Year 2 - Week 17: Finals Week

Though I am not accustomed to going to bed at 2 in the morning, I still woke up fairly refreshed. Unlike the sleep I usually get in Machanga, this sleep was a deep sleep. I did not wake up a single time. I guess that's proof enough that six hours of good sleep is better than nine hours of really shitty sleep. When all of us were awake, we straightened up the house to a sufficient level of cleanliness and I was on my way.

The two other Volunteers who were with me had very short trips to make, no more than 90 minutes each. And for each of them, there is never a shortage of chapas. I, however, was a little concerned. Being Easter Sunday, I wasn't sure if the chapa would be running. Our driver has a history of not driving on holidays, so I got to the chapa stop early, and anticipated the worst. If he hadn't arrived, it would have been easy enough to take three different chapas home. For some reason, though, Easter isn't a holy enough day to cancel his route -- good news for me.

What I have come to realize is that this particular driver is a really shitty driver. It's not just that he drives slower than he should. He also doesn't know how to say "no". It doesn't matter how long a person needs to stay on. He's happy to collect even a few Meticais. While I certainly appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit, it pisses me off to no end that he's willing to pick up people who could walk the same distance quite easily. All the stopping and starting added a good chunk of time to hour trip.

Another 45 minutes was added waiting at the river. The holiday apparently kept people on their respective sides of the river. Finally, enough people showed up to make the trip worthwhile for the boatman. All said, I didn't make it back to Machanga until well after 3 in the afternoon. What normally take takes four and a half hours took nearly six today.

Of course, I was hungry following such a trip. I had the foresight to buy a couple avocados while in Vilanculos, and this provided the perfect post-trip snack. A bit of good fortune was also on our side today: one of the stores had a truck of frozen chickens arrive. We would eat like kings tonight: chicken, salsa, guacamole and rice, a veritable feast.

A physics teacher had come by earlier in the day requesting help with some exams. Richie had already typed out most of the pages, but he needed some help formatting the last one. It was easy enough.

If I had no obligations on Monday, I probably would have stayed in Vilanculos for the extra day, but Richie roped me into proctoring an exam at the ungodly hour of 7:00 AM. I will not forgive him for this. Not only was the hour insane, but as I have made abundantly clear in the past, proctoring exams is one of the worst activities we do here. His little (and I really do mean little) eighth graders were taking their final exam today. I wasn't nearly as vigilant as I would be with my students, but I still nailed a kid cheating. He wasn't even creative: he had his notebook laid open on his lap. Sigh...they learn so young.

In one fell swoop, Richie ruined my day. Asshole. There was only one solution for this: a story of death and vengeance. Richie has praised the book "The Count of Monte Cristo" to no end, and with some time on my hands this week, I figured it would be worth the read. From 8:15 in the morning until the well into the afternoon, I struggled to put to the book down. This is the kind of book that every sixteen year old boy should read. It might keep them interested in reading.

While I sat in the house reading, a very strange thing happened: it rained. And it didn't rain just a little bit. It rained hard for hours on end. I would have thought this would be a good thing, but apparently, the hard rain did a good amount of damage to the gardens behind our house. It seems like we can't live with the rain and we can't live without it. Greedily, I was happy because it cooled this place off a little bit.

My day wasn't the only one that was ruined. Richie had even more exams to give, so his day was ruined even further. I can be forgiven for seeking some pleasure in his pain, can't I? In months past, there is a singular solution to such suffering: baked goods. We haven't made cookies in months, but all of that changed tonight. We were mildly concerned about our oats being expired, but as we have come to learn, don't trust expiration dates and don't trust "must be refrigerated" warnings. They are bullshit. The oats were fine and the cookies were delicious.

The only downside for the night is that we finished our last episodes of "How I Met Your Mother". I'm going to be honest: I'm kind of ready to know who she is. I'm four seasons committed and there isn't even a hint of who she is. I guess that's how they keep you coming back. In place of said series, we moved onto "The Big Bang Theory". I had heard good things but Richie was skeptical. Ten minutes into the first episode, we had approved of it.

The night here was ridiculously hot, just as it had been the night before. All of our little fans have broken. They lasted about a year, which was a pretty good run. I'd ask for more, but by the time they get here, we will be well into the cold season, and then we'll only have to suffer a little in September and October. For now, though, I continue to wake up to sweat-drenched sheets.

I dove right back into "The Count of Monte Cristo". At this rate, this 530-page book is not going to last me very long. I finally got to the part of the book when the Count starts to carry out his revenge. There are so many pieces to this little puzzle, it's quite beautiful to see it all come together.

I had two work-related interruptions in the afternoon. The first was my own work. My last two classes of the trimester were this afternoon. Even though the weeks have been almost painfully slow, this trimester has gone by fast enough. All I had was a brief review of what would be on the exam. It's pretty easy for a final exam: study what we did this trimester.

The second interruption was another request for an exam. One of our best friends, the French teacher, came over in need of a typed exam. He wanted to dictate the exam to me, which would have been a royal pain in the ass, seeing as the extent of my French is limited to pastries. I objected to this, but told him to stick around in case I made mistakes. He still sat by my side and watched me type, impressed at how quickly I was able to type in French. In the end, it's all the same. Letters are letters, regardless of order or language.

I came achingly close to finishing my book before the energy came on. There was beef in the market in the market today, and for some reason, we got a great cut of meat tonight. It's hard to call the guy who kills meat here a "butcher" because he doesn't know how to cut meat. He just takes an ax and a saw and goes to work. But tonight, we had a nice lean cut of meat.

With plenty of energy left, we decided to watch a movie, "Yes Man". It was funny through the first hour until Richie's computer froze. We tried to start it again, but it froze again minutes later. That's grounds for giving up. I curled into bed with my book until the lights went out.

I refused to get out of bed until I finished my book on Wednesday. There wasn't a whole lot to go, maybe 30 pages. In most cases, I would say that bed always beats no bed. These days, though, I'm starting to question that line of thinking. It has been so hot these days that our sheets are literally wet when we wake up (and no, neither of us has a peeing in bed problem). Plus, absolutely no breeze passes through our house. I believe that we have the right to complain. Why do I say this? Because our Mozambican colleagues tell us that it's fuckin hot and even they are having trouble sleeping. I figure if they, who were born and bred here, are complaining about the weather, we can too.

My book finished -- the last couple chapters were kind of a letdown -- I had absolutely nothing to do on Wednesday. Wednesday was a holiday in Mozambique: Mozambican Woman's Day. Women definitely carry the workload in this country. The men may have the glorified positions in government and civil service and teaching, but you rarely see a man with a baby tied to his back throwing a ho in a corn field. So yea, women in this country earn this day off.

Of course, the whole town pretty much shut down for this holiday. School, in spite of being in the middle of finals week, was closed for the day. The truth is that the school probably could have functioned just fine, even without the female teachers. Less than 10% of the teachers here are female, so the impact would be minimal. But that can't be done -- it's a holiday, and if it's a holiday, there's drinking to do.

Usually, this is a day that would be right in our wheelhouse. Booze, food, not working -- it's a perfect combination. But Richie and I weren't really up for it today. Both of us were pretty lethargic. The heat from last night and into this morning sucked the life out of us. We attended one party briefly. The goat they cooked up was pretty good, but the beer was horrifyingly warm. Like, there wasn't even an effort at refrigeration. The spelled the end for me. There was another party in the villa, but that required walking to the villa, and sitting on our patio seemed like a far better option.

Richie was in the mood to see death and destruction. I can never blame him for this. I think it's one of the side effects of living in Machanga. We turned to a movie with guaranteed gore: "300". I've never been a fan of these illustrated novel type movies, but "V for Vendetta" was awesome, so I figured this would be okay. And okay is what I would call it. It wasn't great, it wasn't bad. Some of the effects were cool, but for the most part, it was just there. Not nearly as good as "V for Vendetta".

I had a truly terrible night of sleep Wednesday night. It was hot beyond imagination and I couldn't fall asleep until nearly midnight. Then I was up at 4:00 for some ungodly reason. And then to top it off, I was awakened by my phone buzzing. At this hour, it's usually a hockey score, but this was no text message. This was a phone call from Richie. "Hey man, can you come to the school and control an exam?" You son of a bitch. It's 7 in the morning, I'm still in bed, haven't brushed my teeth, haven't even thought about putting pants on. And you want me to work? Fine. I scrambled my way out of bed, into clothes, and over to the school.

Oh controlling exams, how I hate you. I will not forgive Richie for this. I caught one kid ogling his neighbor's paper like it was covered with Swedish supermodels...three minutes into the exam. He was moved immediately. Other than that, these kids weren't so bad. Some girl rolled in twenty-five minutes late and got right to work. I though, "Wow, she's going to bang out this exam in 20 minutes." Nope. She wrote all of the parts to the exam except the answers. Her paper looked like this: "The five kingdoms of living beings are: 1)_____2)_____ 3)_____4)_____5)_____ " Beautiful. I don't know a damn thing about biology, but even I could grade her exam.

Well, proctoring an exam while still half-asleep put me in just a wonderful mood. It was a good thing I had nothing to do today. I'm playing the waiting game until Friday to give my exam. It's the only day when I have all of my students for two hours each. The only downside was that a nap was out of the question. Despite being exhausted, I knew that if I napped during the day, I wouldn't sleep at night. What a sick trade-off that is.

At some point, a a group of seven year olds came over to my house. "Teacher, we want to learn some English words". Like anyone else, I asked them what words they wanted to know. They ended up learning seven or eight words, including "door", "bucket", "chair" and "shoes". Tragically, I'm pretty sure that these kids no more English than some of my twelfth graders.

To kill some time in the afternoon, Richie and I wandered over to the market. The price of stuff here has skyrocketed in the last couple weeks. The price of a bottle of Coke has jumped from ten Mets in December to twelve Mets in February to fifteen Mets today. Kinda sucks, but what can you do? It's still delicious.

I cooked beans for the first time this week. I really half-assed it, and it showed. The beans were undercooked, and I forgot garlic. That's a huge fail. Whatever. Richie, as usual, wasn't eating dinner, so it was only one of us who had to suffer. Following exam day, we knew we had to watch something funny, so we returned to "The Big Bang Theory" before going to bed.

Friday was the day for my students, but they would have to suffer until the afternoon to take my exam. While they waited to meet their fate, I did some work for the French teacher. He had another exam he wanted typed up, and of course I said okay. Why should he take five hours to type the exam when I can do it in 20 minutes? Not surprisingly, not a single students came over for help or clarification before the exam -- not today, not any other day. I don't know if they are too proud to ask for help or would be too ashamed or are just not used to teachers willing to help, but I offer to help them every time, and every time, no one comes over.

This test, I will say, is probably the most difficult test I've given in my year-plus here. Every question was taken from national exams from years before, there was a ton of vocabulary (most of them cognates) that would be new to them. But seriously, if you can't figure out that negligent is negligente, you might have bigger problems. Plus, on top of the all the new vocabulary, I told them I wouldn't be helping them define certain words. They were on their own, just like they would be on their national exam in November.

So there I stood, for more than three hours, watching my students take exams. Some of them tried to ask for help, but when they asked, I just shrugged my shoulders like I was the one learning English. For the first time in ages, I had no cheaters and I didn't even have to move anyone. They finally realize that I mean business on exam day. The only thing that is slightly concerning is there is a group of students in one of my classes who have not taken a single one of my exams this year. I saw them just sitting under a tree during my exam and they walked in after the exam was done. The truth is, these aren't particularly good students, and they would probably fail the exam anyway. They are just making it easier for me to grade. I have no problem giving out zeroes.

I wanted to get grading right away. 100 exams times 40 questions per exam is a lot. My saving grace was this exam was multiple choice. Ten exams into grading, I pretty much had the sequence memorized and could get through an exam in about a minute or two. I managed to knock out one of two classes before the energy came on and set aside the other class for tomorrow.

For the first time in a while, I was called in on serious tech duty. One of the computers wasn't starting up at all, which was just a little curious for me and a little disconcerting for some teachers because they needed to get documents from this computer. Sure, most of these computers have viruses, but even the most severely infected ones turn on before they shut down. I looked through all the basic stuff -- cables, wires, etc -- and everything seemed in place. I opened her up, and couldn't notice any disconnections. So I went to a last result: I popped out the hard drive, put it another computer, and voila! we had a running computer. The teachers were very grateful for my assistance. While I was out, Richie had cooked up some shrimp and rice. We watched some "Big Bang Theory" while eating, and when the energy when out, we were out too.

I immediately went back to work on Saturday morning. I wanted to get these papers graded as quickly as possible. Usually, the science-track students do better than the language-track students, but that was not the case on this exam. I think the reading comprehension section really messed with them. The difference wasn't too noticeable -- a slightly lower passing rate and a slightly lower average score. Nothing too noticeable, but noticeable to me because they are normally significantly better. Either way, I was done grading by noon, which means I'm done with work until about May!

There was some sort of festa going on in town today, some sort of cultural day. Richie, being the muzungu representative, went to the even while I stayed home and graded papers. Following this event was a soccer game featuring a team from Mambone and a team from Machanga. This is not something I'd usually attend, but Gary came over from across the river. They told him that the game would be in the morning. I laughed when he said this, knowing that most of these games don't start until 4 in the afternoon. And I was right. In the meantime, Gary came over for the better part of the afternoon. We introduced him to the glory that is potato pancakes and egg sandwiches.

Around 4:30, we wandered over to the field to watch the soccer game. It was a terrible game -- a zero-zero tie. While we were there, I think there were two shots on goal. Gotta love soccer. We needed something to make us feel better after that train wreck of a game, so we said goodbye to Gary and walked over to the vila for a soda. One of the stores actually head Pepsi, a rare deviation from the normal Coca-Cola. And everyone knows that Pepsi is better than Coke. I was very happy. My happiness increased when we found out there was beef in the market. We're eating well tonight.

Richie didn't want to do anything fancy. He just wanted meat. I see nothing wrong with that. I tried to make mashed potatoes, but I undercooked the potatoes and we didn't have better. It's tough to fuck up mashed potatoes, but I figured out a way to do it. The steak was still pretty good -- not as good as what we had earlier in the week, but not bad.

I got called back to teach duty tonight with a much simpler task. A teacher wanted me to transfer documents from a computer to his laptop. My work was done in five minutes, and thank god it didn't take longer. Within minutes of me getting home, the deluge began. It rained for the better part of the night. At least it should make for easier sleeping.