Richie was wrong. It rained. And rained. And rained. And then it rained some more. I fear for what the town looks like. We didn't have a choice but to find out. There was no food in the house. This should be fun.
Major negotiations went down before we went to the market. We have one pair of boots and one rain slicker. Richie claimed the boots and I was okay with that. I didn't want to get wet and I'm okay walking in the mud. As we made our way out the school, we walked passed another teacher's house and he offered up his boots to me. Who's the sucker now?
The boots were pretty much useless. We came to find out that boots are really helpful with mud, but not helpful with rain, because the rain fell straight into the boots. And they are not really helpful when the lake that is now sitting in the road is knee high. By the time we got to the river, we both had to take out boots off just to empty the water out.
This turned out to be quite the market run. We didn't have any food in the house and we really didn't want to go back to the market any time soon. So we stocked up on everything -- potatoes, onions, eggs, spaghetti, phone credit, anything we could get our hands on. Walking back with all the groceries was worse than walking to the market. We had to endure the same rain, the same lake in the middle of the road, except now we had ten pounds of food with us.
If there was ever a day to just give up, this was it. We couldn't go anywhere without getting wet and covered in mud. Hell, even our beloved patio was taking a beating, thanks to the wind that blows the rain in just the right way. This was grounds for spending the day in bed.
Sozinho decided to take the lead on this. He said he wasn't feeling well. He didn't need to give us a reason to lie down. I felt perfectly fine and I stayed horizontal for most of the day. I spent almost the entire day doing Kakuro -- and actually getting them right -- before the energy came on.
Following dinner, we wanted to watch something that involved things blowing up. For this, we turned to a movie called "12 Rounds". Any movie that stars a WWE wrestler has to either involve death, fighting, stuff blowing up, or all of the above. We were not disappointed. The movie itself kinda sucked. It was probably one of those straight to DVD films. But it sated our appetite for destruction
Sozinho, meanwhile, remained on his back. He seemed to be struggling. I've stayed in bed for long periods of time, but eight hours in the afternoon is a lot even by my standards. After all that rest, he should feel bette
At least, I thought. Come Monday morning, he was still catatonic. He claimed it was malaria, and who am I to tell him it's not? With Richie having to work on Monday, it looked like I was in charge of the house. This was actually a bit of a blessing. I had no obligations and I really needed something to do.
I can't begin to express how happy I am to be done with February. That was one horrifying month. February has not treated us well in this country: not this year, not last year. Thankfully, the next time we see February we will be in America. It sort have felt like there was a conspiracy amongst the health, school, and weather gods to make February suck.
But now that we are in March, things seem to be looking up. School seems to be picking up bit by bit. We're back into the flow of things. Aside from a small cold courtesy of the weather change, I'm back to healthy. And what is that? A patch of blue sky!
I can't really say I did a whole lot on Monday, but at least what I did was productive. I did dishes, twice. and since it didn't rain much, a had the chance to give the patio and the bathroom a good cleaning. This is the stuff we brought Sozinho to do, but hey, he can't do it if he has malaria. I understand that.
When I wasn't cleaning, I had the Kakuro book in front of me, and I was dominating. It's funny how that game treats me. Sometimes, I can't figure out a damn thing, and other times, they're very easy. Before this week, I hadn't got one right in a long time. Now I was at six in a row. I'll blame my failures on the fact that it was February.
We decided on beans tonight. Foolishly, we thought that putting them on charcoal would be smart. Beans always take forever to cook, so any extra time on the stove helps. Of course, today was the day that they decided to turn the energy on early. The pot was on the charcoal for no more than ten minutes before the energy came on. As long as the charcoal was going, we used it. No use in wasting it. Plus the beans tend to cook better on charcoal. For our entertainment tonight, we decided to watch "Sex Drive", a comedy that only sends like a porno.
The weather gods decided to be extra kind to me for my birthday. I woke up to blue skies from horizon to horizon. If this holds up, Richie and I will be able to go to the vila for food tonight.
The morning was abnormally busy. I wasn't doing anything except talking and replying to text messages. In lieu of receiving physical gifts, hearing people's voices is pretty good. Between all of the phone calls and text messages, my morning was all but gone.
I believe that there should be a rule that you don't have to work on your birthday. I say this especially because my birthday always seems to fall on a Monday or a Tuesday. I can't properly party mid-week. The truth of the matter is I could have cancelled classes today. Who is going to tell me I can't? But my conscience kicked in. I only had to teach two hours today. That wouldn't be a problem.
I gave myself a well deserved nap after classes, waking up at 4:00 for a meeting. This was a big meeting. The education administrator for the district was here. This meeting went on. And on. For two awful hours. I spent the last thirty minutes looking for something I could use to slit my wrists. I just wanted to go out and get drunk.
Finally, at 6:00, we were liberated. Richie and I headed straight to Madinha's place for food and drink. She cooked up some chicken and rice for us. Madinha is very much hit and miss with food. Some of the stuff she gives us, like the stewed beef she makes, is amazing. This wasn't so great, but it's chicken. It's tough to fuck it up too much. With a couple beers in our bellies, we bought a bottle of whiskey and brought it back to our house to drink with colleagues.
At this point, I made what I thought was a wise decision. I told our school director that we had a bottle of whiskey and we needed help drinking it. He invited us to drink his case of beer last month and I felt like I owed him. And he's usually good for providing more booze when the bottle disappears.
As I thought he would, when our bottle was gone, he brought out more alcohol. But instead of bringing whiskey, he chose to bring terrible boxed wine. Why? Why do you torture us so? Well, we weren't going to say no. The box of wine went, and we felt miserable. At least we had enough liquid courage to ask our director to leave in November instead of December. He said it was not a problem. Now we just need Peace Corps to help us out.
I woke up Wednesday feeling like death. Like a truck ran over me, put it in reverse to see what was hit, then run over again after they realized that it was nothing important. At least I wasn't alone. Richie felt just as terrible. And our colleague who also made the beer to whiskey to felt equally bad. At least misery had company today.
Misery also had good luck today. I didn't have to teach until 4:00 in the afternoon, leaving me all afternoon to get my head and my stomach back together. I can't really say I did much. Sozinho was back to feeling better, so he took care of the dishes and cleaning. I took his place and spent plenty of the day in bed reading an "Economist".
I went into class at 4, minutes after the rain had started to fall lightly. When I got to my class, some students told me that I should go quickly because they had to go back to Mambone and they wanted to get back before it really started raining. I have no problem moving quickly. It was a pretty basic lesson today, as it was -- just a review of present continuous. It didn't need the entire two hours, so I cut it down to about half of the time.
We were indecisive about dinner tonight. More than anything, we just didn't have much in the house. Why does it seem like we're always out of food? RIchie, it turns out, wasn't so hungry. He just had a peanut butter sandwich. Being on my own for dinner, I made pasta. Richie is once again done with pasta, so I will take any opportunity I can to eat it. For our viewing pleasure, we watched a couple episodes of "30 Rock". NBC may not have that one hit show, but between "30 Rock" and "The Office" they've nailed certain niches.
The hard rain didn't come until the middle of the night. It didn't last that long, not even long enough to wake us up. It lasted just long enough to make itself recognized by the puddles in the morning.
Sozinho is back ot fully functional and with that I am back to my regular laziness when it comes to going to the market. Sure, I could have gone, but why should I go when we have him to do it for us? Instead of going, I sat around doing Kakuro and cleaning my room. I was up to nine in a row when I got greedy and went for ten and fucked up. Eh, it was a good run.
Class was quick and easy today. I managed to nearly fill the two hours today. that took only an hour yesterday. I'm moving fast with these kids, so they were probably happy to move bit by bit today.
As I got toward the end of class, the twelfth grade math teacher -- the one who thought it wise to bet me five beers -- asked me if I could help out with this class. I told him that it was no problem. I thought this would entail sitting in the back of the room, watching him teach and telling him if something was not correct.
I was wrong. "I'll teach the first half, you teach the second half", said he. Mmm, okay. What am I teaching? Absolute values in inequalities. Alright, fine. There was still a lot of vocabulary I didn't know, so I sat in the back in the first half and listened, trying to pick up the terminology.
My part of class went shockingly well, seeing as I had about 30 minutes to prepare. One of the kids told me he learned more in that math class than he had learned in the previous English class. I don't know if I should take that as a compliment to my ability to teach math in Portuguese or an insult to my ability to teach English in English. Either way, I think that they'll be slightly more prepared when they have to take their exam.
I was in charge of doing dinner tonight. Beans again. Richie and I believe that we can eat beans just about every night. It's cheap, it's easy to make, and it's delicious. And as long as Sozinho is not cooking them, they generally don't take three hours to make. While the beans cooked, I helped another student with some math problems and watched some episodes of "30 Rock".
As if typing up the test and teaching half of a math class wasn't enough, I got roped into proctoring the exam on Friday afternoon. . The last way I want to spend my Friday afternoon is watching kids cheat on a math test. Unpleasant. At least I had the morning to myself. My kakuro dominance went away. I hit a bad streak and apparently, I can no longer solve these damn puzzles. It comes and goes.
My classes went by decently in the afternoon. I finished a little early in both my classes and offered my math services to my students. Both classes jumped at the opportunity. Even though it's a struggle to teach math, especially sicne I have to remember how to do stuff, it's still more fun than teaching English. I don't know how much my teaching helped, but there was no shortage of talking and wandering eyes. If this were an English exam, I'd be taking papers and dropping zeroes like it was nothing. But this was not my class, so I did not care.
At least the teacher who asked for help rewarded us with bottles of wine. So we sat around and drank. And when we got hungry, I did the cooking. The couple hours of drinking, paired with the five straight hours in the classroom, did me in. Richie, however, wanted to go out. I told him I would be staying in for the night. It was a good decision.
Richie rolled in around 2 in the morning. I was awake when he walked in because I'm always awake at 2 in the morning. I don't think I would have made it until 2. And even with a good night's sleep, I woke up feeling tired. I wanted to really just spend the day in bed, so I indulged and stayed in the sheets until 8:30. When i found the motivation to get out of bed, I made a run to the market. I would have gone later in the morning but Richie wanted the bike.
The governor of the province of Sofala was in town to talk to the good people of Machanga. I, as usual, had no interest in going to this type of event. I know the deal: we get there when it's supposed to start, we wait three hours in the sun for the guy to show up, he makes a mediocre speech in Portuguese that requires translation into dialect, and then we leave, asking "Why the fuck did we go watch that?" So I made the decision to not go through all of those steps. Sitting on the patio couldn't be worse than that.
Throughout the event, Richie was texting me. The guy didn't show up until noon. My decision was validated immediately when I heard that news.
Richie came back mid-afternoon and upon his return, we ate lunch. After that, it was just a relaxing afternoon. Each of us napped for some period of time and I read a newspaper from December.
Sozinho cooked dinner tonight. Actually, he started coking last night. This meal took a full two nights to cook. There are a lot of parts of Mozambique that I like, but there food is not high on my list. One of the things I really liked about living without live-in help is that we had complete control of the food. Sozinho wanted Mozambican food so we obliged. Richie enjoyed it. He thought it was sweet. I find at best bland and at worst bitter.
The nightly entertainment was "Funny People". I think it would have been better if we could hear the movie, but it's tough to hear with the beats of Akon rocking in the background. But it seemed like a good film.
I must say, this birthday week was much better than last year's. And I know that next year's, when I'm back with family and friends, will be even better.
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