Year 2 - Week 31: The Blessing of the Shitty Road

Anticipation was the word of the day on Sunday. Everybody was anxious for the grand finale of the World Cup. But being in the same time zone as the game, we would have to wait until 8:30 at night to enjoy the game.

Aside from the beating drums and chanting voices coming from the church, Sunday morning was very quiet. The energy was out for a fair portion of the morning, meaning we didn't have to hear the pounding bass of Akon songs. It was a good environment for reading. I buried myself into the “Best American Non-required Reading” anthology. Last year's edition was so good, so I had high expectations for this year's. The stories started a little slow, but they've picked up. This collection of stories has confirmed what I already knew: given the choice between fiction and non-fiction, I will always take non-fiction.

The stories kept my mind occupied for the better part of the morning. I read right up until lunch. Following lunch, one of our best friends here wanted some help typing an exam. Since distributing the computers, this has been a request I've heard very few times, which is certainly a good thing. Teachers are starting to become more and more comfortable doing it themselves, which is exactly what should happen. This exam was a piece of cake. There was nothing fancy, like graphs or fractions. The pain in the ass, being a French exam, was all the accents. The other minor obstacle was that our friend insisted on reading the exam to me. If this were Portuguese, it would have been fine. But not even the French can spell French words, so I just read along with him.

When the energy came on in the school, we went over to the school to print his exam. I also had some business to take care of in the director's office. I needed my exam photocopied for my students and the students at the secondary school. I was prepared to let my friend photocopy his first. My exam was slated for Tuesday and his for Monday, so it only seemed fair to me that he should have the first crack at it. He didn't have money to make copies though.

We must pay to make copies, even on school business, which for the most part is okay by me. I had griped about this earlier in the year, but things have actually changed a bit. On the padre's insistence, the school dropped the price from five Meticais to two, making things far easier on the students. I still feel bad about making them pay, so I pay for the midterms and have them pay for the finals. Other teachers have them pay for every exam. The way they do this, though, is interesting to me. They have the students collect the money, then pay for the copies. I, on the other hand, front the money and have the students pay me later. I think the teachers don't trust the students to pay them later. By my count, I lost a whole ten Meticais on this exam. If I can afford that hit, anyone here can afford it.

Richie and Sozinho ate fish for dinner, leaving me alone to eat spaghetti. I really didn't want to make tomato sauce for the hundredth time. It's getting a bit old. So I went a different route: pesto sauce. It's the second time I've tried to make pesto and this time was far superior. Cashews and Parmesan cheese make a huge difference. And it's so easy to make. I never have reason to by pesto sauce again.

Around 8:00, Richie and I headed over to the house with the good television. We were far from the only ones. More and more people started to pack into the house before the game started. The temperature in the house rose noticeable. Ten minutes before the game, we were packed into the house like sardines when someone had a brilliant idea: move the television outside.

A good thirty of us Spain and Holland play under the moonless sky. There are no shortage of adjectives to describe this game, but the two that stand out to me are rough and boring. Thank goodness that the people on television keep track of the yellow cards, because I lost count. Both of these teams were so good in the middle that they canceled each other out for the most part. The good chances were few and far between, but the good chances were really good. The goaltenders were the show-stoppers, in every sense of the word. It took extra time, but finally, thankfully, with four minutes left in extra time, Spain hit the back of the net. I was thrilled, not so much for the Spanish victory – I didn't care either way: I was just happy that the game didn't go to penalties. To me, ending a game in a shootout is like determining a baseball game with a home run derby or a basketball game with a three-point competition. I say play to the death. Tonight, we were lucky that we got a winner before penalties.

There seemed to be a bit of let down here on Monday following the World Cup. Even though Machanga is not all that close to South Africa, the sense that something big had ended was palpable. Nobody was really talking football anymore. The games were over. Spain had won and that was that. It was a great tournament. There was a lot of doubt about whether South Africa could pull it off, but they really did a phenomenal job.

I had a little bit of work to take care of Monday morning. A history teacher asked me to type up an exam for him. I was a little surprised because the exam only had five questions. That's the kind of exam you write on the blackboard or on giant paper. Whatever. Not my exam, not my students, not my money, not my problem. After finishing that ten minutes of work, I went right back into “Best American” until lunch.

Today was the unofficial beginning of final exams week. Finals week is scheduled for next week, but next week is when teachers will be returning exams and calculating grades. If they would get on this Excel train with me, they could cut down their work by a whole lot. Then again, there's not a whole lot to do in Machanga, so maybe the enjoy the mind-numbing activity of calculating averages.

I had some serious cleaning to do in the afternoon. I've been on the negligent side with my room this past week. I'm sure my parents aren't shocked by this, but the truth is I have to keep my room here clean. There's so little space here that every square foot is precious. Besides cleaning my room, I had to clean up myself. I was in dire need of a haircut and shave. The goatee I've been growing the entire year stayed (sorry, Sach), but everything else was nice and tidy. I felt a lot better afterward.

For the first time in a month, we didn't have a soccer game to fall back on for entertainment. After dinner, we watched “Changeling”, which was pretty good. The movie came up in the one of the stories in “Best American”, so we thought it was worth of a shot. The movie was well done. It's hard to go wrong with Clint Eastwood.

Tuesday was the big day for students of the muzungus. Richie's students began taking exams yesterday and continued this morning. It would be interesting to see how these kids do relative to yesterday's. Richie's students have a tendency to give each other the answers in between classes, but Richie, being crafty, changed some of the questions. He roped me into controlling one of his classes and to my surprise, they were actually quite good. I only had to move one kid during the test and everyone finished well before the end of the class, meaning there wasn't any cheating at the last moment, when kids normally scramble to get their papers in.

Richie dutifully started correcting papers as soon as he got home. The results showed that an exchange of information was made overnight. The kids from Monday passed at an 85% clip; the kids from today passed at a 33% rate. It's not like his questions were difficult. The kids were just lazy. They'll figure it out eventually. Maybe. Hopefully.

I finished up the “Best American” stories before lunch. It seemed like the best stories were in the back, which I found a little odd. Someone with less time than me might have given up on it.

After lunch, it was my turn to give exams. For the first time, I decided to give the exams to both classes at the same time. There would be no exchange of information, as tends to happen even with my students. Since I proctored for Richie, he proctored for me. I warned him about which students to keep an eye on, and as if on cue, he had to move one of them. Otherwise, the test went very smoothly, from my point of view anyway.

The students' feelings of the test were to be determined. Walking out, a lot of the students felt like they did okay. No one felt they did great, no one felt that the test was overwhelming. I got right to it and saw for myself. The first class was, well, dominated. Thirty-three percent passed the exam, the average score being under fifty percent. I couldn't handle doing the second class right away.

Both of us frustrated, Richie and I walked to the villa to get a soda. Since the weather turned cold, our trips to the market for a soda have been drastically reduced. We don't feel swallowed by dehydration and we've generally slept better these months. It's why we love winter here. This market run was just to clear our heads.

While at the market, we were able to buy some bell pepper, a truly vital ingredient to both our food and our happiness. Dinner followed shortly after our market run. I cooked up a pretty tasty stir fry. I used enough soy sauce to make the house smell like a Benihana. It didn't taste as good, but it was good enough. Exhausted from a frustrating day of exams, we called it a night shortly after dinner.

I woke up Wednesday slightly hopeful and pragmatic. I hoped that the other class would do better tha the first one. I figured that they couldn't do much worse. More importantly, this second group was the languages group. In theory, they should dominate the science kids, but the science group has proved me wrong time and time again. While I figured that they couldn't do much worse, I also figured that they couldn't do much better. In the end, they split the difference: the science kids had a slightly higher but not statistically relevant average score, but the letters kids had a slightly higher but passing rate. All said, the classes were even.

How well the students did depends on the scale by which they and I choose to measure. During the school year, the kids need ten out of twenty marks to pass a test or a class. By that scale, a nuclear bomb would have done less damage than this exam did. Overall, a whopping 36 percent passed. The highest score was a fifteen and the lowest was a three. Just for fun, I wanted to see how students would do if they had chosen A-B-C-D over and over again. Four of my ninety students would have improved their scores if they had done so. That fact alone made me join Richie on the search for the nearest bridge. It's a good thing that the bridge that crosses the Rio Save is three hours and sixty kilometers down a shitty dirt road.

On the other hand, students need to earn seven and a half points on the National Exam to pass. Using this scale, 75 percent of the letters students and 85 percent of the science students would have passed. If this is the silver lining to the cloud, it's a very bold lining. Compared to last year's National Exam scores, the kids are doing much better this year. Last year, 20 percent scored ten our higher and less than 50 percent passed with a 7.5. There may yet be hope for these kids.

With that piece of good news, things were a little better Wednesday afternoon. Things got even better when we received a couple of packages from home. And then, as if someone knew we were riding too high, our eleventh-grader neighbor decided to tear me down. He heard that one of the student helpers here earned a measly seven on the exam and figured he could do better. He then proceeded to take the exam. Not only did he defeat said student: he also managed to do better than all but two of my twelfth graders. He earned – and I mean earned – a fourteen. Time to find that bridge.

For a change, Richie, Sozinho, and I all agreed on our meal for the night: beans. Sozinho thinks he's special and wants to cook his own beans. I no longer take offense to this. I see it as more good beans for Richie and me. Just to spite him, I threw some chicken breast into out beans. Victories are small, even petty, here so I take them where I can get them.

While in Chimoio, Richie purchased “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” the new(ish) series on Starz. We figured that gladiators always make for good television. We watched two episodes and were split. Of course we loved the blood and guts and gratuitous female nudity, but we thought they went a little too “300” on the whole show. Way too much slow motion.

I had planned on making a run to the market on Thursday morning. But minutes before I was about to walk out the door, we got a text from Alexis. She was back in town for the day to show her bosses around and wanted to say goodbye. We didn't have the opportunity to say goodbye to her when she left for Beira a couple weeks ago, so it was nice to have this second chance. She wanted to meet around 11, which gave me a couple hours to do some reading. After months of not reading it, I jumped back into “Someone Knows My Name”. I found my place and sat on the patio glued to the book. Yes, it's a piece of fiction writing, but it's steeped in a whole lot of history, so I'm okay with it.

We spent about an hour in the villa with Alexis and her boss's two daughters. As I said a couple of weeks ago, it's a little difficult to see people leave, especially those who arrived after us. It's especially difficult in the case of Alexis because outside of her and and the Volunteers who were here before us, no one really understands this place, including the Volunteers from Mambone.

We returned home just after noon. There was no rush to jump into lunch. Neither of us had class today and we had plenty of beans left over from last night. We threw those on the stove for a couple minutes, cooked up some rice, and feasted.

One of our colleagues came over early in the afternoon with a worse-than-average box of wine. He doesn't have any classes on Thursday and Richie is normally done on Thursdays by 9:30. I would normally have class now, but since I've given my final, I'm not obligated to go into class. We sat around for a while, knocking off that box of wine. They wanted to go to the villa; I wasn't really up for it. We just came back from the villa and I didn't want to walk all the way back there just to do something I could do here. I stuck around, wanting to read and work on the electricity in our colleague's house.

A lot of the houses here have been having trouble with their lights since receiving twenty-four hour electricity. This included our house. I did a very American thing when this happened: recognized the problem, sought a solution, and fixed it. My colleagues, however, have chosen a different route: recognize the problem, do nothing about it, and light candles at night. This, to me, is kind of like doing grades by hand even though we have Excel. We have the technology, it can make life easier, but they are just a little slow to embrace technology, even if the technology is 150 years old.

As such, I have made it my mission to show them that there is a better option. I wanted to rewire my colleague's house, but there was no electricity in the afternoon. It's been touch-and-go the last week or so. We've had at least one big power outage every day and today's was the biggest of all. Power was down from around 1:00 until 7:00. All of that time with only three hours of energy per day had us well prepared for this. I sat down with my book and read until there was no more sunlight.

Richie was still in the villa around dinner time, so I went on and had dinner without him. He was planning to eat fish anyway, so I was okay cooking for myself. Having not eaten potatoes and eggs for lunch, it became my dinner. With the lights on, I continued reading until Richie came back. He returned around 9:00, drunk, ate his fish, and passed out. I stayed up reading a little more before going to sleep.

Friday morning did not treat Richie well at all. Quite frankly, he looked miserably. There was a lot of win consumed last night, apparently, and I was glad I didn't take part in it. Our colleague who went out with him looked surprisingly unfazed. For me, the morning was quiet. All of the action for me would be in the afternoon. With all my exams corrected and entered into the computer, the only things left for me to do were writing up an answer guide and handing back the exams. The first I did before lunch; the second would have to wait a little.

Before I could take care of my own stuff, one of our friends asked us to proctor an exam for him. It's not a thrilling activity, but it would take up a couple hours.

Immediately following their biology exam, I went into my classes to return my exams. The consensus was clear: the test was hard. Really hard. I didn't need them to tell me that: I could see it in the numbers. And they didn't need for me to read the numbers. They knew that they got killed. But this is their future in a mere four months and I'll be damned if I don't have them as prepared as possible.

The second class – the one I watched during the biology exam – had even more issues with me. “Controlou muito!” they said. I don't know what they were expecting. I watch them like a hawk during my exams. Did they think I would just play games on my phone for their biology test? Of course not. If anything, I almost feel obligated to watch them even closer.

After finishing up my school responsibilities, Richie and I ran to the market looking for nothing in particular. On the way, we realized we hadn't had beef in a while and should see if it was in the market. Success! With a kilo of delicious beef, we went with cheesesteaks and fries, always a winning dinner.

Nightly entertainment went later than usual for me, but not for Richie. We watched a couple episodes of “Spartacus”, which were better than the first two. For one, they cut down on the slow motion. More importantly, though, there was a ton of hand-to-hand combat in the last couple episodes, which was awesome. Richie went to bed after the two episodes. I, on the other hand, stayed up until about midnight finishing “Someone Knows My Name”. I was too close not to finish.

The other factor in keeping me awake was a strange feeling of homesickness. The last time I was homesick here was the third week of training. I remember it distinctly because it happens so rarely. I don't know why it hit tonight, but I couldn't help but think about home, my family and friends, my students in San Diego, all the people I want to see and things I want to do. For most of the night I was wrapped up in memories instead of sheets and blankets. The book proved to be a good distraction. Finally, I fell alseep.

Sozinho was gone for all of Saturday morning. We wouldn't mind this, except he failed to do any of the necessary cleaning in the house. This shit is getting old. He has so few responsibilities in this house that if he wanted to, he could be done with everything by 8:00. Instead, he chooses to be lazy or he goes off doing his own thing, and this pisses us off to no end.

There was no way I was going to do his work. And besides, I had my own work to do. My sweatpants were in dire need of some repairs. It's not that they were particularly damaged. Everything was in tact, but they were about six inches too long. I was sick and tired of dragging them in the dirt, so I spent a couple hours sewing them up. I kept the work momentum going by prepping for lunch. After that, things came to an immediate halt. I prepped, so cooking duties fell to Richie.


After lunch, I was called over by a couple colleagues to do some work in their house. They wanted me to change all the light fixtures in their house. I grabbed my Leatherman and a knife and went to work. They seemed happy to have a fully lit house. The also wanted me to fix their fridge, which was a far bigger challenge. I couldn't fix it perfectly, but what's important is that it shuts completely now. Maybe I'll get a free soda or two sometime down the road.

We made a late afternoon market run to kill some time. We didn't need anything urgently – everything could have waited until the morning – but as long as we were there, we knocked out some shopping.