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.
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