A late night and a lot of work done appears to be the ticket for getting a good, uninterrupted sleep. Six solid hours of English theater work yesterday knocked me out but good, but I woke up Sunday morning refreshed and ready to have a relaxing day. Once Richie rolled out of his room, we finished watching "The Blind Side", one of the better films we've watched here.
We had the movie finished by 9:00, and that's just about when I realized that we were in dire need of a market run. Things here have become a little more active on Sundays. Now that energy has been fairly well established, shop-owners have realized that Sunday is just another day to make money.
All said, it was a very quiet day in Machanga. After all that work yesterday, I was happy to have a day to sit back, relax and read old "Newsweek" magazines. Most of the afternoon was spent between the patio and bed, reading "news" about the oil spill or Supreme Court nominations.
Richie made another run to the market in the afternoon. He went to take care of our dinner problem by buying meat. He appeared to have purchased a decent cut; there was no major fighting with it, a welcome surprise. I decided to cook it Mozambican/Sozinho style, in the tomato broth. Everything tasted just fine, but the meat was tough. Our high hopes were dashed in a single rubbery bite. Richie went to bed right after dinner. I stayed up to read for a little while longer before crashing.
The end of my weekend on Monday was shockingly productive, even though I did very little. Late in the morning, I made a run to the market to stock up on potatoes, onions, and eggs. Lunch quickly followed the market run.
After eating, I was sitting around for a bit reading when a colleague came by with some computer problems. He had typed up a physics exam for his students -- impressive since he's only had his computer for a couple months -- but needed to add some little graphs. These, admittedly, are tough. They do require a fairly intimate understanding of Word. He explained what he wanted and I threw them into his document in just a couple minutes.
Richie came back from his afternoon classes and both of us just sort of shook our heads. For a while now, Sozinho has been pissing us off. At first it was little things, but now we are simply annoyed. After washing dishes, he's not drying them off or putting anything back. I can't tell you how many times some of my food has tasted like dish soap. Today's action, or lack thereof, is what finally broke us. We put our laundry out on Saturday to be done. He blew it off yesterday and today, and since Richie was out of clean clothes, this created a bit of a problem. We decided he needed a talking-to.
It wasn't long before it was dinner - just a Newsweek or two away. I went over to our neighbor's house to pull out the remaining meat from his fridge. We made a stir-fry, which had the same problem as yesterday's meal. Once we finished, we decided it was time to talk to Sozinho. I calmly outlined exactly what we wanted everyday. Even though I was careful not to be an asshole about it, Sozinho still walked away like a dog with his tail between his legs.
I guess we could register it as a victory because right after that talk, he washed, dried, and arranged the dishes, then quietly left. In his absence, we watched a couple episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" before going to sleep.
Tuesday meant getting back to work, for everyone. Sozinho was over earlier than usual to sweep and mop because he had a busy day ahead of him. The longer he waited to wash clothes, the bigger the pile grew. The washing took up most of his morning.
I had my own things to do in the morning. I was prepared to cook beans tonight, which meant sorting and soaking. It's amazing how many little twigs, how many rocks, and how much dirt gets into a sack of beans. What's more amazing is that we haven't cracked any of our teeth on said rocks. After cleaning the beans, I went to the bigger project of my room. I rearranged some things, swept the floors and hands-down/ass-up Mozambican-style mopped the room.
Around lunch time, a very strange thing happened (and I don't mean our laundry being done): the skies gently split open and drizzled all over our clothing. Wonderful -- I guess our clothes won't be completely dry by the end of the afternoon. This bit of rain also thwarted my lunch efforts because we couldn't put the charcoal outside to get going. After a while, and a lot of fanning, the fire finally got going.
Full from lunch, I went over to school to give my classes for the day. Today's set of phrasal verbs were verbs with "give" and "drop". For the most part, these phrasal verbs are straight-forward. A couple of them, like drop out, required a little extra explanation, but the kids seemed to get it. I walked around class, checking on the students' work, when I saw that a couple smartasses had written a perfect and perfectly true sentence: "Mr. Lee does not give away points on the ACS (the midterm)". That is beautiful. Maybe it was just the first day that was especially difficult.
Riding a bit of a high after class and with some time on my hands, I decided to get a workout in. I figure that I'm never going to be this thin again and I've lost a ton of muscle in my time here. This is as good a time as ever to put it back on. Forty-five minutes later, I was sweaty, tired and in need of a shower and shave. I relit the charcoal from earlier, heated some water for my shower, then threw the beans on the stove to cook.
While the beans finished cooking, my parents called. A lot of the discussion centered around how quickly my time here is coming to an end. It's very funny how these conversations have changed over the course of almost two years. For a while, it was about planning their trip out here. Then, after their trip, we couldn't stop talking about the trip. And now, with less than 100 days to go, the conversation is about coming home. Crazy.
The beans came out wonderfully -- cooked thoroughly and the texture of the sauce was perfect. With our bellies full, we finished up season five of "How I Met Your Mother". There may be one more season that's already out, but I'm not sure. Still, it was cool to hear them drop "Avatar" into one of the scripts -- not because I'm a fan of the movie (haven't seen it actually) but because it came out while we were here, so it can't be that old.
Wednesday started with the sound of my alarm, a truly dreadful sound. I had to go to English around 8:30. The kids have had a couple days to read through the script. My counterpart had hoped that they would have the lines already memorized. I thought that was a little ambitious, but not entirely impossible. The day with the kids proved to be a lot more stressful than I had anticipated. At least three kids of the eight kids misunderstood their parts and went about changing line assignments. Frustrating? You bet, especially since they don't fully understand what the script says. Aside from having copies for everyone, one of the reasons I wantd to type up the script was to work out all of the kinks. In one fell swoop, these kids threw a couple wrenches into the machinery. After an hour, we finally had everything straightened out. So much for this day being productive.
My afternoon started out productive. I filled out some paperwork for Peace Corps, an always fun activity. At least I could do it with a smile on my face knowing that it would be the last set of paper work I'd have to complete. I also worked out and showered before going over to class. Even after showering, I still felt filthy. I understood why this time. The well that we usually use has been busted, so Sozinho has been using a different well. When I looked in the buckets, there was a distubing smog-colored tint. I'm supposed to use this water to get clean.
Neither of us had much luck in the afternoon. My class dealt with phrasal verbs with "cut". I can't honestly say that this class was as successful as the classes from last week. At least I made it through my class. Richie had four classes this afternoon. The first time, it tanked. The second time, it tanked and he realized it was worthless. So he just canceled the other two classes. "This shit's not important anyway". Ah, the advantage to teaching a non-National Exam year. There's only one solution to make a day like this better: cake. It's been a long time since we've had cake. After dinner, we busted out a box of Betty Crocker and had us some chocolate cake. It was as delicious as we remembered. We also started watching "Law Abiding Citizen", until my computer decided it wasn't going to work. Nice. It'll have to wait until tomorrow.
Richie had a pair of classes Thursday morning, but once he returned, we jumped back into the movie. It was everything we enjoy in a non-comedy, and by that, I mean lots of death. After a magazine or two, it was time to cook lunch.
I had the first class of the afternoon, a repeat of yesterday's class. This class was a little more cooperative in acting out some of the examples and as such, the class went much smoother than yesterday. Or maybe this class is just that much smarter than the other class. I came back from class feeling better than yesterday. No cake would be necessary today.
In the middle of the afternoon, a got an unexpected text message: a friend with whom I went to Ghana and who is now in Cameroon as a Volunteer, sent me an email. Even though we are on opposite sides of the continent, it seems like things are pretty much the same there. Same school issues, same gripes with the people in charge. He has one big advantage though -- he's in a biggish city, one that has restaurants. The coolest thing is one of those restaurants serves viper. Am I jealous? Absolutely.
It was every man for himself for dinner tonight. Richie didn't have any brilliant ideas when it came to dinner. All he was willing to do was eliminate rice, spaghetti, and xima as potential bases. Well, that's seventy-five percent of what's available. I was fine with rice, so I cooked up some stirfry. Richie did potatoes with something, and I think Sozinho just ate bread. Whatever. Richie, who is heading to Vil tomorrow, went to bed early. I stayed up replying to my buddy in Cameroon and reading a bit more of "All the King's Men" before crashing.
Richie was up and at it at 5 o'clock. I was up, but certainly not at it. I had to be up at 8:15 for English theater practice, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be on my feet a minute before. When the alarm finally went off, I felt refreshed and ready to go.
Friday's English theater practice could not have been more different than Wednesday's disaster. A couple of the kids had already memorized their lines. Things were looking good...until we timed the play. It turned out to be fourteen minutes, two minutes more than we have been allowed. A second over twelve minutes means disqualification. If these kids could just speak a little faster, know their lines a little better, then I thought it could be under twelve minutes. The second time they read through it was 11:22. Third time was 10:55. Satisfied with their work, my counterpart and I dismissed the students for the day.
I made myself some lunch before heading to school, hopeful that I could combine my classes again. For at least the second week in a row, the school director wasn't around, which meant I was free to join my classes together. Success! Today's lesson was on phrasal verbs with "go". There are so many phrasal verbs with "go" that teaching all of them, even over multiple lessons, would be impossible. I chose eight good ones and went from there. The results were pretty good. One kid wrote "I will go on to university and find a girlfriend because Machanga does not have good girls". Gotta love these kids sometimes.
I celebrated the end of the week with a brief nap before starting the charcoal for beans. I was resigned to eating something boring tonight, but Sozinho wanted to have beans, which I'm always happy to eat. With Richie gone, my only entertainment was the last chapter of "All the King's Men". Mercifully, this book came to an end. I'll give credit where credit is due: the last two chapters were better than the rest of book. That said, those chapters don't make up for the rest of the book.
For one reason or another, I could not fall asleep for the life of me. I almost popped a Benadryl to knock me out, but finally, around 1 in the morning, I finally fell asleep.
I've had plenty of good days in Mozambique and I've had a few really good days. But in almost two years here, I can't say that I've had a perfect day in Mozambique. Until Saturday. I was up and moving at 6:30, packed my backpack, and hit the the road at exactly 7:00. I walked to the river, where plenty of people of people were waiting to head to Mambone. Because of this, I had no wait time at the river. The twenty thirty minutes of waiting in Mambone was the only time I wasn't on the move. The chapa ride from Mambone to Maluvane was painfully slow. I knew ten minutes into that ride that I wouldn't be breaking 3 hours and 56 minutes.
Even so, I couldn't complain. We were at least moving. Once I got to Maluvane, things started going really well. I jumped into the back of a truck heading toward Vilanculos. The sun beat down pretty hard, but I was happy to work on my tan a bit. When we got toward Vilanculos, I offered to pay, but the driver wouldn't take my money. Awesome! One short truck ride later, and I was in Vilanculos, just breaking the 5-hour mark.
I had a significant-sized list of things to accomplish in Vilanculos and I wanted to get them all done in the afternoon. First, I took some cloth up to my tailor to have a shirt made, which will be ready tomorrow. I stopped next store to arrange my delicious dinner plans. With that done, I dropped off my things at the Vil girls' house so I wouldn't have to carry around all my stuff while I shopped.
Today's mission in the market was huge. With Sozinho's 900 Meticais, I was on the hunt for clothes for his baptism. I knew this would be a challenge when I found out that one store sold shoes for 600 Mets. That's okay -- I'm always up for a challenge at the market. I may be the exception to the rule in that I love going to the market to negotiate. I feel like I'm going into battle, with stubbornness as my best weapon. The first part was easy. I got the shirt, tie, and pants for 430. I didn't even bother to negotiate -- I knew the prices were reasonable.
I hoped, given the price I saw earlier, that I'd have just enough for shoes and the belt. That's when the battle royale began. I told the guy that I needed black leather shoes in size 42 (European, of course). He presented me a beautiful pair of shoes that cost 850 Mets. That's just a wee bit out of budget, but that wasn't going to stop me. I said that the price was too much, and he immediately sliced the price to 600. I told him I'd pay 350. The price came down to 500, but I wouldn't budge. It dropped to 450, then 400. I thought about paying 400. I got my fifty percent. But I decided to push it. Finally, he said 380. I considered it for a moment and then agreed. "This guy, he knows his money". Yes. Yes I do. Finally, I went on the hunt for a decent belt. The first one I found was 95 Mets. It was nice enough and I didn't want to negotiate anymore.
After all my purchases were made, I totaled everything up: 905. That doesn't count as being overbudget. That's a rounding error. Satisfied with my work, and hungry, I treated myself to a delicious cheeseburger.
The rest of the day, went absolutely beautifully. I ran over to the other side of town to some food shopping. I didn't find everything I wanted, but found something I wasn't expecting, so that was a bonus. By the time I got back to the house, it was already late afternoon. I hung out with the girls for a bit before heading over to Muhammad's for dinner. Even though he raised the price by 50 Meticais, it was still delicious and worth it.
So there it was: the perfect day in Mozambique. A heavily discounted ride, market domination, did all of my tasks, ate delicious food. I should just quit now. Something bad is bound to happen.
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