Year 2 - Week 33: The March of "Times"

By Sunday morning, just about everybody had found there way out of the school. The whole town, for that matter, was shockingly quiet. There wasn't much music blaring, no school bells ringing, no kids screaming at the top of their lungs in spite of their proximity to each other. We would make our way out soon enough too. There were some things to be done around the house before we could enjoy our last vacation here.

For one, we needed our laundry done. I can't speak for Richie, but I'm going to be gone for at least ten days, and I was running low on clean clothing. Sozinho did his work at a reasonable hour this morning, which was a welcome change from last week's disaster. I had my own clothing work to do. I came here with two pairs of jeans and each have taken a beating. It's gotten to the point that I'm now using one pair of jeans as a junkyard in an effort to salvage the other pair. The saveable pair had a Texas-sized hole in one of the knees. I cut out a slightly bigger square from the other pair and sewed it in. The way Sozinho abuses our clothes when he washes them, I'm sure they won't hold up for that long.

That little project took up most of my morning. Richie, in the meantime, went to the villa to pick up some food items for the day. He then decided that we were going to eliminate as much food as possible today. We had so many potato pancakes between us that we both felt pretty sick after finishing. Richie noted that usually our stomachs hurt from feeling hungry. This was a rare moment when we hurt from being too full.

After lunch, I went about cleaning my room. I don't mean just a casual picking up of things. This was a full on scrubbing. There are few things worse than coming home to a filthy room. I organized my things, threw out a ton of unnecessary stuff, swept and mopped. The worst part is by the time I come back from my trip, it will be blanketed in dust again. At least there won't be that much cleaning to do.

We continued our demolition of food in our house at dinner. We knocked off the last couple of chicken breasts that we bought last month in Vilanculos. Fake chicken parmesan has moved very high on the list, quite possibly to the top, of our favorite dinners. With the extra tomato sauce we made a couple Mambone bread pizzas. If nothing else, this day was a culinary victory.

Our nightly entertainment consisted of "Burn After Reading". It was a strange and strangely funny film. We both particularly enjoyed Brad Pitt's role as a gym trainer half his age. His roll was only made better when he was shot in the head by George Clooney. We did not see that coming. Within seconds of the film ending, my parents called. We talked for a little bit before I drifted off to sleep.

Richie and I were up and at it around 6:00, ready for the travel battle ahead on Monday. We left the house around 6:30 and made our way to Mambone. The day started well. We didn't have any wait time at the river or in Mambone. That was the end of our luck. The car we got to Maluvane was a pick-up drunk. Richie and I eventually made it, along with seventeen other people. Even this far into my time here, I'm still shocked at how many people can fit into the back of a truck.

I'm shocked even more by how much of that shit people are willing to tolerate. We didn't have to wait long for the next truck at Maluvane. As we waited, more and more people piled into the truck. We were packed in like goats. And as we went down the road, more people yet piled in. Fifteen minutes into the ride, Richie and I had had enough. We got out of the car and told the driver that we didn't want to die today. Another fifteen minutes passed before we got another truck, which actually was packed with goats. It was heading to the crossroads just outside of Vilanculos, the price was less than it should have been, and we felt considerably safer, so we were content with our decision to abandon the other car.

We arrived in town and fell into our normal routine. Or so we thought. As we made our way over to our regular backpackers place, a very enthusiastic Canadian told us that we should go to another place. We weren't completely convinced, until she told us that for just twenty-five more Meticais than we would have paid, we got our own room instead of a dorm and breakfast was included. I think breakfast was the main selling point. We said "what the hell" and gave it a shot.

After dropping our bags at our new place, we did all the things we usually do in Vilanculos. Our first stop was pizza. It's the first time we've had real pizza since coming down for World Cup at the beginning of June, and yes, it was just as good as we remember it. Then the great shopping fest began. We killed off a good thousand Meticais in just under an hour. And there would be more to do later. I failed to find a couple things, as did Richie. We remembered our credo "if at first you don't succeed, give up" and went back to the hotel to relax until dinner.

Dinner was way beyond our expectations. For a mere hundred Meticais, we got plate after plate of rice, chicken, beans and seafood (which I passed off to Richie). It wasn't just the quantity that did it: the quality was pretty good too. I thought I was full last night, but tonight outdid it by a landslide.

I woke up Tuesday morning still full from dinner, a truly amazing feeling. That set up a wonderfully lazy day. I went over to our regular backpackers place because the have hammocks, looking forward to a lovely day of reading "The Three Musketeers". Within thirty minutes, I was lulled to sleep, only to be awakened by a text message from Richie a couple hours later.

There was much to do in the afternoon. A had to get a shirt altered by my tailor. A couple months ago, we made me a couple shirts. I told him cut them a little big, figuring that I would fill them out when I returned to America. He clearly did not hear me say "a little" because I could fit a second me into the shirt. While he worked on the shirt, Richie and I had some business to take care of in town.

Richie was on the hunt for flashlight light bulbs for a student's science fair project. I was looking for power adapters for a couple teachers. A laptop is pretty worthless if it can't be recharged. After failing in three places yesterday, I succeeded at the first store today. That's when the fun began. The price the salesman told me was almost double what it was three months ago. I understand that the value of the Metical keeps slipping, but it's not falling that fast. This isn't Zimbabwe, where currency devalues so quickly, it has an expiration date. So I considered this price the opening salvo in a war and I was not going to lose. The man wanted 120 Mets for an adapter. I returned with an offer of 200 for three of them. He dropped his price, bit by bit, but I stuck with my offer. He finally agreed. And after the exchange of money for goods was made, he had the audacity to ask for more money. I laughed in his face and walked away. Point: Muzungu.
Year 2 - Week 33: The March of Times

That was the first of two wins on this day. The other item that we bought had a set price, but it's still a huge win for us. We purchased an electric kettle. It may seem crazy that we're buying new items with just over 100 days left to go here, but this is a worthwhile luxury. Instead of lighting up carvao or putting a kettle on our stove for ten or fifteen minutes, we can plug in our kettle and have two liters of boiling water in less than five minutes. Yes, it cost 350 Meticais, but we boil water often enough that we'll make up that money in our energy bill quite quickly. And it will be a nice thing for the next Volunteers in our house to have.

With the successful day in the market behind us, I chilled at our hotel and read "The Three Musketeers". It's not as good as "The Count of Monte Cristo", but it's still a pretty smooth read. By the end of the afternoon, I had finished about forty percent of it. I should have it knocked out in the next couple days.

Instead of sticking with good, cheap food at our hotel, we met up with some other Volunteers at a different restaurant. The food at this other place was slightly cheaper, but not nearly as good. I guess the company made up for the loss in quality. We got a ride back to the hotel from some people who had dinner with us, had a nightcap, and went to bed.

Or at least we tried. There was so much noise throughout the night that we struggled to get any sleep. Regardless, we had planned to leave anyway on Wednesday. Richie decided to head back home for a couple days before heading back to Inhassoro. I decided to stick around Vil, but save some money by staying around with a Volunteer here.

My decision to do so looked better and better by the minute. The father and sister of a Volunteer here are visiting and they brought all the same goodies my family brought in December, except more recent. They brought a hard drive full of music and a glorious bounty of magazines. There were three month's worth of Time magazines, including one from -- no joke -- July 26th. I did a double-take when I saw the date. News that was actually news? Unheard of. That was enough reason for me to stay. I spent the afternoon engrossed.

Having bypassed lunch, I decided to indulge on dinner. I went out with another Volunteer and her family. I had no issue paying -- I fully expected to, quite honestly. But then I rolled out the booze. The Volunteer's father and I split a bottle of rum. Three-quarters of the way throught the bottle, the waiter told us that we had to pay a "corkage" of 175 Meticais on my fifty Met bottle of rum. I argued my way out of that one. Another point for me. And when we knocked out that bottle, the double Captain and Cokes started coming. By the end of the night, my food and drink was covered - and the father and I were tanked.

Considering I only got four hours of sleep, I was feeling pretty good on Thursday. I was definitely not hung over, although I can't say the same for my drinking partner. He claimed to be fine when he walked out around 8 in the morning, but he promptly found his way to sleep for another couple hours.

The whole day was pretty lazy. Though I didn't go back to sleep, or even nap later in the afternoon, I did spend most of the day horizontal with a couple of Time magazines. I can't say that many of the stories stuck. I was going through the magazines so quickly that the material usually left as soon as I read it. But three articles that really stood out to me were an article on adopting Russian children; one on the fiftieth anniversary of The Pill; and the new tech-savvy generation of poker players.

In the dead heat of the afternoon, I made a run to the supermarket - yes, the supermarket - to buy some dinner. One of the Volunteers and I decided we were going to do spaghetti and meatballs. I know, spaghetti is old and boring, but meatballs are a new adventure here and I might as well take advantage of the opportunity to buy ground beef.

Just after getting back, one of the Vil Volunteers and her family decided that they were going to have pizza for dinner. They invited me along. Telling them "no, I'm committing to making spaghetti and meatballs" like a thousand stabs to the stomach. Turning down pizza for spaghetti. It makes me sick thinking about it.

When another Volunteer from close to Xai Xai came into town, us non-pizza eaters got started on dinner. We diced, chopped, boiled and baked our way to a pretty tasty dinner. The deliciousness of the meatballs helped me get past the lack of pizza. After eating, the three of us watched "Invictus". Richie and I started watching this movie a couple months ago, but the DVD we bought in Vil cut off short of the first hour. It was lovely to see the second half of the movie. Morgan Freeman did an incredible job as Mandela.

Friday would be my last day in Vilanculos. I made a couple of calls to arrange my weekend stay in Inhassoro. It was time to leave. The only thing really keeping me in Vil was the pile of Time magazines. I made myself anti-social and read for most of the morning and into the early afternoon. In three days, I think I made my way through nine Time magazines cover to cover.

By mid-afternoon, I was starting to get antsy. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one. While I was reading, other people in the house were watching "Glee" and "How I Met Your Mother". I think we all reached our breaking point around the same time. I proposed that we play Phase 10, a pretty good card game that can take up a lot of time. The game went long enough that we didn't finish it by the dinner time.

We took the cards to dinner with us and still did not finish before our food came out. The father of the Vil Volunteer treated us to burgers, which was very kind. This little restaurant opened up literally across the street from their school. Talk about convenience. And the burger was pretty tasty - definitely better than the burgers that Richie and I get on the other side of town.

Everybody was on the move Saturday morning. One of the Vil Volunteers is training for a marathon, so she went out for a three hour run. The other girl and her family were going out to the islands for snorkeling. And I was on my way to Inhassoro. I picked up some cash - always an interesting event - before heading out. People here seriously struggle to use ATMs here. I think it's a combination of the technology and a lack of Portuguese vocabulary. I had four people in front of me. In America, I would have waited, I don't know, ten minutes at most. I waited twenty-five minutes before I got to the machine. It was frustrating, sure, but I was in no rush to get to Inhassoro.

Even so, I was still in Inhassoro by 10 o'clock. The chapa that I got in never filled up completely and only stopped twice along the way. This was my kind of chapa. The Volunteer with whom I was staying wasn't at home, so I went across the street to the high-speed internet cafe to update my anti-virus, check my email, and catch up on the sports world. By 11, the Volunteer still wasn't back, so I read some "Three Musketeers" until she arrived.

She was as hungry as I when she arrived, so we headed to the market to forage for food. We bought some items for dinner and went to a little restaurant for egg sandwiches. By coincidence, the Portuguese people who came to Machanga a couple weeks ago were in Inhassoro as well. They sat with us for a little bit before we made our way back to the Volunteer's house.

The rest of the afternoon was calm. Someone came over asking for help writing a grant. The Volunteer helped this kid write it out while I messed around on the computer and read a book. By the time she was done with him, it was dinner time. It would be yet another spaghetti night. It's a good thing I like spaghetti. A third Volunteer came over with a bottle of wine. We ate, drank, and were merry, happy to be done with another week in Mozambique.