We had really hoped to go back to Machanga on Sunday, but following the twenty-hour death-ride to Vilanculos, Richie and I decided that we both deserved a day to relax. I won't speak for Richie, but I for one was very tired and extraordinarily sore. I needed a day to get my body back to normal.
As you would assume, I slept lke a baby, in spite of how hot our room was. You could have put me in the middle of the Sahara and I would have slept well. I was just happy to have minimal obligations. My first priority was to head to the tailor. I purchased a couple new capulanas in Maputo and wanted them turned into shorts. Plus, I had a couple of pictures that I needed to pass off to Alchandre.
Richie and I decided that as long as we were in Vilanculos, we would be irresponsible with our money. Spending nearly 400 Meticais on clothing was a good start. Breakfast at the backpapers was a solid second step. As we sat around, we met two Volunteers who had just finished up their service in Malawi. Even though we didn't know them, the conversation flowed easily. It's amazing how this whole Peace Corps experience brings people together.
Early in the afternoon, we headed in to town. Vilanculos is empty these days. With the holiday rush over, almost all of the South African tourists have found their way home, leaving Vilanculos a sleepy beach town. It's a noted difference from just montRichie and I both were in dire need of some cash. We hit up the bank, then headed to get some chicken. We went to this little takeaway place for the first time. After eating, we regretted that we hadn't tried it out before.
The rest of the afternoon was quiet. The ocean was absolutely beautiful. I guess the tourists took the heat out of the ocean; it was absolutely refreshing. We could have stayed in there all day. I also aspent a small part of the afternoon relearnng how to play cribbage. It's been a long time since I've played, so playing on this day was lke playng for the first time. I'd like to think I played okay, but I came in dead last.
The irresponsible spending continued in the evening. Along with our new friends, we got pizza. Over the course of the day, Richie and I managed to each spend 650 Meticais on food. That accounted for more than 10 percent of our monthly salaries. What do we care? With the money that Peace Corps gave us for travel and per diem, we were stll coming out ahead.
We went to bed on the early end, but I was up many times over the course of the night. I think it was around 3:30 that I decided to check the score of the football games. Richie would be disappointed by the Jets' loss to Indianapolis, and I stayed up late enough to see that the Saints beat the Vikings. Should be a great Super Bowl.
I wasn't happy to be back on the road on Monday, but we didn't have much of a choce. We needed to get back to Machanga. Shockingly, classes startd late last week and we had to get back to school to do our part. The ride was one of the better chapa rides we've ever had. We sat in the back row, which was left almost empty for most of the ride. It made it quite comfortable. As usual, the worst part of the trip was the walk from the river to the school. Between the heavy backpack and the two computers I was hauling, it wasn't a fun walk. So I decided to test a theory. We've been told that you could pay a kid ten Mets. I told a kid that I had ten Mets for him if he carried my bag. Lo and behold, he did. It made the walk a lot nicer.
We walked into a house that was spotless and and well-organized. Sozinho went to town on our house. As nice as the house was, I was a little frustrated because a lot of things had been moved around. I felt lost in my own house. And Sozinho had taken over a fair portion of my room. I wasn't thrilled about this, but what could I do? The house looked great.
There wasn't a lot going on at night. Our energy came on around 6:30. We fell into our regular old habits and cooked up spaghetti and tomato sauce. The house, now with three people, is a little crowded, but we're happy to have the help. We ended the night with some episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia".
Tuesday was the start of a couple good things. I told Sozinho that I wanted to speak English only to him. I figure that if we are going to have a kid living with us, he could at least get the benefit of hearing a lot of English. He agreed to the plan and so I started with the English right away.
Tuesday was also the start of classes. Along with some returning students in twelfth grade, I had a fresh batch of kids in eleventh grade. Even though I wasn't looking forward to teaching, I was excited once class started. I'm going to do my best to not use Portuguese with my twelfth graders and my eleventh graders seem eager to learn.
After classes ended, Richie and I went to the villa to grab a soda. It was amazingly hot and a cold soda went a long way in making us feel a bit better.
I was getting used to the new house set-up and thought that t would be best to at least make some room for Sozinho. I reorganized my room a little so that Sozinho could have a place to hang his clothing. I don't mind that all his stuff is in my room, but it should at least be situated in one place.
Our night was pretty ridiculous. After eating some shrimp stir fry, we watched a movie called "Bitch Slap". This was, undoubtedly, the best worst movie we have ever seen. Our colleagues are going to love it.
Like last night, I had trouble sleeping. 'Tis the season. It's fuckin' hot and we are dehydrated beyond belief, even though we are pouring water down our throats by the liter. No matter how much we drink, we sweat out that much plus some. I was up at least three times during the night for no other reason but to drink water. After last night, I learned my lesson: keep a bottle of water in bed. It saves a lot of needless trips out of bed.
I spent the morning reading “How Starbucks Saved My Life”. It's among the books that a friend of mine sent me. It's an interesting, improbable story of a man who loses his big-time ad agency job and ends up taking a job at Starbucks to get his life back on track. It's not a shining piece of literature by any means, but it's a good story.
Even though Tuesday was the first day of class for me, it wasn't really the first day of lessons. For my eleventh graders, I was merely introducing myself. Most of them were new students, the exceptions being the ones who managed to fail my class (and at least a couple others last year). For the twelfth graders, I just laid down how the year was going to work. Wednesday was the real first day of classes.
I had one class introduction to do with a set of eleventh graders, but after that, it was time to work. I brought in a small piece of writing (one paragraph) for my students to read. Following the reading, they had some questions to answer. A lot of them did pretty well. Some of them – especially the ones who failed my class, but were “voted up” to twelfth grade – struggled mightily. It's going to be a long year for them.
After my first full day of teaching, I was rather exhausted. I didn't want to do much of anything, which is good, because as we well know, there is nothing to do in Machanga. New year, same boring village.
We intend to change that, though. Following another miserable night's sleep, Richie and I went to talk to our school director on Thursday morning. We wanted to reiterate our commitment to building a basketball court here. The man who was going to plan it out had utterly failed us, so he decided that he would talk to a new person. He said he'd have someone by the end of the morning.
Naturally, we doubted this ambition. We decided to go to the market, figuring there was no way we'd be meeting with anyone today. But when we got back, we were shocked to get a call from the school. The “tecnico” was here and he wanted to talk. Sweet.
I had a full load of classes, mostly with eleventh graders, Thursday afternoon. My new kids showed some promise when I demonstrated how easy this language can be. I think I made some converts with the first mini-lesson on the first day; now it was a matter of getting them to think a bit in English. I went back to basics with them, introducing present simple and the verb “to be”. I know most of them know the verb, but most of them didn't really know how to use it. This group, compared to last year's eleventh graders seem younger, more malleable, and they seemed to get it quickly.
The clouds started to roll in Thursday afternoon, but it didn't make the temperature any more tolerable. In fact, all the humidity might have made it worse. We prayed for some rain. Even though it makes market runs difficult, we wouldn't mind much. Sozinho is doing most of our shopping these days anyways.
With the exception of a couple earth-rattling cracks of thunder and a quick shower, it was a pretty dry night. The thunder literally shook our house and a couple times over the course of the night woke us up. But for all the noise, there wasn't a lot of rain to match. When we woke up, the ground was still pretty dry.
I was called over to the school Friday morning by one of the teachers. There was someone who wanted to meet me. He was a new English teacher at the secondary school not too far from us. He wanted to plan out some classes. I wasn't too thrilled about this, as I like to do this kind of thing a little independently. But then, with a new curriculum, I figured that this wouldn't be the worst thing to do. He probably had more insight than me on how to plan out this curriculum, so I went along with it. He said we should meet tomorrow morning. Okay.
Thursday and Friday are my longest teaching days of the week. Each day, I have every period in the afternoon filled. I'm not thrilled about the situation. I would much rather have a front-loaded schedule and take it easy later in the week, but I have no control of this, so I let it go. I decided to make things on this day a little easier. I had some materials from last year that I wanted to put into use. They would get me through this day with no preparation and little work.
Richie and I had planned to go out with some teachers Friday night, but that plan was nixed when we got a good bit of rain Friday afternoon. There was no need to trudge through the mud to drink when we could just drink in the house. So that's what we did. It wasn't a night of excess, but it was enough to help us sleep.
Sozinho should have given us a clue that we were going to get some serious rain. Hell, he gave us two. The first was that for the first time all week, he was going to sleep inside. There's plenty of room in our house for him to sleep inside, but it's admittedly much nicer to be outside at night. He saw the rain coming and knew better. The second clue was that he told me to close my windows. I told him that water shouldn't get into my room because the wind was blowing away from
I was wrong. It absolutely downpoured for the entire evening. Around 1 in the morning, I woke up to find my sheets soaked. I only had myself to blame for this. I should have listened to Sozinho. I stripped the sheets, closed the windows, laid a towel over the especially rain-soaked part of my mattress and went back to bed.
The rain did some serious damage. The ground was strewn with puddles. Small lakes would actually be a more accurate description. And sadly, on a Saturday, I had work to do. As promised, I went to the school at 10:00, ready to lesson plan with this other teacher. I gave it twenty minutes. He didn't show up, so I left. Of course, I had forgotten the “40 Minute Rule”. Every meeting here starts forty minutes late, and why shouldn't this one? Sure enough, at twenty til eleven, a kid came over and told me there was someone at the school waiting for me. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
I walked back to the school and we got back to work. Clearly, he was as eager as I was to get going and knock this thing out. There was no bullshit conversation, no messing around. We both wanted to get in, get out, and get on with our day. We had the entire trimester planned out in forty-five minutes. It was a masterful performance by us.
On this otherwise grey, rainy day, there wasn't a whole lot to do. Our neighbor brought over a bottle of rum that we bought him. He wanted to get to work. Sure, why not? He was over at 3:00. By 3:30, the bottle of rum he brought over was gone, utterly destroyed by the three of us. I decided that I was done until the energy came on.
The best part about afternoon drinking is that you're still awake, giving you the opportunity to eat and rehydrate. By the end of the night, I was feeling perfect. On a dry day, I could have been coaxed into going drinking. But on this wet night, I was done. I ate a late dinner, watched some “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and went to sleep.
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