the villa, past the government building and back into the school.
By the time we got back, we were hungry. We told Madinha that we would be over for lunch around 2:00 and without having eaten breakfast, we needed something to hold us over. It would be a rare three-meal day for us.
The food was just enough to keep us hungry for lunch and it’s a good thing we brought our appetites. Madinha brought out all the stops: chicken, fish, matapa, rice and a little salad. For all her trouble, we barely paid her anything – 155 Mets each, and that included a couple drinks each. It was probably the best bang for our buck we’ve had anywhere.
We returned home around 4:00 and started debating the merits of dinner. We had just eaten twice. Would it really make sense to eat again? Sure, why not. After hanging around for a bit, our visitors cooked up some delicious spicy rice. While they cooked, I was made useful once again. There were four different tech problems that I attended to: one laptop wasn’t printing; a “lost” (read: unsaved) document needed to be “found” (read: retyped); the director’s computer needed a media player; and the printer jammed. All four problems were resolved with little effort.
I returned from the tech run just as food was coming out. Richie, who is not a fan of spiciness, ate three bites and gave up. I killed my plate and nearly finished his. The best decision we made, though, was the choice to eat dinner on the patio. As it has become hot again, the house has become ridiculously hot at night. Eating on the patio made dinner enjoyable.
Initially, I had no trouble sleeping. But I woke up at midnight, and was for a long time. I think I finally fell asleep sometime around 3 in the morning, but it wasn’t a good sleep by any means. Our visitors headed out early in the morning, making the wise decision, on our advice, to head south to Mambone before heading north. We would have walked them over but we had plans to head across the river later in the morning. While we waited for some hours to peel away, we cleaned up the house.
We were also hoping that the rain that arrived in the morning – and that caught our visitors on the way out – would leave. But as 10:00 rolled around, the rain was still falling, albeit lightly. Hooded and under an umbrella, we headed out to the river. As we walked the rain picked up and the dirt quickly became mud. It continued to rain hard as we crossed the river. And when we finally settled at Zimaima, the restaurant where we like to eat, it was a full-on downpour.
Our reason for going to Mambone was very specific. We didn’t need to have the delicious chicken, although it was a nice perk. The real cause was to pick up our passports. Our renewed visas had made it all the way to Vilanculos, but we didn’t want to go there to get them, so we told one of the Volunteers there to give them to the chapa driver. She bid us good luck, but we had confidence in him. After all, Greg, our recently departed friend, had entrusted him with his bank card and cash. Of course, we got our passports with no problem.
The rain steadily increased for the better part of the afternoon. We caught a break as it seemed to come to a complete halt as we crossed back to Machanga. We then made our way through the mud, both of us nearly falling many times, until we were back at home. As fate would have it, as soon as we were back in the house, it stopped raining completely.
Between the poor night’s sleep and all the walking, we were both exhausted; we both took late afternoon naps. Fully awake, we cleaned up the patio a bit. The rain always turns our blessed patio to mud. And with a night of beans and little media left to watch, we called it a day.
This is a time that is both depressing and exciting. It’s depressing because our friends are leaving. Making things more difficult is the fact that there is so little to do these days. Quite frankly, we feel useless right now. At the same time, we are so excited that Moz14 is literally days away from being sent to their sites. And with Moz12 moving out, and Moz14 moving in, it means that we’re the next group out.
Not that we’re necessarily in a rush to leave. We still have a lot of work to do, a lot of little projects we want to get done. But all of that will have to wait until the school year starts up in January. For now, though, we are stuck doing nothing, which is just about what we did on Sunday.
For the last couple days, I’ve read “The Best American Non-Required Reading” of 2008. It’s a collection put together annually by 826 Valencia, which is in my general neighborhood. It’s an interesting collection of fiction and non-fiction writing from 2008. As I think I’ve made clear over the course of the year, literature is not my thing – I’m more of a history/biography kind of person – but this stuff was good. Really good. Can’t put down good. I spent the better part of Sunday, save for a nap, with my face in the book.
Late in the afternoon, we ran over to the villa to get a soda. The soda run on Sunday is always kind of a fishing expedition. For most of the year, the villa has simply shut down on Sunday, but with electricity, there may or my not be something open. Today, we were lucky: we got our cold sodas.
We had but an hour to wait until the energy on. We made chili tonight, which always takes forever to cook, so while the beans cooked, we watched “The Darjeeling Limited”. I saw this in theatres with my best friends and all I could remember from it was that Sweet Lime was drop-dead gorgeous, India is full of bright colors, and it’s pretty funny. I forgot how good of a film it is.
It’s fuckin’ hot here again, making sleep a challenge. One would think that it would cool down after the sun goes down, but by some strange, cruel meteorological twist, the breeze stops at night. Before going to bed, I did a little more reading, but I was distracted by what was outside my window. The sky, at 9:30 at night, was nearly white. A clear sky, nearly no pollution, and a remarkable bright moon will do that. And it’s not even a full moon.
After 1:30 and 5:15 wake-ups, I rolled out of bed around 7:30 for another day lacking commitments. Today begins the second round of national exams, which we thankfully have not been asked to proctor. This left me plenty of time to finish out “Non-Essential”, which I was happy about. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my hands on the 2009 edition when it comes out.
Richie and I made a run to the market around 10 o’clock. Yesterday, while in the villa, I talked to a tailor about getting a pair of shorts made. He wouldn’t give me a price yesterday, so I decided I should come by with the cloth today. I had a baseline for the price – our colleague spends 200 Mets a pair – so I figured the price would be a little higher here, as there are not as many tailors here. I was shocked to here the price: 600 Mets!
If I was shocked, Madinha, or market friend, was irate. She grabbed my cloth, and the shorts I want the new pair modeled after, and said she would take care of it. “This shouldn’t cost more than 80 Mets!” Then, someone else spoke up. “Are you sure they said 600 and not 60?” Fuck. I was sure I heard 600, but I’ve been wrong before, and there’s no reason I couldn’t be wrong again. I went back to the tailor and asked the price again. “Sixty. Six-zero”. It’s lovely to know that after more than year of speaking this language, I still make the most basic errors. Just lovely.
At least my idiocy provided a good laugh for Richie. And it may have been a good sign. “He doesn’t sew that well anyway”, said Madinha. “I’ll take them to Mambone”. It’s out of my hands now.
I got back to reading Sedaris’s book after lunch. I’m committed at this point, and there’s so little left that I felt like I had to finish it. The second half, in my opinion, was much better than the first. It should come as no surprise that the second half is the non-fiction side. With that knocked out, I started reading “Bulfinch’s Mythology”. This should be interesting. I don’t know what will win out: the fact that it’s a history, making this enjoyable, or the fact that it’s basically a history about fiction.
Our preparations for dinner were minimal. For the first time, I made mango salsa, which was quite good. It’s a shame that mangoes have such a weird texture, because they are so delicious, they could be dessert. After dinner, we watched “Choke”, another strange buy funny movie.
I was enjoying an otherwise cool Tuesday morning when I got the call: “be at school at 8:30.” Damnit. Every time I think I’m done with work for the year, they keep dragging me in. Today was pretty simple – I just had to read through the second English exam and make sure there were no errors. Other than a couple minor things, there was nothing really substantial, much better than the first exam.
It would have been nice to get correcting, but the students were still taking the exam when I was reading through it. This exam, along with having less mistakes, was substantially easier than the first exam. I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see how they did.
As late morning rolled in, so did the clouds. A pallid sheet of grey took over the entire sky. And then it started to rain…for the next ten hours. It was a weak but constant rain, hard enough to fill a bucket but light enough to not turn the entire town to mud. We followed what everyone else did and just sat on the patio trying to stay dry.
The cloud cover did a pretty good job of turning the place dark. It was so dark that they had to turn the energy on hours early so the students could read their exams. This benefited us, as we were able to watch a movie before dinner. After dinner, we watched the “House” bonus features, which weren’t so bad. It did its job and filled out our night.
Wednesday was the real work day. Even though grading is a completely monotonous task, it was still something to occupy my time. I plugged in the iPod and graded away until lunch time.
There was a very interesting split between the two groups that took the exam. In one group, nearly everybody passed convincingly. In the other class, less than ten percent passed. In theory, the classes should pass at a relatively similar rate. The only difference that I could see between the two classes was that one of the groups was presided over by an English teacher and one wasn’t. I’m not saying that anything fishy happened, but it is quite the coincidence.
I had to go back to school around 2:00 to finish up grading. Along with the actually correcting, we have to record the grades. It’s a boring task made worse by the fact that we have to everything first in pencil, then overwrite in pen. A twenty minute task is immediately doubled.
The clouds finally cleared out in the afternoon. The puddles thrown around town were enough to draw a ton of frogs and bugs out into the open. It was an invasion. For some reason, I thought buying a new light for a porch would be a good idea. Wrong. Once the lights came on, and the sun went down, the bugs swarmed to the light. Terrible idea all the way around.
Richie had a revolutionary idea for dinner: pizza. While he cooked up out delicious food, I went over to our neighbor’s house to buy beers. We can’t have pizza without beer. After eating, we watched “Napoleon Dynamite”. Yes, even though this movie has been out for years, I had not seen it. Gosh!
Since we managed to get all of our correcting done on Wednesday, I was in for another boring morning on Thursday. I was enjoying a nice relaxing day on the patio when the tenth grade math teacher came over and threw me the twelfth grade math exam. The twelfth grade teacher is in the hospital, likely with malaria, so I became the go-to person for math. He gave me four problems that he couldn’t figure out: “a little practice for you”, as he said.
Two of the problems were a piece of cake, one gave me a little strain, and one – because it had logarithms – I had no idea to do. As I was working on the problems, a student came over to ask me about the logarithm problem. He gave me an example of how logarithms worked and a few minutes later, I had the problem figured out. When the teacher returned, he just laughed. “These problems gave me a headache trying to figure them out”, he said. I’m just happy to help out.
Richie and I had a little time after lunch to relax before heading over to Mambone. Two Volunteers are making their way through the country and they wanted to see Machanga. For the third time this year, we’re going to have visitors! Before we headed over, we went to the villa to talk to Madinha. We figured that she could cook us up a pretty good lunch tomorrow, and she was okay with the idea.
We got to Mambone around 4:30, by far the latest we’ve arrived there. Usually, we’re there by 9 in the morning. Our timing was absolutely perfect: just as they were pulling into the villa, we were also arriving. Having traveled all day, we figured that we should give them a small break, so we got a beer before heading back across the river.
Besides the fact that our house is tiny, we are ill-equipped to take on visitors. We pretty much only have two of everything because people so rarely come here. This is especially evident on the sleeping front – we only have our two beds. So we asked Sozinho to grab a couple mattresses from our neighbors’ houses and we were set up.
We went with a very simple pasta dinner. Cooking for four is a bit of a task in our tiny kitchen, but it was also made easier because we had some extra hands to prepare. After eating, we watched “Bruno”, and when the lights went out, we all settled into the sweatbox.
All of us were up pretty early Friday morning. Even though the day was young, it was still ridiculously hot. For a little while, we avoided the sun in the shade of our patio, but late in the morning, we found the energy to get up and passear through town. The four of us made a big loop through the villa, past the government building and back into the school.
By the time we got back, we were hungry. We told Madinha that we would be over for lunch around 2:00 and without having eaten breakfast, we needed something to hold us over. It would be a rare three-meal day for us.
The food was just enough to keep us hungry for lunch and it’s a good thing we brought our appetites. Madinha brought out all the stops: chicken, fish, matapa, rice and a little salad. For all her trouble, we barely paid her anything – 155 Mets each, and that included a couple drinks each. It was probably the best bang for our buck we’ve had anywhere.
We returned home around 4:00 and started debating the merits of dinner. We had just eaten twice. Would it really make sense to eat again? Sure, why not. After hanging around for a bit, our visitors cooked up some delicious spicy rice. While they cooked, I was made useful once again. There were four different tech problems that I attended to: one laptop wasn’t printing; a “lost” (read: unsaved) document needed to be “found” (read: retyped); the director’s computer needed a media player; and the printer jammed. All four problems were resolved with little effort.
I returned from the tech run just as food was coming out. Richie, who is not a fan of spiciness, ate three bites and gave up. I killed my plate and nearly finished his. The best decision we made, though, was the choice to eat dinner on the patio. As it has become hot again, the house has become ridiculously hot at night. Eating on the patio made dinner enjoyable.
Initially, I had no trouble sleeping. But I woke up at midnight, and was for a long time. I think I finally fell asleep sometime around 3 in the morning, but it wasn’t a good sleep by any means. Our visitors headed out early in the morning, making the wise decision, on our advice, to head south to Mambone before heading north. We would have walked them over but we had plans to head across the river later in the morning. While we waited for some hours to peel away, we cleaned up the house.
We were also hoping that the rain that arrived in the morning – and that caught our visitors on the way out – would leave. But as 10:00 rolled around, the rain was still falling, albeit lightly. Hooded and under an umbrella, we headed out to the river. As we walked the rain picked up and the dirt quickly became mud. It continued to rain hard as we crossed the river. And when we finally settled at Zimaima, the restaurant where we like to eat, it was a full-on downpour.
Our reason for going to Mambone was very specific. We didn’t need to have the delicious chicken, although it was a nice perk. The real cause was to pick up our passports. Our renewed visas had made it all the way to Vilanculos, but we didn’t want to go there to get them, so we told one of the Volunteers there to give them to the chapa driver. She bid us good luck, but we had confidence in him. After all, Greg, our recently departed friend, had entrusted him with his bank card and cash. Of course, we got our passports with no problem.
The rain steadily increased for the better part of the afternoon. We caught a break as it seemed to come to a complete halt as we crossed back to Machanga. We then made our way through the mud, both of us nearly falling many times, until we were back at home. As fate would have it, as soon as we were back in the house, it stopped raining completely.
Between the poor night’s sleep and all the walking, we were both exhausted; we both took late afternoon naps. Fully awake, we cleaned up the patio a bit. The rain always turns our blessed patio to mud. And with a night of beans and little media left to watch, we called it a day.
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