Year 2 - Week 22: Muzungu Exceptionalism

I knew I wouldn't be sleeping well. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, I rolled around in bed running through all the scenarios, hoping for the best but certainly expecting the worst. It's what we've become accustomed to. But then, after squeezing out a few hours of tormented sleep, my anxiety was relieved with a single text message: "WOOHOO!" Everything I needed to know was written in those six letters: The San Jose Sharks, perennial May no-shows, knocked out the two time defending Western Conference champion Detroit Red Wings. I could now get some good hours of sleep before finding out some of the details.

On Sundays in Machanga, we might as well be in the middle of a corn field in Nebraska. The town comes to a complete standstill, the school sits quietly, other than the morning clamoring of church. The girls sit around, braiding and twisting their hair into intricate patterns. They guys sit around and do nothing. It is a lazy man's paradise. And all I could do was fit in.

I spent most of the morning horizontal in bed. Having not slept particularly well, I was happy to get some rest. I didn't sleep, but I was happy not to be moving. At some point, I rolled out of bed to read up on the Sharks victory. While my computer was up and running, the physics teacher who just received a computer came over with a question. He had written out a three-page questionnaire by himself, impressive considering he hadn't owned a computer last week. It's even more impressive because he didn't just ask me to do it -- he did as much as he could before running into the problem of having to put accents on some of the vowels. I gave him a quick lesson and he was good to go.

The afternoon looked a lot like the morning. I sat around with Richie, reading a Sports Illustrated from months ago. I usually enjoy SI, but I have two problems with this particular issue. One: I've read it cover to cover four times, so it's kind of boring. My second issue is much bigger. It has a picture from the College Football Championship game, with "Dynasty" splashed over the cover the Alabama players. No question mark. No exclamation point. Just "Dynasty". In caps. Maybe something has changed in the year and a half that I've been gone, but I thought you had to win multiple championships over a short period of time to be a dynasty. Alabama is at one. Come on, Sports Illustrated. You should know better.

Considering that the rest of my day was lazy, I saw no reason to change course during the evening. Sure I could have cooked up some gourmet dinner, but why should I do that when I have a box of Trader Joe's macaroni and cheese staring me in face. This was an easy call. Richie was having more problems than usual with his attention span. He didn't want to watch one two-hour movie, so instead we watched eight episodes of "30 Rock". They go by much faster without commercials.

It should go without say that I slept much better on Sunday night. I had nothing to worry about. The Sharks weren't playing. I didn't have to teach class. I literally did not have a concern in the world (well, at least my world). Given our severe dearth of food in the house, I went out for a market run. Things went to plan, in fact better than usual. One of the shops had frozen chickens and orange juice. The chickens, we've come to expect, but the orange juice was a huge victory. As I made my way home from the market, I was stopped by someone. They said my bike was being held in the market. I had no idea why. I didn't take my bike this morning, so I was totally in the dark.

Turns out that all bikes need to be registered, at the cost of 170 Meticais per bike. Really? A year and a half into my stay here, and we are being told now that we have to pay for this. I was a little shocked. I wasn't particularly pissed off by the fact that I'd have to pay the 170 Mets -- a cool 6 dollars. It's just that I know this money is not going to be used for developing the area; it would just wind up in someone's pocket. I tried to get out of paying, but he was having none of it. I told him I didn't have the money, and I'd return in 20 minutes to resolve it.

Before I returned to the market, I asked one of the teachers what the situation was with the bike registration. If I was shocked, he was incredulous. "You don't have to pay! You're Peace Corps!" I tried to weasel my way out of paying, but he was going to make sure it happened. So we went over there and calmly, and then a little loudly, explained the situation. We explained that I was on a tight salary (true), that we hadn't been told about the bike registration (true), and that the bike was given to us by Peace Corps (not true, but they reimbursed us for our purchase). The guy called his boss, and he let us off the hook. He had one more question for us, a last-ditch effort to get the cash, probably to line his pocket. "What if the bike is stolen? We'll have no way to know it's gone." I could have gone the abrasive route and said "Well, given your history of catching thieves in the past, it wouldn't matter if our bike were registered". Instead, I went for funny: "If our bike is stolen, we'll go to the witch-doctor, and it will be back the next day". Keep in mind that Machanga is one of the curandeiro capitals of this country. The truth is that if our bike were stolen, we would go to the witch-doctor, and it probably would be returned. Everyone got a good laugh out of it, and we were off the hook for paying.

Buoyed by this victory, I rode the momentum for the entire afternoon. Following lunch, I wanted to be productive. I don't think I could handle another day of sitting around mindlessly. While Richie was in the classroom, I washed the dishes alone for the first time in a while. Richie had wanted to build a drying table for our dishes. This was definitely my sort of thing. I like building, I'm good with that kind of stuff. So I got to work. For an hour, a threw around a hoe, making space for the legs of the table. I cut the tree branches to reasonable size, then laid a piece of aluminum siding over the legs. Just like that, instant drying table.

I rewarded myself by watching a soccer game here. It was Machanga vs. Mambone. Mambone played a really good first half. Machanga came back in the second half and by my count had seven quality chances to score. Finally, with ten minutes to play, Machanga cashed in. They held on for dear life for the last ten minutes, anchored by the goalie who made two excellent saves from close range. It was probably the best soccer game I've seen here.

I had a little bit of time between the end of the game and the arrival of electricity. I prepared our chicken and left it to Richie to cook. Once the energy came on, I had to go over to the director's office to do some computer work. I went over with one request for help, but one quickly turned into four. It always seems to work out that way, and it's fine by me. I'd rather go once and do four things than do one thing for times. By the time I got back, the chicken was finished and the rice was just about done. Our evening's entertainment was "Still Waiting", the sequel to "Waiting". I got a good laugh out of the original, but seeing as I hadn't even heard of the sequel, I didn't have high hopes. I figured it was a straight-to-DVD kind of thing. And I was right. It was a pretty terrible movie.

Right before going to sleep Monday night, our math teacher colleague came over needing some help with an exam. He wanted a single page typed up, which is no problem at all. I know that these tests -- with fractions and superscripts and whatnot -- are a lot more difficult to format than say, a history exam. Either way, one of my priorities for this trimester is to teach a bunch of classes on how to format math and science exams.

My Tuesday began by typing up this test. What would have taken me an hour last year took me about fifteen minutes to do today. Just as it takes some time to get accustomed to speaking a language, I guess it also takes some time to learn to type it. Even though it is still just fingers hitting letters, I think there's a mental aspect to it. In English, you don't expect to follow an "a" with an "o". These days, though, that's completely normal.

Typing up that exam got my day rolling quickly. I had some lesson planning to do for my own classes and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. The students seemed to kind of enjoy the lesson on prefixes from last week, so I figured I'd continue there. We have tons of prefixes in English, so it was a matter of choosing some that have good parallels to Portuguese. I ended up using "co-", "inter-", "de-" and "re-", each of which is exactly the same in Portuguese (except for de-, which is des- in Portugues).

The class itself went okay. It's a boring lesson because I am just spitting information at them and they are writing it down. But the good students -- the ones like to pass the National Exam in November -- got it figured out. As others were copying, they would shyly ask me to come over and look at a word to see if it worked in English, and most of the time, they did. I think that's all I really want out of my students: to have their minds working just a little bit harder than they would have been otherwise.

If the afternoon was slow, the evening was anything but. I got roped into doing some computer work. The physics teacher who wrote up the exam by himself needed his documents printed. It always starts like this: one person makes a request, and three others roll in. It's all good. I know that all this computer stuff is really difficult for them. I guess that's what were here for.

There is some very good news coming out of Machanga which really made our night. I don't know if you're prepared for this. This is such a tiny thing, it's almost pathetic that it qualifies as news. After months of not being sold here, Mambone bread is back in Machanga! Having good bread back in town meant we could reward ourselves with pizzas. And man, they were delicious.

Tonight, we watched "Zombieland". I don't know when or why zombies and other forms of the undead became big again. I guess things happen when you're in Peace Corps. Anyways, these movies are never really my cup of tea, but "Zombieland" was unexpectedly funny. Props to whoever figured that one out.

I was back to not sleeping on Tuesday night. Having taken my Larium the day before, I knew I was in for something. Usually I get the crazy dreams, but tonight, I got the paranoia/racing mind. It has only happened two or three times over my entire stay, but when it happens, it's not fun. I was up passed midnight with my mind running in circles. Pleasant, huh?

Wednesday was Richie's birthday, and following his first class, he was faced with a philosophical/ethical question: should he cancel class for the rest of the day? The answer was clear to me. Of course he should cancel class. Nobody should have to work on a birthday. He wavered at first, but when he realized that a car was leaving for Mangunde -- his destination for the weekend -- his answer was crystal clear. He threw his notes aside, packed a bag, and was gone by 9:30, leaving me all alone for the rest of the week.

I was in for a boring day all alone. I didn't have class until way late in the afternoon. I still had to lesson plan, but that usually doesn't take more than 15 or 20 minutes. This day might kill me.

My students, however, spared me today. One of them came over right at the beginning of first period, telling me that they had no one in the classroom and they wanted to get our lesson overwith. Nice. I had to write some stuff on big paper, so I wouldn't have to write it twice on back to back days, so I arrived in the classroom starting second period. This is much better than having to wait until 4:00. Even though I'm doing the same amount of nothing, the monotony will be broken up a bit.

For my class today, I had my students do some busy work. It was productive busy work, maybe a little mind-numbing for them, but they need the practice. The National Exam has a section of multiple choice fill-in-the-blank. I gave one of these sections to my students for their first trimester final and all of them failed miserably. I'm committing this trimester to having them do well on this section. So the class for me was boring -- a lot of watching my students copy stuff down -- but when a lot of them were getting 7 or 8 or 9 out of 10 correct, I was pretty happy.

The rest of my afternoon was committed to mastering four-suited Spider Solitaire. I've played this game plenty before and two-suited is way to boring. When I played years ago, I was winning around 20% of the games. I'd like to get back to that level, but right now, I'm only at 18%. I need one good winning streak...

With Richie gone, I was left to cook for myself. Beans were on the menu for the night, and as long as I was cooking for one, I wanted to cook plenty of food so I wouldn't have to cook again tomorrow for lunch. I cooked the regular amount of beans I normally cook, but stashed half for tomorrow. And since Richie wasn't here, I held off on entertainment. I continued to get my ass handed to me at Spider Solitaire until the lights went out.

Thursday did not start well. Larium hit me again, this time with a nightmare. At some point in the dream, someone crushed my face with stone. Nice, eh? And shortly after waking up, I received a flurry of text messages from my brother. Apparently, the nine-hour time difference is still fucking with him. He claims that it's a 24-hour world. That may be so, but Machanga isn't part of that world. We work sunrise to sunset, and anything after sunset is fortunate.

The morning was even slower than Wednesday was. It didn't help that I was tired for a poor night's sleep. It was slow enough that I had to run to the market, even though I needed almost nothing, just to keep my sanity. That knocked off a good portion of the morning. I didn't have to lesson plan since I was giving the same lesson to a different class. Soon enough, though, it was time for lunch. With so much beans left over,I was happy that I didn't have to cook another meal. It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Class went about as I thought, maybe a little better. The science class is always smarter and harder-working, so I got out of class a little faster than I anticipated. I'd like to say I was productive the rest of the afternoon, but I wasn't. I was exhausted, but I couldn't bring myself to sleep. I know that if I nap, I'm done for the night. So I just lay there in bed, reading, until the energy came on.

I was particularly lazy about dinner tonight. I didn't want to cook anything special, so it was a night of spaghetti for me. Again, I was left without entertainment and frustrated by Spider Solitaire. I've come to realize that I'm very finicky about my games. If things are too easy, then I hate them because they're boring. And if things are too difficult, then I hate them because I can't complete them. But what I like about Spider Solitaire and Kakuro is that they are Goldilocks games for me. They strain me a lot, but I know I can win at least some of them. And whenever I win them, it feels like I accomplished something. If you hadn't figured it out already, my life is pathetic.

I've been much better about my sleeping habits recently. Following bad sleeping nights, I'm usually good for a mid-afternoon nap, which just makes it more difficult to sleep at night. Today, I resisted the nap and the resulting sleep was beautiful. I slept straight through from 10 at night until 8 in the morning. The cool weather helped a lot too.

Our math teacher colleague came over as soon as I was awake with a couple of math of exams he wanted typed. I really didn't want to waste my battery on typing exams that would take 45 minutes, so I instead went online. Then I got lucky. The energy was flipped on in the school, but not in the houses. I ran over to the school and dropped off my computer to be charged. It charged half way through before the lights went out, but it would be enough to type up the exams later.

Having the first class in the afternoon meant I had to lesson plan in the morning. I chose to continue my lessons on health with the topic of drugs and alcohol. This isn't like teaching drugs and alcohol in high school in America. Drugs aren't a huge problem here and most of my students are old enough to drink legally. It was more about giving them English vocabulary.

I had lunch right before class, just the usual eggs and potatoes. So why comment on it? It took me 18 months, but I finally learned that a single slice of Velveeta turns on omelet from above average to epic. It had to be a good afternoon after that. The classes went very well. For the first time in a while, I managed to fill the entire four hours of class. I was very happy with this, especially since the students seem to making some improvement. I gave them another National Exam practice and almost everyone did better on Friday's round.

The work continued after class. I banged out the exams the math teacher wanted. It was fourteen total questions and four of the questions on one test went right over to the other. It was a piece of cake. And then when the energy came on, the work increased. One of our pedagogical directors wanted to swap out laptops. He's had trouble with his since the first day -- a mouse issue, of all things -- and I finally got him a new one. Thankfully, he didn't have that many documents to transfer. And just when I thought he was all set up, there was another problem -- his charger wasn't working. I had forgotten about this charger. It was the reason I had my parents bring a new one. After getting his computer all set up, we realized it didn't have a sound card. Well, fuck. I gave up for the night. We'll deal with the sound card issue later.
lesson planning -- drugs and booze.

Sozinho wanted to have beans tonight, which was fine by me. He had been cooking the beans for most of the afternoon and I think he was expecting to cook the beans how he wanted to. I know better, though. His beans are fuckin awful. As soon as the beans were cooked through, I took over the operation. It was an excellent decision. My beans were delicious. His, almost certainly, would have been awful.

It has been a long time since I've gone into town for drinks. All of our drinking this year has been at the school or out of town. Ussene, or top drinking buddy, was feeling it too. He hasn't gone into town for a while either. We had to put an end to this. We were both on the tired side, so we stayed out for two drinks and returned. I had a travel day to worry about and I was going to be doing plenty of drinking over the weekend.

I slept well all the way until 4:00. I woke up feeling alive, feeling ready to move, but the boats wouldn't be leaving for at least another hour. Therefore, I had to sleep for at least another hour. You don't need to tell me twice to sleep.

I was on the road by 6:15, committed to getting to Inhassoro before 11. Once I crossed the river, my stomach started hurting. A lot. This could be a long ride. A Volunteer from Zambia once told me that maybe half of the Volunteers there crap their pants at some point. I did not want to become a part of this fraternity. When we got to Maluvane, I shuffled my way from the car to the nearest whole in the ground.

Relieved in every sense of the word, the rest of the ride was a piece of cake. On the last leg of the ride, we almost got rear-ended, but the car blowing by us had the good sense to go by us instead of through us.

Aside from the gorgeous ocean and wide beach, one of the beautiful parts of Inhassoro is is has an awesome internet cafe. It is by far the best internet in the area. Yes, the internet in Vilanculos is nice, but that is due to its convenience. The internet in Inhassoro is lightning fast. America fast. Of course, I had to take advantage of it. I sat in that cafe -- air conditioned, by the way -- for two hours. It was more expensive than other internet cafes, but every Metical was worth it.

Around noon, I walked over to the Volunteers' house, nicely located right across the street. I wasn't particularly hungry. The beans from last night and the bread from the morning kept me pretty full. We made a move to go to the beach. As we walked down, five other Volunteers rolled into town. We turned around so they could drop their stuff off and from there, headed to the ocean.

It was a beautiful beach day. It wasn't scalding hot and there was enough cloud cover to keep us from burning. The ocean, however, was too cold for a swim. Still, we all had a good time. And when the tied rolled in, we walked upstairs to the nearest bar.

The drinking began then, continuing all the way through the night. We went out for dinner to a restaurant near by to celebrate a Volunteer's birthday. One of the other Volunteers made a cake, and I provided the frosting for it. We didn't even bother with forks. The cake was slapped onto plates and eaten by hand. It was delicious. From there, we continued drinking at another bar. By the time we got out there, I was wiped. Between waking up at 4, traveling, and only eating one meal, I was done.

Still, we managed to stay out till 3 in the morning.