The constant rain that finally found its way to Machanga last week has decided to stick around. It's been a much different rainy season this year. Last year, when it rained, it poured and poured and poured. And the rains started in December and kept up a good pace through March and April. We didn't get our first rain this year until January, and it's been far from a wet rainy season. Until this week.
It's a pesky rain that we've had, raining in fits and starts. Strong winds have kept clouds moving in and moving out. I don't think it's rained for more than an hour at a time, but when it rains, it's a good rain. Such was the rain on Sunday. It stayed just dry enough to not make the roads miserable, but it was also just grey enough to keep us from going very far.
I spent most of the day sitting around reading, catching up on news from August. Who knew that six month old news could be so intriguing. I did manage to get one thing done: I finished correcting the rest of the exams from Friday. In a strange reversal from last year, the letters kids did better than the science kids. I know that seems counter-intuitive. The letters kids should do better at English. But it really comes down to one simple fact: the science kids are smarter.
There have been two major upsides to all of this rain. The first is that the bugs have been kept at bay. The monster grasshoppers – the ones that are big enough to eat (we haven't tried them...yet)– seem to have all but vanished. The ants that invaded our beloved porch have mostly disappeared. And mosquitoes have yet to really make an appearance. The other upside is that with the cooler weather, it has been significantly easier to sleep. It's still fuckin hot, don't doubt that. But it's not wake-up-with-the-sheets-soaked hot. It's more like struggle-to-fall-asleep hot. Regardless, it's a step up.
Sunday evening to Monday morning was catch-up time with the family. I got a call from my grandparents Sunday night and “woke up” to my parents on Monday morning. Of course, I was awake 90 minutes before they called, but I was still drowsy. They caught me up on real news and I caught them up on, well, nothing.
It was rainy again on Monday. Luckily, the furthest I had to go was to the school. The dreaded call from the director came. I'm starting to not fear these calls anymore. This one was about the basketball court that we are trying – and failing – to build. This meeting basically confirmed the fact that what we are trying to do is near impossible. Under different circumstances, like being in America, I'd say this were possible. But as we know, things move at the speed of smell here. This does not look promising.
Other than the meeting, it was a slow day. One of the great benefits of my family was I got a new computer battery. This means that I can now get some work during the day. I did the work that I dreaded doing: punching in all the names into a spreadsheet. At this moment, I was extremely thankful for only having 113 students (as opposed to the 260-some I had last year).
I didn't do much for the rest of the afternoon. I got a bit of a nap in and read a magazine and tried to not get completely drenched when the wind blew the rain into our house.
I was in charge of dinner again tonight. We were doing beans again, and we actually had tomatoes tonight to do it properly. For some reason, though, I think they were better with just the tomato paste. Strange. For our entertainment for the night, we got away from sitcoms and went for straight, stupid humor - “Step Brothers”. John C. Reilly. Will Ferrell. Boats and Hoes.
As usual, I had a slow Tuesday morning. I should come to embrace these mornings because come second trimester, I'm putting an end to it. It's a little late in the game to start computer lessons for this trimester, especially since I'll probably be in Maputo, again, in the middle of March. I want to have some continuity, so I will wait until April to get going. I spent the morning perched on the patio, reading an Economist from way to long ago.
The morning was especially slow because I didn't have to lesson plan. I only had 45 minutes with each of my classes and all I had to do was return exams. The students, for the most part, did alright. There were no grade disputes, other than three miscalculations I made. And I'm pretty sure I made an enemy for life out of the girl who I called out for cheating. She didn't admit it at first, but after I showed her the exams, she had no choice but to agree. I was kind with her: I only took half the points instead of giving her a zero, like I usually do.
I was happy to have a short work day because I had some work to take care of for some other teachers. As usual, a couple teachers turned to me to type up an exam. I have no problem with this, but I have come to like the social science exams a lot more than the hard science and math exams. There is way to much notational stuff – square roots, subscripts, other stuff I've never seen – and it ends up being a royal pain in my ass. Regardless, I made my way through this math exam. It took me a couple nights and one afternoon to finish.
When the energy came on, all I had to do was print out the exam for the teacher. We cooked up some beans and watched “500 Days of Summer”. I had no expectations for this movie, and it turned out to be pretty funny. It had a great humor about it.
I had an extraordinarily productive Wednesday. I used to the first couple of weeks to get my students acquainted to the idea of reading comprehension. This really was a three week shock-and-awe assault for them. I have grand plans to teach these students the actual national curriculum, but this can't start until I get the book. Until then, I'll be reviewing grammar with them. This morning, I figured out how I was going to get a year of grammar (the stuff I taught them last year) into six weeks. They should, in theory, know the stuff, but I know they need to see it at least a couple more times before it kind of sticks.
The afternoon wasn't nearly as productive. I didn't have to teach until 4:00 and I didn't have a lot to do until then. I cleaned up a little around the house. My room was in dire need of a decent cleaning. I didn't get so far as to mop, but at least my room was recognizable again.
Class went okay. The students seem to understand what I was getting at. At least, I hope they did. Present simple is like Day One of seventh grade English. They should know this stuff like the back of their hand, but I have to teach to the lowest of the low.
In comparison to my day, Richie's day was brutal. He gave exams for almost the entire day. As we have said time and time again, giving exams is one of the most painful experiences we have here. We constantly have to fight the cheaters and keeping a tight eye on those students is seriously exhausting. Anyways, he took about a quarter of the exams from one class. That's just depressing. So I treated him to a beer at the market. And I cooked dinner.
We didn't watch anything tonight because Richie wanted to get all of his exams corrected. I won't forgive him for this. Until tomorrow.
For the first time all week, we didn't have any rain. It was still grey for most of the day but not a single drop fell. This was highly fortunate for Richie. After teaching a couple of classes, Richie decided to embark on a journey that we not yet done: the one-day bank run to Inhassoro. Usually we take at least two days to go to Vilanculos, but Richie was poor and he didn't want to spend the night anywhere. Due to his classes, he got a late jump – around 9:30 – but with some luck, he'd get back.
Before he left, I made a run to the market. I figured that if he's going to be taking money out of the bank for me, I should at least get him some bread to eat before leaving. He only told me after that he had a loaf of bread before class. This is what I get for trying to be nice.
I spent the morning trying to do some Kakuro. I put the emphasis on trying. I failed miserably on almost every possible. I fell into a pattern. I'd move pretty well through the puzzle, get stuck, make as educated a guess as possible and inevitably be wrong. It's frustrating having to look at the answers to see where I fucked up. At least my mind was busy.
I taught first and second period in the afternoon, which was nice. Given the choice, I think I would much rather teach in the morning and just get it done. But since I don't have that luxury, the least I could ask for is getting the classes done as quickly as possible in the afternoon. With the exception of Wednesday, I teach first period every afternoon. The scheduling gods were on my side.
The afternoon was spent on the patio. Around 2:00, I got a text from Richie saying that he was “going for it”. He really wanted to make it back to day. God bless that child. It's a lot of travel for one day, even though it's not more than 250 kilometers. I kept wondering when he was going to make it, if he was going to make it at all. In the worst case scenario, he could stay in Mambone for the night, but that sort of defeats the purpose.
Around 5:30, Richie rolled up to the house. It took eight hours and a lot of sunburn, but we both had money. I owed him, big time. I cooked up dinner. He wanted to watch “Hitmen” – some movie with a lot of killing – because he said he wanted to kill everyone today. I can't blame him. After eating, we watched some random Michael Jordan highlights and “Parks and Recreation”.
Much like last Friday, I awoke to a math challenge, although this time the other teacher learned his lesson and chose not to make a wager. This was especially beneficial for me because had a bet been made, I probably would have lost. The problem involved solving an inequality with two absolute values. I know how to do inequalities with one absolute value, but it's been many years since I learned the rules of inequalities with two. Thankfully, my handy internet USB thing was working decently and I was able to get some information.
I worked at this problem for a good hour or two, and the answer finally came to me. I don't know if it's the best way to solve it. I'm sure it wasn't the best way to solve it, but it was correct nonetheless. If there are any math wizards who want a crack at solving it, here it is: |x-3<|2x-3|. The answer is x<0 and x>2. Anyone who sends me an eloquent manner of solving this gets an acknowledgment I'd offer a cookie or a toy or something, but I'm a bit far away.
It's a little funny: over the year-plus that we've been here, Richie and I have fallen into certain roles. Richie is the person that people come to with news of a death. I don't know why. Richie is also the person who is also more willing to go to public events. I, on the other hand, am the problem man. If there is a computer issue, they come to me. A math problem can't be solved: they send it to the “dono da matematica”.
The technology helper is the role I especially like. Sure, there are other people who can probably figure out a physics problem, but the Casa do Muzungu is the last line of defense for computers. A couple nights ago, one of the teachers from another school came over with his virus-riddled computer. It's taken me days to get it back to functioning. This morning, I made it half way through the virus scan and managed to get rid of no fewer than 290 infected files. There will be more work to do later.
All of this problem-solving took up the entire morning. I must say that although I like having down time, I think I'd rather be too busy than too bored. The time just drags on when there's nothing to do.
On this day, however, a short break would have been nice. I went straight from problem-solving to teaching. I was due for four periods of English. I filled two periods with the first group with no problem. The second class was more challenging, even though I was teaching the same material. Two-thirds of the class wasn't there, and they ones that we're there were not really all together there. They had already started their weekend, so I promised we would move quickly. I finished class a half hour early and everyone was grateful.
I knew what I was in for when I got back to the house: drinking. Richie wanted to drink, a colleague wanted to drink, and who am I to say no? It would have been nice to drink something other than pineapple flavored gin, but we made it work. I took care of dinner – rice with shrimp. I'm no fan of shrimp, but after tonight, I am convinced that anything can taste good if you drown it in enough butter, garlic, and lemon juice.
The drinking recommenced after eating. We knocked out another flask of gin and then Richie thought it would be a good idea to go to the villa for beers. I knew as soon as I stepped out of the school that this was a bad decision. We sat around drinking for another three hours. By midnight, I was done. Richie and our colleague wanted to keep drinking. They tried to convince me to stay, but I know when I've had my fill.
My timing could have been better, but it could have been a lot worse. Three hundred yards from the house, the deluge began. I was soaked in seconds, but luckily the roads didn't turn to mud immediately. I made it home without incident, just soaked.
I found out Saturday morning that Richie wasn't so lucky. They came back at 3 in the morning. And the roads were finished. Richie simply gave up: he took off his shoes so he could trudge through without getting stuck in the mud.
We had a school meeting scheduled for 7:30 in the morning, which was just dandy. Richie and I both felt miserable. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't even bother going to this type of meeting. I know that that most of the time, these meetings don't really mean much to us. They are usually administrative things that don't apply to us Peace Corps Volunteers. And yet, on this day, we chose to go.
There was another mistake that we made. There has yet to be a meeting that has started on time, yet we chose to arrive at 7:25. What the fuck were we thinking?! The meeting didn't start until 8:30 and there was, as anticipated, nothing of importance for us. After an hour, I got up, pretending to take a very important phone call. I told Richie that he had to leave and we made our great escape.
We were both useless for the rest of the day. It was a perfect day to spend in bed. I did absolutely nothing of value and neither did Richie. The cloud cover gave us another reason to stay in. It never really downpoured like it did last night, but the constant drizzle and the threat of a drenching was enough to keep us in.
Following dinner, one of our colleagues came over with something new and interesting: white wine. People here love their red wine. They usually mix it with Coca-Cola. I refuse to taint red wine like that, but Richie says it's good. Anyways, this new white wine was pretty good. Add the fact that it was cold and I was very happy.
The clouds never left and Richie was full of hope. “It won't rain tonight, probably tomorrow”. I'll trust him for now.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Year 2 - Week 10: These Are A Few of My Favorite Things
Sunday. Another travel day. Does it ever end? Thankfully, today it does. At least I slept well. With all the people at the house, there was a severe shortage beds. But I found something better than a bed: sand. Between the girls' house and the ocean is a lovely patch of sand that the tide does not reach. Two other Volunteers and I found our way there and slept beautifully. The only downside was that I woke up with an ant in my ear.
I got to the chapa stand on the early end, which was fortunate. The chapa from Mambone never arrived and it wasn't going to. This wasn't the first time that this happened and we know how to handle it. After a year plus, I hope we know how to handle just about any situation here.
We left earlier than usual and we got home later than usual. Our rides were on the slow side. And when we got to the river, it was just the two of us. No one was crossing the river today, and we told the boat person this. He, however, did not believe this. "You can pay double or we can wait for two more people", said the boatman. We told him that it would happily wait. We had nowhere to go and it would only get cooler as the day went on. This was a showdown for the ages, but we were committed to winning this battle. We sat there for an hour, in the shade of a pile of beer crates.
But we won. I think the boatman went especially slow on our trip across the river, just to spite us. We labored our way from the river to our house and...no one is home. Damn it, Sozinho. Why can't you just be home when we get home? After a couple minutes, he showed up, and we gave up for the rest of the afternoon.
I don't think anything happened when we were asleep. The night was pretty good. We ate spaghetti, I talked to my parents, and we watched "Glee". "Glee" has quickly climbed the list of our favorite television shows. And once again - and I hate to this - I was happy to be back in Machanga. Or maybe I was happy not to be going anywhere for a while.
It was back to work on Monday. I spent the morning figuring out how to march on with my eleventh graders. They've been doing such a great job and I just wanted to keep them marching forward.
This was the last day that I would teach present simple to those students. All we did in class was question writing. A couple of kids were a little slow to pick it up, but I think they got it for the most part.
Teaching five hours in the afternoon can be exhausting, no doubt about it. I think that the travel day from yesterday did not help my cause. But man, I was wiped. I didn't want to do anything, but I didn't manage to cook a pretty tasty stir fry. We ate, watched "Glee" and went to sleep.
I was called into the director's office early Tuesday morning. I hate this, so much. Everyone in the director's office usually speaks really fast. And for some reason, I always think that if I'm being called to the director's office, I must be in trouble, something must have gone wrong. Usually that something going wrong is a computer, but there was no computer today -- just the two assistant directors. One of them began: "You were really busy last year, 26 hours per week". Yup. "And you're busy again this year". Check. Where are we going with this. "How about you only teach 12th grade this year?" Yes. Yes. Y. E. S.
Now, given the choice between keeping 11th grade and keeping 12th grade, I think I would have preferred to keep 11th grade. They seem more enthusiastic and I feel like there is a lot more that they can learn. But it's really hard to argue with a teaching schedule that doesn't have me teach on Mondays and has me teaching no more than four hours on any other day. If there is any downside to this, it was realized right away. It usually doesn't take me long to lesson plan, but it does take up a small portion of my morning. When I got back to the house, I just sat down. I had no planning to do. What the hell am I supposed to do now? In the weeks and months that come, I'd like to fill these mornings with computer classes, but for now, there is nothing to do.
I had two classes in the afternoon, a whole 90 minutes of work. After such an exhausting day of teaching, I clearly deserved a nap. Richie, I believe, now hates me for my glorious teaching schedule. But he really is in no place to complain. Even with his "strenuous" 18 hours a week, he still has a day off. And he only taught eight hours a week last year. And oh yea, Richie doesn't teach on Tuesday afternoons, so we made our way to the villa to buy some stuff. Mostly, we just wanted to buy tomatoes so we could have some decent beans tonight.
We thought that one of the benefits of having Sozinho live with us would be his cooking. It's not just that Mozambican beans are pretty tasty; it's that we wouldn't have to do anything except eat them. What we didn't count on would be Sozinho taking an unholy three and a half hours to cook dinner. Unlike Sozinho, who eats three to four times a day (who knew having kids would be so damn expensive? Oh, wait...), Richie and I rarely eat more than twice a day -- lunch and dinner. We really can't wait 10 hours in between those meals. That's just wrong. Plus he didn't even use the tomatoes in the beans. He half-assed it tonight, and at that point, I vowed to myself that I would be taking over in the kitchen.
Due to the mild bought of starvation last night, I did sleep pretty well. I was in for another rough day of teaching -- 90 minutes with the same group of kids. Since the first day of class this year, the 12th graders have been doing only reading comprehension. This makes up 25% of the national exam and most of them fail this part miserably. So I have been trying to give them a paragraph to read every day, followed by questions. I would say most of the students get 60% or more right. But there are some who still ask me for the definition of cognates, like "What is 'independence' in Portuguese?" Uhh, independencia. The first eight letters are the same. Come on.
Before I had the pleasure of doing more reading comprehension with my students, I was called into duto for tech help. A teacher who was here last year was transfered into the District Education building, a promotion to say the least. With promotions, apparently, come computers and his was having issues, so he turned to me. I have to say that these moments make me the happiest. I feel useful in these moments. I went over to his new office and fixed his problem and another computer issue. I'm a hero
Today's paragraph was about something I thought the students would appreciate: telephones. Even in the bush of a developing country like Mozambique, everyone and their mothers have cell phones. Under normal circumstances, I'd say that the students would enjoy reading about their beloved tele-communication babies. But this was for English class, so they hated it. Again, the students kill me with the cognates. The question was simple: This paragraph is about ________. I even made it multiple choice for them. A) correction B) communication C) collection D) corruption. I was astounded by the number of students who managed to answer something other than B.
This was only mildly depressing. After Richie finished with his classes, we headed over to the villa for a soda. And we managed to find some beef, which was good news since we had no idea what we wanted to do for dinner. We went back to an old favorite: Mexican rice bowls. It's Mexican food without the pain in the ass of tortilla-making. After filling our bellies with delicious Mexican food, we watched "Parks and Recreations", a knock-off of "The Office". It's pretty good, not great, but I think it will take some time to come around on.
Thursday was a lot like Wednesday, except for the tech help. Same lesson, different students, same mistakes, same agony. I won't get into the frustration that was this lesson. Instead I'll address the frustration that is the "voting up system" in the education system here. I can't address the exact details of this system, mostly because it's so outrageous that I reguse to participate in it. Unlike American schools, where you are required to pass subject by subject (for example, you need to pass Spanish 1 before Spanish 2), students in Mozambique pass an entire grade collectively. So they can still fail subjects but pass the overall year. But there's a limit on how many subjects one can fail. Except, there is voting up. If a person fails one too many subjects, they can be voted up by a teacher to pass a subject. This is why some of my 12th grade students have the education level of say, an 8th grader. There are a lot of things I won't miss about this school system, and this sits close to the top of the list.
Moving on to Friday, which was far more exciting. Friday was exam day for all of my students. This should be interesting to say the least. There were questions about topics: Mozambican politics and airplanes. Half was multiple choice, half were question and answer. I'd like to think that most of the students would get the multiple choice questions right. We'll see. From the exams that I looked at, it seems like students were more or less doing okay. I think most will pass.
Being Friday, we had to do something. One of our colleagues thought it would be a good idea to drink wine on our patio, and who were we to object. It started with one bottle, then two, and by dinner time, there were five bottles knocked off. At one point, I called Richie a prostitute. He agreed. He has big plans to open a brothel here, but he needs the seed money to do it. To raise this money, he will sell himself. Come get him, ladies.
I took care of the bean cooking tonight. This prompted him to call me "the wife" in the relationship. I guess I deserved that, you know, since I called him a prostitute. Following the disaster that was Sozinho cooking beans, I've decided to take matters into my own hands. I cooked beans American-style - chili. And I won over the Mozambican crowd. This can only be a considered a victory for America.
I woke up Saturday morning at 6:30, feeling good, to the vibration of my phone. A colleague texted me, in English, saying he had a question. Coming from this teacher, I knew this had to be a math question. For some reason, the school decided to give a chemistry teacher the responsibility of teaching math. I can see some logic in this -- sure, there is some basic algebra used in chemistry, balancing equations and such -- but I don't think a lot of calculus is required for high school chemistry. Regardless, this teacher wisely consulted me for some help. Of course, I was happy to do so.
I explained a few things for him, and he seemed to understand my logic. But we had a disagreement about a particular problem involving square roots. He believed he was right and was willing to put up a wager of five beers on the problem. This was his mistake. These are a few of my favorite things: beer, gambling, and math. And he chose to throw them all together. Being certain in my answer, I took the bet and shut up. He, however, continued to talk until we saw the answer guide. "I'm going to win". "The beer is mine". This is when I knew I had victory. There is nothing like the sound of false confidence.
The assistant director came over with the answer and I was write. The teacher who bet me was left saying "the answer sheet is wrong". Right. I smiled and awaited my five beers. The assistant director laughed at the teacher. "You bet him five beers?!" Even he realized what a mistake this was.
Basking in the glory of my victory, I decided to keep the academic momentum rolling. I spent most of the morning correcting one set of exams. The kids seem to be doing alright. I'm still appalled by their lack of ability to write a sentence in present tense, but they are at least understanding most of the information.
The afternoon was slow, almost painfully slow. I made my way through a couple of magazines from November. I have no idea where we stand on things like healthcare in America. All I do know is that the Democrats really fucked things up in Massachusetts. Either way, it's still news to me. At some point, I gave up on reading and just fell asleep.
Our night was also less than exciting. We ate spaghetti, mostly out of laziness and because we had tomatoes. It's down season for tomatoes now, so the market rarely has them, and when they do, they're expensive. After dinner, we watched "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist". I could have done with just the soundtrack. The actual film sucked.
I got to the chapa stand on the early end, which was fortunate. The chapa from Mambone never arrived and it wasn't going to. This wasn't the first time that this happened and we know how to handle it. After a year plus, I hope we know how to handle just about any situation here.
We left earlier than usual and we got home later than usual. Our rides were on the slow side. And when we got to the river, it was just the two of us. No one was crossing the river today, and we told the boat person this. He, however, did not believe this. "You can pay double or we can wait for two more people", said the boatman. We told him that it would happily wait. We had nowhere to go and it would only get cooler as the day went on. This was a showdown for the ages, but we were committed to winning this battle. We sat there for an hour, in the shade of a pile of beer crates.
But we won. I think the boatman went especially slow on our trip across the river, just to spite us. We labored our way from the river to our house and...no one is home. Damn it, Sozinho. Why can't you just be home when we get home? After a couple minutes, he showed up, and we gave up for the rest of the afternoon.
I don't think anything happened when we were asleep. The night was pretty good. We ate spaghetti, I talked to my parents, and we watched "Glee". "Glee" has quickly climbed the list of our favorite television shows. And once again - and I hate to this - I was happy to be back in Machanga. Or maybe I was happy not to be going anywhere for a while.
It was back to work on Monday. I spent the morning figuring out how to march on with my eleventh graders. They've been doing such a great job and I just wanted to keep them marching forward.
This was the last day that I would teach present simple to those students. All we did in class was question writing. A couple of kids were a little slow to pick it up, but I think they got it for the most part.
Teaching five hours in the afternoon can be exhausting, no doubt about it. I think that the travel day from yesterday did not help my cause. But man, I was wiped. I didn't want to do anything, but I didn't manage to cook a pretty tasty stir fry. We ate, watched "Glee" and went to sleep.
I was called into the director's office early Tuesday morning. I hate this, so much. Everyone in the director's office usually speaks really fast. And for some reason, I always think that if I'm being called to the director's office, I must be in trouble, something must have gone wrong. Usually that something going wrong is a computer, but there was no computer today -- just the two assistant directors. One of them began: "You were really busy last year, 26 hours per week". Yup. "And you're busy again this year". Check. Where are we going with this. "How about you only teach 12th grade this year?" Yes. Yes. Y. E. S.
Now, given the choice between keeping 11th grade and keeping 12th grade, I think I would have preferred to keep 11th grade. They seem more enthusiastic and I feel like there is a lot more that they can learn. But it's really hard to argue with a teaching schedule that doesn't have me teach on Mondays and has me teaching no more than four hours on any other day. If there is any downside to this, it was realized right away. It usually doesn't take me long to lesson plan, but it does take up a small portion of my morning. When I got back to the house, I just sat down. I had no planning to do. What the hell am I supposed to do now? In the weeks and months that come, I'd like to fill these mornings with computer classes, but for now, there is nothing to do.
I had two classes in the afternoon, a whole 90 minutes of work. After such an exhausting day of teaching, I clearly deserved a nap. Richie, I believe, now hates me for my glorious teaching schedule. But he really is in no place to complain. Even with his "strenuous" 18 hours a week, he still has a day off. And he only taught eight hours a week last year. And oh yea, Richie doesn't teach on Tuesday afternoons, so we made our way to the villa to buy some stuff. Mostly, we just wanted to buy tomatoes so we could have some decent beans tonight.
We thought that one of the benefits of having Sozinho live with us would be his cooking. It's not just that Mozambican beans are pretty tasty; it's that we wouldn't have to do anything except eat them. What we didn't count on would be Sozinho taking an unholy three and a half hours to cook dinner. Unlike Sozinho, who eats three to four times a day (who knew having kids would be so damn expensive? Oh, wait...), Richie and I rarely eat more than twice a day -- lunch and dinner. We really can't wait 10 hours in between those meals. That's just wrong. Plus he didn't even use the tomatoes in the beans. He half-assed it tonight, and at that point, I vowed to myself that I would be taking over in the kitchen.
Due to the mild bought of starvation last night, I did sleep pretty well. I was in for another rough day of teaching -- 90 minutes with the same group of kids. Since the first day of class this year, the 12th graders have been doing only reading comprehension. This makes up 25% of the national exam and most of them fail this part miserably. So I have been trying to give them a paragraph to read every day, followed by questions. I would say most of the students get 60% or more right. But there are some who still ask me for the definition of cognates, like "What is 'independence' in Portuguese?" Uhh, independencia. The first eight letters are the same. Come on.
Before I had the pleasure of doing more reading comprehension with my students, I was called into duto for tech help. A teacher who was here last year was transfered into the District Education building, a promotion to say the least. With promotions, apparently, come computers and his was having issues, so he turned to me. I have to say that these moments make me the happiest. I feel useful in these moments. I went over to his new office and fixed his problem and another computer issue. I'm a hero
Today's paragraph was about something I thought the students would appreciate: telephones. Even in the bush of a developing country like Mozambique, everyone and their mothers have cell phones. Under normal circumstances, I'd say that the students would enjoy reading about their beloved tele-communication babies. But this was for English class, so they hated it. Again, the students kill me with the cognates. The question was simple: This paragraph is about ________. I even made it multiple choice for them. A) correction B) communication C) collection D) corruption. I was astounded by the number of students who managed to answer something other than B.
This was only mildly depressing. After Richie finished with his classes, we headed over to the villa for a soda. And we managed to find some beef, which was good news since we had no idea what we wanted to do for dinner. We went back to an old favorite: Mexican rice bowls. It's Mexican food without the pain in the ass of tortilla-making. After filling our bellies with delicious Mexican food, we watched "Parks and Recreations", a knock-off of "The Office". It's pretty good, not great, but I think it will take some time to come around on.
Thursday was a lot like Wednesday, except for the tech help. Same lesson, different students, same mistakes, same agony. I won't get into the frustration that was this lesson. Instead I'll address the frustration that is the "voting up system" in the education system here. I can't address the exact details of this system, mostly because it's so outrageous that I reguse to participate in it. Unlike American schools, where you are required to pass subject by subject (for example, you need to pass Spanish 1 before Spanish 2), students in Mozambique pass an entire grade collectively. So they can still fail subjects but pass the overall year. But there's a limit on how many subjects one can fail. Except, there is voting up. If a person fails one too many subjects, they can be voted up by a teacher to pass a subject. This is why some of my 12th grade students have the education level of say, an 8th grader. There are a lot of things I won't miss about this school system, and this sits close to the top of the list.
Moving on to Friday, which was far more exciting. Friday was exam day for all of my students. This should be interesting to say the least. There were questions about topics: Mozambican politics and airplanes. Half was multiple choice, half were question and answer. I'd like to think that most of the students would get the multiple choice questions right. We'll see. From the exams that I looked at, it seems like students were more or less doing okay. I think most will pass.
Being Friday, we had to do something. One of our colleagues thought it would be a good idea to drink wine on our patio, and who were we to object. It started with one bottle, then two, and by dinner time, there were five bottles knocked off. At one point, I called Richie a prostitute. He agreed. He has big plans to open a brothel here, but he needs the seed money to do it. To raise this money, he will sell himself. Come get him, ladies.
I took care of the bean cooking tonight. This prompted him to call me "the wife" in the relationship. I guess I deserved that, you know, since I called him a prostitute. Following the disaster that was Sozinho cooking beans, I've decided to take matters into my own hands. I cooked beans American-style - chili. And I won over the Mozambican crowd. This can only be a considered a victory for America.
I woke up Saturday morning at 6:30, feeling good, to the vibration of my phone. A colleague texted me, in English, saying he had a question. Coming from this teacher, I knew this had to be a math question. For some reason, the school decided to give a chemistry teacher the responsibility of teaching math. I can see some logic in this -- sure, there is some basic algebra used in chemistry, balancing equations and such -- but I don't think a lot of calculus is required for high school chemistry. Regardless, this teacher wisely consulted me for some help. Of course, I was happy to do so.
I explained a few things for him, and he seemed to understand my logic. But we had a disagreement about a particular problem involving square roots. He believed he was right and was willing to put up a wager of five beers on the problem. This was his mistake. These are a few of my favorite things: beer, gambling, and math. And he chose to throw them all together. Being certain in my answer, I took the bet and shut up. He, however, continued to talk until we saw the answer guide. "I'm going to win". "The beer is mine". This is when I knew I had victory. There is nothing like the sound of false confidence.
The assistant director came over with the answer and I was write. The teacher who bet me was left saying "the answer sheet is wrong". Right. I smiled and awaited my five beers. The assistant director laughed at the teacher. "You bet him five beers?!" Even he realized what a mistake this was.
Basking in the glory of my victory, I decided to keep the academic momentum rolling. I spent most of the morning correcting one set of exams. The kids seem to be doing alright. I'm still appalled by their lack of ability to write a sentence in present tense, but they are at least understanding most of the information.
The afternoon was slow, almost painfully slow. I made my way through a couple of magazines from November. I have no idea where we stand on things like healthcare in America. All I do know is that the Democrats really fucked things up in Massachusetts. Either way, it's still news to me. At some point, I gave up on reading and just fell asleep.
Our night was also less than exciting. We ate spaghetti, mostly out of laziness and because we had tomatoes. It's down season for tomatoes now, so the market rarely has them, and when they do, they're expensive. After dinner, we watched "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist". I could have done with just the soundtrack. The actual film sucked.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Year 2 - Week 9: Reclamation
Maputo on Sunday is an interesting place. Sure, a lot of cities around the world slow down on Sundays, but I'd say that most stores are open. There is still action in the streets. This is not at all the case in Maputo. Maputo comes to a near standstill. You can count the cars on the road on one hand and even the normally-bustling Maputo Shopping Center doesn't officially open until late in morning..
It would have been nice to have the last piece of information before we made our way downtown on Sunday morning. We had a couple of things we needed to get done and we were lucky that they were all in the same general area: there was shopping to be done at Hiper Supermarket, test results to be picked up, and a bus ticket to be bought. The bus depot, supposedly open at 8:00, wasn't open when we got there at 8:30. I picked up my test results – of course they meant nothing to me – and we made our way to Maputo Shopping Center, hoping that we could get some shopping done.
We walked around Maputo, trying to find a way to kill some time, quench our thirst and sate my hunger. We stumbled across a hole in the wall with an aroma emanating from the open door. I followed my knows and came across what have to be the best french fries in all of Mozambique. If I were in a better financial situation, I would have bought a second order. In this morning of small defeats, this was a huge victory.
Maputo Shopping didn't open until 10:00, and even then, it didn't really open. Sure, the doors were open, but Hiper was closed. Conveniently, a drug store sat right next to the supermarket. It then became a three-way race of what would open first: the supermarket, the drug store, or the bus depot. The drug store opened it's doors first, but the supermarket allowed customers in first. Point goes to the supermarket.
In the holiness that is the supermarket, it would be easy to go crazy. But after blowing through thousands of Meticais this weekend on medical stuff, food, and hotel rooms, I would have to be restrained. I managed to escape just buying Listerine and garlic salt, things impossible to buy in Vilanculos.
Our slow-starting day picked up quite quickly. Right after leaving the supermarket, I dropped into the pharmacy to pick up the last of my three drugs needed to treat my malady. And before heading to pick up the bus ticket, I enjoyed a couple shwarmas. This is why I love Maputo: for the shwarma – and the other international cuisine.
The rest of the day was pretty calm. Knowing that I would be on my way out of here soon, I wanted to soak in the hotel room. It's a pretty barren room – everything you need, nothing you don't. CNN had sufficient coverage of the Super Bowl and National Geographic had a hilarious show on called “Monkey Thieves”, based in Jaipur, India. Those monkeys are hilarious.
Super Bowl Sunday doesn't really feel the same in Mozambique. There is no hype, there are no commercials and it's nearly impossible to watch the game. Due to the time difference, the game didn't come on until 1 AM. Hell, it's no longer Super Sunday – it's Super Monday, and that just doesn't sound right. Whatever – I'll wake up Monday morning, hoping to hear news of a Saints victory.
This wasn't a particularly fair Super Bowl for the Indianapolis Colts. If they were playing a team from any other city, the division amongst fans from outside the city would be a little more evenly split. But given the recent history of New Orleans, people from outside of the Midwest couldn't help but root for this team. I include myself in this group. I was thrilled to see 31-17 score on Monday morning. And as if I wasn't pissed off enough at the Chargers for consistently choking in the playoffs, I became even more pissed at them, knowing that they discarded Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees. Stupid, just stupid.
We had a very busy Monday. Peace Corps was holding this big annual internal planning meeting. There's no need to get into details, but it was fascinating to see a lot of things that us Volunteers really don't see from the outside. Although it sometimes seems like the office is out of touch with Volunteers in the field, we could tell that they were doing their best to make our lives as easy as possible. And it was really interesting to see where Peace Corps in Mozambique is heading in the next couple of years.
The meeting lasted all day, 8:30 to 5:30. As happy as I was to participate in this meeting, I was happier to get out of there. After all, Monday is two-for-one pizza night at Pirata, a restaurant one block away from our hotel. Of course the pizza was good, but this night was made by one particular event. As we sat waiting for our food, a man walked by with a huge black and white painting of the now-iconic image of Obama, looking slightly up and to the future. I had no interest in buying it, but I had to at least see the price tag.
The 700 Meticais the man wanted was laughable, so I figured I'd bargain with him, just to see how low I could go. First I played the “I live here” card: down to 600. Then I pulled the “I'm an American, this is my president” ploy: down to 500. I offered him 250, and he said 300. I told him I'd consider it. I shared the news with my colleagues, telling them that they could get it for 250. Girls definitely have an advantage in this: a man is much more likely to reduce the price for a pretty face than for a bearded mug.
I stayed up late Monday night, getting in as much internet and TV time as possible. Even though I know I have to come back to Maputo in March, knowing that I'm going to go five weeks without life's little luxuries made me want to get the most out of them. This decision – to stay up late – would come back to bite me. I was up at 4 in the morning to catch the Suicide Bus to Mambone.
Why do we call it the Suicide Bus? you ask. Because if you sat on a bus for fifteen hours and still not arrive at home, you'd want to kill yourself too. Plus, it's a piece of shit. This bus looks like it's been through a war. And yet, it still runs. This bus typically leaves at 6 in the morning, but for some reason today, it didn't leave until 7:45. Of course, this was frustrating, but it's not like I had control of the situation. I would laugh hours later when the driver got pissed off that we would arrive at night. All I could think was, “Your the asshole with the keys. You have control of this situation”.
The day was rather uneventful. The roads, save for a small, recently paved stretch north of Xai Xai, still suck. I made the huge mistake of sitting on the wrong side of the bus. That's right, the wrong side of the bus. I had the sun on my side of the bus for most of the trip. The ride sucks as it is; having the sun on your face for the entire trip only added to the pain.
We pulled into Mambone just after 9 at night. I know where Gary's house is, but he was still waiting for me on the side of the road. I should correct that last statement: I know where Gary's house WAS. His school plowed it so they could put up the teacher housing. In the meantime, Gary is living with his school director – awkward to say the least. He cooked me up for dinner and I happily slept on the floor.
The whole point of getting all the way to Mambone last night was to be able to teach on Wednesday. I still felt like shit after the fifteen-hour bus ride. Being dehydrated, even though I'm making an effort to drink more, didn't help. I knew as soon as I walked out of Gary's house that I wouldn't be teaching. My teaching schedule conveniently allowed me to cancel class without screwing everything up.
I spent the afternoon, for the most part, asleep. I was very happy, even in the horror that is my bed. When I wasn't out like a light, I was busy sweating and reading a magazine, a much better alternative to teaching.
After dinner, we decided to try something new. Of course we watched something, but we have a pretty standard viewing schedule. “Glee” would be something new. Something very, very new. I've heard that it does a decent job of mocking the “High School Musical” series, and I'm all for any show that goes after that disaster of a movie series. I must say, it's a pretty good show. The music is pretty good, it's got plenty of plot to it, and the humor is just enough to keep you interested.
There were no excuses for missing work on Thursday. Richie, on the other hand, found one. He canceled class on Wednesday because he was sick. His fever returned again on Thursday. Lucky him. In the meantime, I went about planning my eleventh grade classes. I wanted to pick up where I left off last week, continuing with present simple. I've come to realize that I like this kind of stuff a lot: the absolute basics. Teaching the more complicated concepts is interesting and all – I've learned how much English and other languages are alike in the more complex forms – but we rarely use those forms in conversation. I like the basics.
And there is definitely a connection between teaching what you like and how well the class goes. This class went beautifully. It seemed like the kids really understood what was going on. And I like these kids, which helps. Most of them seem to want to learn, and if they don't, they're doing a hell of an acting job. They also seem more prepared than last year's eleventh graders.
Classes were fine and all, but I was on a far more important mission Thursday afternoon. Sozinho had taken over a fair portion of my room. Some of it I willingly conceded. I figured if I just gave him an assigned space, he would stick to it. I was wrong. As much as he does to keep our house clean, he has limited my privacy and sense of personal space just as much. This had to change.
I have kept a school desk top under my bed as support for my back. I weighed the pros and cons and came to the conclusion that my personal space was more important than my back. The desk, put together with some nails and wire quickly became a closet for Sozinho. It took a total of one hour to get Sozinho completely out of my room. This is nothing short of a huge victory for me.
The night could only get better at this point. We made sandwiches for dinner, watched some “Glee” and I turned into my – yes, my! – room. It was at this point that I regretted my decision to get Sozinho out of my room. As I crawled into bed, I completely understood when Ron Burgundy when he says “I immediately regret this decision”. The board that became Sozinho's closet was the only thing keeping my mattress comfortable. It sagged like the economy, and probably produced more discomfort than the economy too! I wasn't able to fall asleep until 1:00.
As soon as I woke up, I sought a solution. I had one other board that I kept under my mattress, but this one ran long and skinny. I think that I managed my way onto it last night. It would be the last night that the long board stayed as one piece. I broke out a saw, cut the one board into two, and had what seemed to be better back support. Once again, a huge victory.
Classes today were okay, at best. I intended to have a conversation about celebrities in my twelfth grade class. For some insane reason, the curriculum calls for a this topic of discussion. I don't know how they expect people to talk about celebrities when they can barely say, “Hi my name is Joao”. Regardless, I went for it. And it tanked. It was an interesting study though: of the American celebrities mentioned, the first two were Barack Obama and Michael Jackson. After that came a flood of rappers, dead and alive: Tupac, DMX, Eminem, and more. This is what gets exported to Mozambique – rap music. Excellent.
I was on my own for food tonight and we had no food in the house. So I went to the reserves. Thankfully, we had just enough butter and powdered milk for me to make mac and cheese. It's been a good couple months since I've had said delicacy. It was a lovely taste of America.
I slept far batter Friday night than I did on Thursday. I actually beat my alarm to it today. I wanted to be out by 7:30 to get to Vilanculos. Yes, I was on the road again. There was a really big part of me that did not want to travel. I've been away from Machanga so much in the last couple weeks. And it's not that I miss Machanga, but it's tough not being situated. Regardless, I didn't want to miss a second party. GREs pinned me in Maputo during the Central party, and I just couldn't miss the first North Inhambane party.
The long walk to the river started exactly at 7:00. Unlike a lot of my travels from the last couple weeks, the traveling today went pretty smoothly. I didn't have to wait for a canoe at the river, and I only had to wait for one of the three cars I needed to get to Vilanculos. There were only two downsides to this trip. The first was that on the ride out of Mambone, I was pinned against a rice sack full of fish, leaving me smelling like the worst parts of then ocean. The second downside was that for the majority of the day, I was in the back of a truck, leaving me burnt to a crisp. By the end of the day, I smelled like a Red Lobster, and looked like one too.
The day in Vilanculos was largely uneventful. Of course, I got my hamburger at one of our favority hole-in-the-wall places. There was rumor that the new twelfth grade English book was around town. I failed to find it. I'll believe it when I see it. And in an effort to cool down from a 100-degree day, we went swimming in the ocean. However, the ocean was so hot that you could almost use the water for coffee or tea. It helped, but not much.
This would be an interesting party. I think us Moz13ers wanted to see how the new Moz14ers partied. It's impossible to really compare our old friends, the Moz12 group, with this group. It's a whole different dynamic, different personalities, and we just haven't had that much time with the new group. They held their own, for sure. Many games of flip-cup and beer pong were played and, all in all, it was a good time. And as is usual, our party night in Vilanculos ended at AfroBar. This was probably the only disappointing part of the evening, but hey, it can't be perfect all the time.
It would have been nice to have the last piece of information before we made our way downtown on Sunday morning. We had a couple of things we needed to get done and we were lucky that they were all in the same general area: there was shopping to be done at Hiper Supermarket, test results to be picked up, and a bus ticket to be bought. The bus depot, supposedly open at 8:00, wasn't open when we got there at 8:30. I picked up my test results – of course they meant nothing to me – and we made our way to Maputo Shopping Center, hoping that we could get some shopping done.
We walked around Maputo, trying to find a way to kill some time, quench our thirst and sate my hunger. We stumbled across a hole in the wall with an aroma emanating from the open door. I followed my knows and came across what have to be the best french fries in all of Mozambique. If I were in a better financial situation, I would have bought a second order. In this morning of small defeats, this was a huge victory.
Maputo Shopping didn't open until 10:00, and even then, it didn't really open. Sure, the doors were open, but Hiper was closed. Conveniently, a drug store sat right next to the supermarket. It then became a three-way race of what would open first: the supermarket, the drug store, or the bus depot. The drug store opened it's doors first, but the supermarket allowed customers in first. Point goes to the supermarket.
In the holiness that is the supermarket, it would be easy to go crazy. But after blowing through thousands of Meticais this weekend on medical stuff, food, and hotel rooms, I would have to be restrained. I managed to escape just buying Listerine and garlic salt, things impossible to buy in Vilanculos.
Our slow-starting day picked up quite quickly. Right after leaving the supermarket, I dropped into the pharmacy to pick up the last of my three drugs needed to treat my malady. And before heading to pick up the bus ticket, I enjoyed a couple shwarmas. This is why I love Maputo: for the shwarma – and the other international cuisine.
The rest of the day was pretty calm. Knowing that I would be on my way out of here soon, I wanted to soak in the hotel room. It's a pretty barren room – everything you need, nothing you don't. CNN had sufficient coverage of the Super Bowl and National Geographic had a hilarious show on called “Monkey Thieves”, based in Jaipur, India. Those monkeys are hilarious.
Super Bowl Sunday doesn't really feel the same in Mozambique. There is no hype, there are no commercials and it's nearly impossible to watch the game. Due to the time difference, the game didn't come on until 1 AM. Hell, it's no longer Super Sunday – it's Super Monday, and that just doesn't sound right. Whatever – I'll wake up Monday morning, hoping to hear news of a Saints victory.
This wasn't a particularly fair Super Bowl for the Indianapolis Colts. If they were playing a team from any other city, the division amongst fans from outside the city would be a little more evenly split. But given the recent history of New Orleans, people from outside of the Midwest couldn't help but root for this team. I include myself in this group. I was thrilled to see 31-17 score on Monday morning. And as if I wasn't pissed off enough at the Chargers for consistently choking in the playoffs, I became even more pissed at them, knowing that they discarded Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees. Stupid, just stupid.
We had a very busy Monday. Peace Corps was holding this big annual internal planning meeting. There's no need to get into details, but it was fascinating to see a lot of things that us Volunteers really don't see from the outside. Although it sometimes seems like the office is out of touch with Volunteers in the field, we could tell that they were doing their best to make our lives as easy as possible. And it was really interesting to see where Peace Corps in Mozambique is heading in the next couple of years.
The meeting lasted all day, 8:30 to 5:30. As happy as I was to participate in this meeting, I was happier to get out of there. After all, Monday is two-for-one pizza night at Pirata, a restaurant one block away from our hotel. Of course the pizza was good, but this night was made by one particular event. As we sat waiting for our food, a man walked by with a huge black and white painting of the now-iconic image of Obama, looking slightly up and to the future. I had no interest in buying it, but I had to at least see the price tag.
The 700 Meticais the man wanted was laughable, so I figured I'd bargain with him, just to see how low I could go. First I played the “I live here” card: down to 600. Then I pulled the “I'm an American, this is my president” ploy: down to 500. I offered him 250, and he said 300. I told him I'd consider it. I shared the news with my colleagues, telling them that they could get it for 250. Girls definitely have an advantage in this: a man is much more likely to reduce the price for a pretty face than for a bearded mug.
I stayed up late Monday night, getting in as much internet and TV time as possible. Even though I know I have to come back to Maputo in March, knowing that I'm going to go five weeks without life's little luxuries made me want to get the most out of them. This decision – to stay up late – would come back to bite me. I was up at 4 in the morning to catch the Suicide Bus to Mambone.
Why do we call it the Suicide Bus? you ask. Because if you sat on a bus for fifteen hours and still not arrive at home, you'd want to kill yourself too. Plus, it's a piece of shit. This bus looks like it's been through a war. And yet, it still runs. This bus typically leaves at 6 in the morning, but for some reason today, it didn't leave until 7:45. Of course, this was frustrating, but it's not like I had control of the situation. I would laugh hours later when the driver got pissed off that we would arrive at night. All I could think was, “Your the asshole with the keys. You have control of this situation”.
The day was rather uneventful. The roads, save for a small, recently paved stretch north of Xai Xai, still suck. I made the huge mistake of sitting on the wrong side of the bus. That's right, the wrong side of the bus. I had the sun on my side of the bus for most of the trip. The ride sucks as it is; having the sun on your face for the entire trip only added to the pain.
We pulled into Mambone just after 9 at night. I know where Gary's house is, but he was still waiting for me on the side of the road. I should correct that last statement: I know where Gary's house WAS. His school plowed it so they could put up the teacher housing. In the meantime, Gary is living with his school director – awkward to say the least. He cooked me up for dinner and I happily slept on the floor.
The whole point of getting all the way to Mambone last night was to be able to teach on Wednesday. I still felt like shit after the fifteen-hour bus ride. Being dehydrated, even though I'm making an effort to drink more, didn't help. I knew as soon as I walked out of Gary's house that I wouldn't be teaching. My teaching schedule conveniently allowed me to cancel class without screwing everything up.
I spent the afternoon, for the most part, asleep. I was very happy, even in the horror that is my bed. When I wasn't out like a light, I was busy sweating and reading a magazine, a much better alternative to teaching.
After dinner, we decided to try something new. Of course we watched something, but we have a pretty standard viewing schedule. “Glee” would be something new. Something very, very new. I've heard that it does a decent job of mocking the “High School Musical” series, and I'm all for any show that goes after that disaster of a movie series. I must say, it's a pretty good show. The music is pretty good, it's got plenty of plot to it, and the humor is just enough to keep you interested.
There were no excuses for missing work on Thursday. Richie, on the other hand, found one. He canceled class on Wednesday because he was sick. His fever returned again on Thursday. Lucky him. In the meantime, I went about planning my eleventh grade classes. I wanted to pick up where I left off last week, continuing with present simple. I've come to realize that I like this kind of stuff a lot: the absolute basics. Teaching the more complicated concepts is interesting and all – I've learned how much English and other languages are alike in the more complex forms – but we rarely use those forms in conversation. I like the basics.
And there is definitely a connection between teaching what you like and how well the class goes. This class went beautifully. It seemed like the kids really understood what was going on. And I like these kids, which helps. Most of them seem to want to learn, and if they don't, they're doing a hell of an acting job. They also seem more prepared than last year's eleventh graders.
Classes were fine and all, but I was on a far more important mission Thursday afternoon. Sozinho had taken over a fair portion of my room. Some of it I willingly conceded. I figured if I just gave him an assigned space, he would stick to it. I was wrong. As much as he does to keep our house clean, he has limited my privacy and sense of personal space just as much. This had to change.
I have kept a school desk top under my bed as support for my back. I weighed the pros and cons and came to the conclusion that my personal space was more important than my back. The desk, put together with some nails and wire quickly became a closet for Sozinho. It took a total of one hour to get Sozinho completely out of my room. This is nothing short of a huge victory for me.
The night could only get better at this point. We made sandwiches for dinner, watched some “Glee” and I turned into my – yes, my! – room. It was at this point that I regretted my decision to get Sozinho out of my room. As I crawled into bed, I completely understood when Ron Burgundy when he says “I immediately regret this decision”. The board that became Sozinho's closet was the only thing keeping my mattress comfortable. It sagged like the economy, and probably produced more discomfort than the economy too! I wasn't able to fall asleep until 1:00.
As soon as I woke up, I sought a solution. I had one other board that I kept under my mattress, but this one ran long and skinny. I think that I managed my way onto it last night. It would be the last night that the long board stayed as one piece. I broke out a saw, cut the one board into two, and had what seemed to be better back support. Once again, a huge victory.
Classes today were okay, at best. I intended to have a conversation about celebrities in my twelfth grade class. For some insane reason, the curriculum calls for a this topic of discussion. I don't know how they expect people to talk about celebrities when they can barely say, “Hi my name is Joao”. Regardless, I went for it. And it tanked. It was an interesting study though: of the American celebrities mentioned, the first two were Barack Obama and Michael Jackson. After that came a flood of rappers, dead and alive: Tupac, DMX, Eminem, and more. This is what gets exported to Mozambique – rap music. Excellent.
I was on my own for food tonight and we had no food in the house. So I went to the reserves. Thankfully, we had just enough butter and powdered milk for me to make mac and cheese. It's been a good couple months since I've had said delicacy. It was a lovely taste of America.
I slept far batter Friday night than I did on Thursday. I actually beat my alarm to it today. I wanted to be out by 7:30 to get to Vilanculos. Yes, I was on the road again. There was a really big part of me that did not want to travel. I've been away from Machanga so much in the last couple weeks. And it's not that I miss Machanga, but it's tough not being situated. Regardless, I didn't want to miss a second party. GREs pinned me in Maputo during the Central party, and I just couldn't miss the first North Inhambane party.
The long walk to the river started exactly at 7:00. Unlike a lot of my travels from the last couple weeks, the traveling today went pretty smoothly. I didn't have to wait for a canoe at the river, and I only had to wait for one of the three cars I needed to get to Vilanculos. There were only two downsides to this trip. The first was that on the ride out of Mambone, I was pinned against a rice sack full of fish, leaving me smelling like the worst parts of then ocean. The second downside was that for the majority of the day, I was in the back of a truck, leaving me burnt to a crisp. By the end of the day, I smelled like a Red Lobster, and looked like one too.
The day in Vilanculos was largely uneventful. Of course, I got my hamburger at one of our favority hole-in-the-wall places. There was rumor that the new twelfth grade English book was around town. I failed to find it. I'll believe it when I see it. And in an effort to cool down from a 100-degree day, we went swimming in the ocean. However, the ocean was so hot that you could almost use the water for coffee or tea. It helped, but not much.
This would be an interesting party. I think us Moz13ers wanted to see how the new Moz14ers partied. It's impossible to really compare our old friends, the Moz12 group, with this group. It's a whole different dynamic, different personalities, and we just haven't had that much time with the new group. They held their own, for sure. Many games of flip-cup and beer pong were played and, all in all, it was a good time. And as is usual, our party night in Vilanculos ended at AfroBar. This was probably the only disappointing part of the evening, but hey, it can't be perfect all the time.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Year 2 - Week 8: The Death of My Dignity and My Grad School Dreams
Just a heads-up: new pictures of my family's visit to Africa are posted on the right. There are a lot of really awesome pictures that do a far better job explaining this place than my words can do. Enjoy - LG.
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I had Sunday morning all to myself. Richie went across to the river on a solo expedition. He came back with a bounty of goods including tomatoes and bell pepper. It is a rough season for us. Besides being ungodly hot and occasionally rainy, this is the time of year when we are shy on even the most basic vegetables. Things should get back to normal around March. Unitl then, it's going to be an interesting couple of weeks.
I spent most of the morning reading “Strength in What Remains”, a story about a Burundian trying to make it in America. It's a book stitched together by short, simple sentences, a style of writing I've come to appreciate. It's also a good story, which helps a lot.
Just as Richie got back to our side of the river, our school director came over. This is usually not good news. It's never a death message, but it's almost always a “pedir”: help with computers, the need for a signature, whatever it may be. And today was no different. He had a very important request of us “I bought a case of beer over at Madinha's and I need help drinking it”. Hello, beautiful! We've been called into duty to drink, and damn it, we can't say no to that.
I brought along the bottle of Jameson that I bought in Maputo. It was our intention to share the bottle with Madinha. At the end of the afternoon, we did leave the bottle with her. But to kick off the afternoon, I decided to go a little crazy with Irish Car-bombs. Amarula was a reasonable substitute for Bailey's and Laurentina Preta performed well in place of Guinness. The result was delicious though eye-raising for Madinha. She thought I was nuts, especially after I did a second one right after the first. She quickly understood: after sampling mine, she saw the light.
Toward the end of the afternoon – and the end of our case – the conversation turned to football. The final of Cup of African Nations was to be contested tonight between Egypt and Ghana. Well, my allegiance was set. Ghana is my first African love, the place that made me want to come back to Africa for my Peace Corps service. The game started minutes before we started talking about. The director said we could go back to his house to watch. “And don't worry”, he added, “I have another six beers in the house”. Charming.
We got back to his house just as the second half was beginning. Analysts had said that the team that got the first goal would win the game. This isn't the bravest of predictions, but there was a point: this was going to be a close game. The half-time score of 0-0 made that prediction look good. The stats didn't lie either: Egypt had a slight edge in time of possession, while Ghana had more chances. Ghana added some quality chances in the second half, but nothing found the back of the night.
In the 85th minute, Egypt took advantage of a defensive lapse. Two players put together a beautiful give-and-go and Egypt effectively ended the game right then and there. It's one thing to give up the first goal. It's another thing to give up that goal with five minutes to play. Full of beer and tired, I was now disappointed. I did find some consolation, though, in the cheese steaks that we had for dinner.
I woke up feeling okay for the most part. I wasn't hung over at all. The only pain I had was the pain that was lingering from the infection from two weeks. I would have thought that the antibiotics would have killed it off. But this was a new kind of pain. This was day four or five of this pain, and I was not happy about it. I considered doing the guy thing and just dealing with it, but this was becoming more and more difficult every day. I decided that morning that I would leave for Maputo on Tuesday. I had to be there over the weekend for the GREs anyways, and my doctor's appointment on Friday gave me reason to leave early.
Monday meant I was back to work. I was due to teach for five periods, but with the upcoming week of cancellations, I wanted to keep some sense of balance. I canceled two of the five, so each of my eleventh grade groups got one class. There was a bit of a fight with the pain and all, but I still managed through it.
Our evening was pretty typical, aside from Richie cooking banana bread. He never cooks anything. After dinner, we started watching “Criminal Minds”. We were hoping for a “Dexter”-type drama, but this just didn't live up to our expectations.
For the first time since we arrived at site, I woke up before Richie. I wanted to get on the road and, apparently, Richie was feeling particularly lazy. I was out the door at 6:27 in the morning, armed with a small backpack and a loose travel plan: at worst arrive in Vilanculos, at best get to Xai Xai. Xai Xai was certainly ambitious, but doable.
The travel day started poorly. I had to wait a good while for the chapa to leave Mambone. Sometimes on days like this, I think about how the same activity would be done in America. I think, given the same circumstances, a driver would load a car with the cargo, then get people. After all, in America, time means money, and everyone's time is valuable. Here, time is nothing, there's no rush, and there's little money to be earned, so fuck it. The driver collects a couple people, then spent the next hour loading up the car with rice-sacks full of fish. Frustrating, to say the least.
The only upside to the first ride was that I had the front seat to myself – much better than sitting with stinky fish. I had a bit of wait time before I got a car down to Inhassoro, a seat in the back of the truck. I was making decent time. From Inhassoro, I caught a chapa toward Vilanculos, again in the front seat to myself. It was barely noon and I had already arrived at my low-end goal. Time to be greedy. I sat around the crossroads for an hour or so. Suddenly, two cars came screaming around the corner. Bingo! For the third time, I had the front seat of a car, this time, a ballin' four-by-four truck. At one point we hit ninety miles an hour, a speed unheard of here. I got to Maxixe, a city between Vilanculos and Xai Xai, around 4:00. This would make for a good stopping point.
Within ten minutes of arriving in Maxixe, one of the Volunteers living there pulled up in a chapa. Excellent timing, indeed. He was giving an introductory English class between 4 and 5. Having nothing to do and nowhere to go, I stuck around to watch.
We had only seen each other a couple times over the past year. Even though I had just seen this Volunteer but two weeks ago, it was still nice to see him. We cooked up some pretty damn good Venezuelan food and watched “I Love You, Man”, a movie that has gotten funnier every time I've seen it. Exhausted from a long travel day, and the pain I was still dealing with, I went to bed.
For the last couple days, sleep has been one of the few times where I've felt almost no pain. Being on my back was far better than the absolutely worthless ibuprofen that I was taking. But Tuesday night was agonizing. It was the most pain I've been in during this entire stretch.
Needless to say, I didn't sleep well, but I was still committed to getting on the road relatively early. I put in a call to a Volunteer in Xai Xai, just in case I couldn't make it all the way to Maputo. It's not that the distance is impossible to cover – under normal circumstances, it's an easy one-day trip – but between wanting to get a free ride and dealing with the pain, I wasn't sure I can make it.
The ride was the easy part. After 40 minutes of waiting, I had a seat in a car that was going all the way to Maputo. But as we made our way down the bumpy road, I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it all the way down. By the time we reached Xai Xai, I was done.
As it turned out, stopping in Xai Xai was a blessing. For one, the Volunteer in Xai Xai was spending the day at the beach. I can't say if the ocean and beer helped my condition, but they didn't hurt. Each certainly did contribute to my absolute exhaustion. The fact that I didn't have to pay for hotel in Maputo was a second factor in my decision. And closely related, the fact that I wouldn't be paying an exorbitant amount for dinner sealed the deal. This didn't just make sense for my health – it made financial sense as well.
The night in Xai Xai was excellent. The Volunteer's empregada made rice and beans earlier in the day. Her rice and beans are delicious. This was a treat. After dinner, we watched a movie called “The Maiden Heist”. It's a movie I had never heard of, but it was pretty funny. Somehow, I managed to make it to 10:00 before falling asleep.
I had really good luck leaving Xai Xai the last time I headed down to Maputo. If I had even half of that luck on this trip, I would make it down to Maputo with ease. It wasn't promising initially. A few cars, clearly heading to Maputo and with empty space, passed me up. But the fifth or sixth car passed me, then backed up and picked me up. Once again, I was in luck. The trip was a piece of cake. The only difference between this trip ad the one a couple weeks ago is that I had to pay for this one. Still, given the choice of paying for a chapa or paying for a ride in a private car, I'll always take the private car.
I would be mooching off of another Volunteer's hotel room for the night. She had made the reservation a couple days ago and I knew she had extra space in the room. Arriving from Vilanculos, she wouldn't arrive until late in the evening. I checked into her room and for hours, enjoyed the glory that is the hotel room: CNN, refrigeration, air conditioning, internet, and a comfortable bed. This wouldn't be a healthy way to live on a daily basis, just sitting like this, but every once in a while, it can't be that bad for you.
I did make one trip out before the end of the day. I walked down the street to a book store in search of the new twelfth grad English book. I was unsuccessful in my attempt, but two things came out of it. The first was that I bought a new English-Portuguese dictionary for Sozinho. His birthday is coming up and with me speaking only in English to him, a dictionary would be good for him.
Failing to find the English book the first time, I went to a second bookstore. There was a couple in the first bookstore and we both ended up at the second. The man turned to me and said, in perfect English, “Are you following us or are we following you?” It turned out the man, a Mozambican, has lived in LA for twenty-five years and now runs a hedge fund. We swapped information and I look forward to meeting with him on my side of the world.
My roommate for the night didn't arrive until 9:00. I had been waiting for her to have dinner, but at some point I gave in and went by myself. She ended up getting a taxi, the traffic broke, and she made it to the restaurant before my food was out. Wisely, she asked me to order food for her.
Through a lot of dinner and over the hours after dinner, a lot of our conversation centered around the GRE. The exam is this weekend. After originally being signed up for the October date, we are both anxious to get this test behind us.
I had two missions on Friday. One of them would come late in the afternoon: getting to the other side of town to make my appointment with the urologist. Before that, though, I had the entire day to kill. My other mission for this time in Maputo was to continue looking for the new twelfth grade English book. Late in the morning, I went on a march through town in search of said book. I got my answer concerning the book in the second store I went into: “The book won't be ready until September”. So just to make this clear, there is a curriculum, but no book. There are many things I will never understand about this country. I will never understand why the first person off the chapa is always the person who sits in the back row. But this – this tops the list. Why the government release a curriculum without a book is beyond me.
I needed something to fix this. Down the street from the hotel sits an Indian restaurant. In all the times I've been to Maputo, I have never been to this restaurant. What a mistake that was. The curry was delicious, the chicken was perfectly cook. It was the perfect cure to my book-search frustrations.
The early part of the afternoon was spent bunked up in the room, soaking in the air conditioning and CNN. Around 3:30, my roommate for the weekend and I walked down to Baixa for different reasons: she wanted to do some shopping and I had my 5:00 doctor appointment. Of course, I got to my appointment ten minutes early; you can't take the punctuality out of us Americans. And then I sat in the waiting room. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “there's no chance of not waiting, it's called the waiting room”. I just didn't expect to wait for three hours.
The whole experience was quite frustrating. Navigating the Mozambican medical “system” in Portuguese presented some challenges. The waiting was excessive even by Mozambican standards. But the appointment itself was the worst part. Now, don't get me wrong: I love taking off my pants, but I like having control of where and when I do so. I'll spare you the details of the appointment, but I was diagnosed with prostatitis, an inflamed prostate. The doctor told me that sex would help cure this little infection. Well, god damn, if I have to....
After a trying day, I was pissed off, tired, and hungry. A good chunk of my dignity was taken away and all I wanted to do was eat. If there was any good news to come from this, it was that my medical issue kept my mind off of tomorrow's GREs. At this point, all I wanted to do was eat and get a good night's sleep.
Eating was easy. Getting a good night's sleep was more challenging. I was up every couple of hours like clockwork. Regardless, I still felt decent going to the exam. I wasn't at all concerned about math. I figured the writing would come naturally. And I had added a significant number of words to my vocabulary. I thought I could do well, even after knocking out the essays. Then the vocab/English section came, and I felt like I got slaughtered. Hell, all of us felt like we got slaughtered. I would have loved to have gotten hammered afterward, but being on antibiotics put that idea to bed. Instead, we just wallowed in our collective despair for a while.
As if getting killed on the exam wasn't enough, I had to go back to the clinic to do some tests. Today's trip was much smoother than yesterday's. I went straight to the front of the line and was clear about what I needed to get done. The doctor wanted all sorts of fluids taken from me for whatever reason. It didn't really matter to me since I was in and out in fifteen minutes.
We continued our trip of international cuisine with Thai food tonight. I love most Asian food. Chinese and Japanese are over-rated. Thai and Vietnamese, though, are superior products. I have been itching for some for a while. And, man, the wait was worthwhile. The food was perfectly cooked, perfectly spiced. The only problem was that it was gone too fast. Following dinner, we went out for a couple of drinks, nothing too serious, just enough to be social.
I'm just glad this week is over.
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I had Sunday morning all to myself. Richie went across to the river on a solo expedition. He came back with a bounty of goods including tomatoes and bell pepper. It is a rough season for us. Besides being ungodly hot and occasionally rainy, this is the time of year when we are shy on even the most basic vegetables. Things should get back to normal around March. Unitl then, it's going to be an interesting couple of weeks.
I spent most of the morning reading “Strength in What Remains”, a story about a Burundian trying to make it in America. It's a book stitched together by short, simple sentences, a style of writing I've come to appreciate. It's also a good story, which helps a lot.
Just as Richie got back to our side of the river, our school director came over. This is usually not good news. It's never a death message, but it's almost always a “pedir”: help with computers, the need for a signature, whatever it may be. And today was no different. He had a very important request of us “I bought a case of beer over at Madinha's and I need help drinking it”. Hello, beautiful! We've been called into duty to drink, and damn it, we can't say no to that.
I brought along the bottle of Jameson that I bought in Maputo. It was our intention to share the bottle with Madinha. At the end of the afternoon, we did leave the bottle with her. But to kick off the afternoon, I decided to go a little crazy with Irish Car-bombs. Amarula was a reasonable substitute for Bailey's and Laurentina Preta performed well in place of Guinness. The result was delicious though eye-raising for Madinha. She thought I was nuts, especially after I did a second one right after the first. She quickly understood: after sampling mine, she saw the light.
Toward the end of the afternoon – and the end of our case – the conversation turned to football. The final of Cup of African Nations was to be contested tonight between Egypt and Ghana. Well, my allegiance was set. Ghana is my first African love, the place that made me want to come back to Africa for my Peace Corps service. The game started minutes before we started talking about. The director said we could go back to his house to watch. “And don't worry”, he added, “I have another six beers in the house”. Charming.
We got back to his house just as the second half was beginning. Analysts had said that the team that got the first goal would win the game. This isn't the bravest of predictions, but there was a point: this was going to be a close game. The half-time score of 0-0 made that prediction look good. The stats didn't lie either: Egypt had a slight edge in time of possession, while Ghana had more chances. Ghana added some quality chances in the second half, but nothing found the back of the night.
In the 85th minute, Egypt took advantage of a defensive lapse. Two players put together a beautiful give-and-go and Egypt effectively ended the game right then and there. It's one thing to give up the first goal. It's another thing to give up that goal with five minutes to play. Full of beer and tired, I was now disappointed. I did find some consolation, though, in the cheese steaks that we had for dinner.
I woke up feeling okay for the most part. I wasn't hung over at all. The only pain I had was the pain that was lingering from the infection from two weeks. I would have thought that the antibiotics would have killed it off. But this was a new kind of pain. This was day four or five of this pain, and I was not happy about it. I considered doing the guy thing and just dealing with it, but this was becoming more and more difficult every day. I decided that morning that I would leave for Maputo on Tuesday. I had to be there over the weekend for the GREs anyways, and my doctor's appointment on Friday gave me reason to leave early.
Monday meant I was back to work. I was due to teach for five periods, but with the upcoming week of cancellations, I wanted to keep some sense of balance. I canceled two of the five, so each of my eleventh grade groups got one class. There was a bit of a fight with the pain and all, but I still managed through it.
Our evening was pretty typical, aside from Richie cooking banana bread. He never cooks anything. After dinner, we started watching “Criminal Minds”. We were hoping for a “Dexter”-type drama, but this just didn't live up to our expectations.
For the first time since we arrived at site, I woke up before Richie. I wanted to get on the road and, apparently, Richie was feeling particularly lazy. I was out the door at 6:27 in the morning, armed with a small backpack and a loose travel plan: at worst arrive in Vilanculos, at best get to Xai Xai. Xai Xai was certainly ambitious, but doable.
The travel day started poorly. I had to wait a good while for the chapa to leave Mambone. Sometimes on days like this, I think about how the same activity would be done in America. I think, given the same circumstances, a driver would load a car with the cargo, then get people. After all, in America, time means money, and everyone's time is valuable. Here, time is nothing, there's no rush, and there's little money to be earned, so fuck it. The driver collects a couple people, then spent the next hour loading up the car with rice-sacks full of fish. Frustrating, to say the least.
The only upside to the first ride was that I had the front seat to myself – much better than sitting with stinky fish. I had a bit of wait time before I got a car down to Inhassoro, a seat in the back of the truck. I was making decent time. From Inhassoro, I caught a chapa toward Vilanculos, again in the front seat to myself. It was barely noon and I had already arrived at my low-end goal. Time to be greedy. I sat around the crossroads for an hour or so. Suddenly, two cars came screaming around the corner. Bingo! For the third time, I had the front seat of a car, this time, a ballin' four-by-four truck. At one point we hit ninety miles an hour, a speed unheard of here. I got to Maxixe, a city between Vilanculos and Xai Xai, around 4:00. This would make for a good stopping point.
Within ten minutes of arriving in Maxixe, one of the Volunteers living there pulled up in a chapa. Excellent timing, indeed. He was giving an introductory English class between 4 and 5. Having nothing to do and nowhere to go, I stuck around to watch.
We had only seen each other a couple times over the past year. Even though I had just seen this Volunteer but two weeks ago, it was still nice to see him. We cooked up some pretty damn good Venezuelan food and watched “I Love You, Man”, a movie that has gotten funnier every time I've seen it. Exhausted from a long travel day, and the pain I was still dealing with, I went to bed.
For the last couple days, sleep has been one of the few times where I've felt almost no pain. Being on my back was far better than the absolutely worthless ibuprofen that I was taking. But Tuesday night was agonizing. It was the most pain I've been in during this entire stretch.
Needless to say, I didn't sleep well, but I was still committed to getting on the road relatively early. I put in a call to a Volunteer in Xai Xai, just in case I couldn't make it all the way to Maputo. It's not that the distance is impossible to cover – under normal circumstances, it's an easy one-day trip – but between wanting to get a free ride and dealing with the pain, I wasn't sure I can make it.
The ride was the easy part. After 40 minutes of waiting, I had a seat in a car that was going all the way to Maputo. But as we made our way down the bumpy road, I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it all the way down. By the time we reached Xai Xai, I was done.
As it turned out, stopping in Xai Xai was a blessing. For one, the Volunteer in Xai Xai was spending the day at the beach. I can't say if the ocean and beer helped my condition, but they didn't hurt. Each certainly did contribute to my absolute exhaustion. The fact that I didn't have to pay for hotel in Maputo was a second factor in my decision. And closely related, the fact that I wouldn't be paying an exorbitant amount for dinner sealed the deal. This didn't just make sense for my health – it made financial sense as well.
The night in Xai Xai was excellent. The Volunteer's empregada made rice and beans earlier in the day. Her rice and beans are delicious. This was a treat. After dinner, we watched a movie called “The Maiden Heist”. It's a movie I had never heard of, but it was pretty funny. Somehow, I managed to make it to 10:00 before falling asleep.
I had really good luck leaving Xai Xai the last time I headed down to Maputo. If I had even half of that luck on this trip, I would make it down to Maputo with ease. It wasn't promising initially. A few cars, clearly heading to Maputo and with empty space, passed me up. But the fifth or sixth car passed me, then backed up and picked me up. Once again, I was in luck. The trip was a piece of cake. The only difference between this trip ad the one a couple weeks ago is that I had to pay for this one. Still, given the choice of paying for a chapa or paying for a ride in a private car, I'll always take the private car.
I would be mooching off of another Volunteer's hotel room for the night. She had made the reservation a couple days ago and I knew she had extra space in the room. Arriving from Vilanculos, she wouldn't arrive until late in the evening. I checked into her room and for hours, enjoyed the glory that is the hotel room: CNN, refrigeration, air conditioning, internet, and a comfortable bed. This wouldn't be a healthy way to live on a daily basis, just sitting like this, but every once in a while, it can't be that bad for you.
I did make one trip out before the end of the day. I walked down the street to a book store in search of the new twelfth grad English book. I was unsuccessful in my attempt, but two things came out of it. The first was that I bought a new English-Portuguese dictionary for Sozinho. His birthday is coming up and with me speaking only in English to him, a dictionary would be good for him.
Failing to find the English book the first time, I went to a second bookstore. There was a couple in the first bookstore and we both ended up at the second. The man turned to me and said, in perfect English, “Are you following us or are we following you?” It turned out the man, a Mozambican, has lived in LA for twenty-five years and now runs a hedge fund. We swapped information and I look forward to meeting with him on my side of the world.
My roommate for the night didn't arrive until 9:00. I had been waiting for her to have dinner, but at some point I gave in and went by myself. She ended up getting a taxi, the traffic broke, and she made it to the restaurant before my food was out. Wisely, she asked me to order food for her.
Through a lot of dinner and over the hours after dinner, a lot of our conversation centered around the GRE. The exam is this weekend. After originally being signed up for the October date, we are both anxious to get this test behind us.
I had two missions on Friday. One of them would come late in the afternoon: getting to the other side of town to make my appointment with the urologist. Before that, though, I had the entire day to kill. My other mission for this time in Maputo was to continue looking for the new twelfth grade English book. Late in the morning, I went on a march through town in search of said book. I got my answer concerning the book in the second store I went into: “The book won't be ready until September”. So just to make this clear, there is a curriculum, but no book. There are many things I will never understand about this country. I will never understand why the first person off the chapa is always the person who sits in the back row. But this – this tops the list. Why the government release a curriculum without a book is beyond me.
I needed something to fix this. Down the street from the hotel sits an Indian restaurant. In all the times I've been to Maputo, I have never been to this restaurant. What a mistake that was. The curry was delicious, the chicken was perfectly cook. It was the perfect cure to my book-search frustrations.
The early part of the afternoon was spent bunked up in the room, soaking in the air conditioning and CNN. Around 3:30, my roommate for the weekend and I walked down to Baixa for different reasons: she wanted to do some shopping and I had my 5:00 doctor appointment. Of course, I got to my appointment ten minutes early; you can't take the punctuality out of us Americans. And then I sat in the waiting room. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “there's no chance of not waiting, it's called the waiting room”. I just didn't expect to wait for three hours.
The whole experience was quite frustrating. Navigating the Mozambican medical “system” in Portuguese presented some challenges. The waiting was excessive even by Mozambican standards. But the appointment itself was the worst part. Now, don't get me wrong: I love taking off my pants, but I like having control of where and when I do so. I'll spare you the details of the appointment, but I was diagnosed with prostatitis, an inflamed prostate. The doctor told me that sex would help cure this little infection. Well, god damn, if I have to....
After a trying day, I was pissed off, tired, and hungry. A good chunk of my dignity was taken away and all I wanted to do was eat. If there was any good news to come from this, it was that my medical issue kept my mind off of tomorrow's GREs. At this point, all I wanted to do was eat and get a good night's sleep.
Eating was easy. Getting a good night's sleep was more challenging. I was up every couple of hours like clockwork. Regardless, I still felt decent going to the exam. I wasn't at all concerned about math. I figured the writing would come naturally. And I had added a significant number of words to my vocabulary. I thought I could do well, even after knocking out the essays. Then the vocab/English section came, and I felt like I got slaughtered. Hell, all of us felt like we got slaughtered. I would have loved to have gotten hammered afterward, but being on antibiotics put that idea to bed. Instead, we just wallowed in our collective despair for a while.
As if getting killed on the exam wasn't enough, I had to go back to the clinic to do some tests. Today's trip was much smoother than yesterday's. I went straight to the front of the line and was clear about what I needed to get done. The doctor wanted all sorts of fluids taken from me for whatever reason. It didn't really matter to me since I was in and out in fifteen minutes.
We continued our trip of international cuisine with Thai food tonight. I love most Asian food. Chinese and Japanese are over-rated. Thai and Vietnamese, though, are superior products. I have been itching for some for a while. And, man, the wait was worthwhile. The food was perfectly cooked, perfectly spiced. The only problem was that it was gone too fast. Following dinner, we went out for a couple of drinks, nothing too serious, just enough to be social.
I'm just glad this week is over.
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