I was optimistic early Sunday morning. Having thrown down almost two liters of water during the night, I thought I had beat the hang-over monster. Just in case, I threw down half a liter of Gatorade and popped some precautionary aspirin.
In addition to said measures, I thought some fresh air would help me out. I made a run to the bank to flush out my bank account, quickly followed by a trip to a gas station to buy some biscuits and drinks for my students.
Our ride appeared at the hotel just around 9 o'clock. If we move well, we would arrive in Machanga just around 4 in the afternoon. The students generously offered me one of the four seats inside, an offer I gladly accepted. It turned out to be extraordinarily helpful. As soon as the car got going, I felt sick, and not driving-down-17-to-Santa-Cruz-as-a-child sick. I finished another bottle of Gatorade and quickly fell asleep.
I slept almost until Muxungue, where I knew we would be taking a break for lunch. I went on the hunt for the egg sandwich lady from Friday, but she was nowhere to be found. Eventually, I ran into someone who brought me to a random lady's house. She said she could make me egg sandwiches. I paid a premium for service – double the price of Friday's, but didn't have to wait particularly long. The sandwiches were okay; it's hard to fuck up a fried egg and bread. But it wasn't nearly as good as Friday's. Just goes to show that anyone can make an egg sandwich in Muxungue, but not everyone in Muxungue can make The Muxungue Egg Sandwich.
I felt much better once I had some food in my system. I was awake, tragically, for the rest of the ride, including the miserable sixty kilometers of dirt path to Machanga. With a good truck, the ride was almost tolerable. All said, though, we made good time: we were two minutes before 4 o'clock.
When I got home, I was tired to say the least, but I was also feeling somewhat inspired. I wanted to bang out some work before eating dinner. I knew I would have some time. As follows our unspoken deal, since I traveled all day, Richie was in charge of dinner. While he cooked spaghetti, I wrote up my final exam, which is a copy of the most recent National Exams. The kids are going to hate me for giving them 60 questions, but it will be good practice for them.
I finished typing just as the spaghetti and sauce came off the stove. Richie and I ate quickly, then moved into “Sons of Anarchy”. We've seen some bad movies here, and we've seen some bad television shows, but “Sons of Anarchy” might have won the distinction of being the worst of them all. And yet, we will continue to watch.
For the first time in at least a few weeks, I managed to sleep through the night. Not a single wake-up. Clearly the trick to a good night's sleep is a night of excessive drinking followed by an eight-hour travel day.
Never have I been so grateful to have Mondays off. I didn't want to do much of anything today. That's how most of my morning was spent – doing nothing productive. These days, Monday's have taken on new meaning for us. With football season upon us, we now have reason to go online every Monday morning – to check football scores. I spent a good part of the morning reading game recaps and catching up on some writing (this thing doesn't write itself, ya know).
After lunch, I became a productive member of the workforce again. We have but a few weeks of school to go, and I still have two exams to give. I spent a bit of time in the afternoon planning on my remaining classes. From there, I was able to write up the midterm that I'll be giving at the end of the week. All said, it was a very productive afternoon.
And I wasn't even done for the day. Having soaked beans in the morning, I was in charge of cooking beans in the afternoon. Actually, the real reason I'm in charge of beans is because my beans are so much better than Sozinho's. Go figure. Around 4 o'clock, I lit up the carvao and got cooking.
While the beans sat on the stove, I ran over to the director's office to print out the exam that I typed up yesterday. With some formatting tricks and printing two sheets per page (still readable), I cut down the exam from seven to three pages. It will save the kids eight Mets a piece, money they can spend on, well, other exams.
The beans and rice finished cooking around 6:30. We devoured our food. For some reason, Sozinho chose not to eat beans. Always a terrible decision. But it was good news for us: we'll make burritos tomorrow. We continued with the misery that is “Sons of Anarchy” after eating. Just before bed, I started a new book, Zadie Smith's “White Teeth”. So far, it's very funny.
I slept well Monday night, but I'm fearing that the days of not sweating through the sheets at night will be coming to an end very soon. It's definitely getting hotter at night, the sun is up earlier, and as such, so are we – on both counts.
There were rumblings Tuesday morning about classes being canceled for the day. The governor of Sofala is in town, and whenever a government official is in town, he (and it's almost always a “he”) draws the attention of all the teachers. By late morning, classes were officially canceled. Lots of important business, I'm sure.
I kept myself busy around the house. There was plenty of cleaning to be done, and is as usually the case, once I get started cleaning, I usually go for hours on end. I started with the kitchen table, which is become a cemetery for, well, everything. From there I took on my own room, which wasn't all that much work. That's one of the nice upsides of living in a room not much larger than a jail cell. When Richie got back from class, we got to work on the book shelves. All said, it was a productive morning.
The cleaning took us right up until lunch. It was a perfect afternoon for a nap. The breeze was blowing the right way, nobody was here to bother us. I wasn't horizontal for more than five minutes before I fell asleep.
Once I woke up, I took care of some school business. With class canceled today, I had to reassess my lesson plans for the rest of the year. The lesson will be pushed to later in the week, which is fine. It'll be a little rough for one of the groups – to learn a lesson one day, then have it on the test the next day – but I suspect they'll be just fine.
Late in the afternoon, my parents gave me a ring. I was wondering where they had been, since they normally call on Sundays. Who could believe that mCel would have problems?
We had a bounty of beans left over from last night, but it wasn't enough to be its own meal. They would play a fine supporting role in burritos. We defrosted some (a very little bit) of our precious filet, cooked some rice and tortillas, made some salsa, and ate delicious Mexican food.
The rest of the night was a repeat of last night: two horrible episodes of “Sons of Anarchy” followed by some time in bed with “White Teeth”.
I should say that the rest of the night while I was awake was the same, because the sleeping was definitely different. Whatever breeze there was in the afternoon dissipated. It was hot, muggy, in a word – miserable. It wasn't sweat-through-the-sheets hot, but it was hot enough to keep me awake until almost 2 in the morning. Pleasant.
And because it was so damn hot at night, it only got hotter in the morning that much faster. I didn't get more than a few hours of decent sleep. I should probably get used to this. The nights for next nine weeks could be like this.
I was treated to a phone call from my brother Wednesday morning. This was the second consecutive time that he has called at an insane hour – 11:30 PM his time. It's a great time for me (8:30 in the morning) and I'm always happy to talk to my brother whatever the hour is. We chatted for almost an hour, which was nice, because the last time we talked, my sister kept stealing from the phone from him.
The rest of the morning was pretty quiet. It was crazy windy for most of the morning, which knocked out the electricity on our side of the river. I would have liked to have done some writing, but instead I gave myself a haircut and powered on with “White Teeth” until lunch.
My students came by early in the afternoon, asking me to use up a time slot from another teacher. It seems like most of the teachers have checked out. I'm not totally there yet. Three more weeks and I'll be done. After my lesson, I told the students the scheduled date of their final. I had hoped to give them their exam on a Friday, so I could give the exam to them and the other class on the same day. For some reason, all of the students of twelfth grade are heading to Beira the Thursday before the slated date. They said Wednesday would be better. That's fine by me – just need to talk to a couple teachers to see if I can use their class time.
That shouldn't be much of a problem. It's not like the teachers here need a reason to not go to class. I was giving them a gift. The only torturous part of this was that the teachers with whom I needed to speak were the director and the assistant director. I try to keep involvement with them to a minimal, but they were both fine with it.
Richie and Sozinho were in the mood for fish tonight. I guess it's spaghetti for me. With powdered milk, some butter that was in the house, and sauce packet, I had some pretty tasty alfredo sauce – a nice change from tomato sauce. After eating, we continued with “Sons of Anarchy” and I marched on with “White Teeth”.
I was thrilled that the night wasn't nearly as hot as the night before. All I had to contend with tonight were crazy Larium dreams, one after another until I woke up.
Shortly after I woke up, I heard a small rumbling in my room. I thought I had heard it last night, but it could have easily been the Larium doing its thing. This time, I was certain of it. I started going through my room, wondering what it could be. I finally got to our suitcases when it heard it again. Out go the suit cases, time to crack em open.
And that's when I saw it. Well not all of it. But enough of it that I knew what I was. A rodent had taken apparently taken residence in my room yesterday. With the help of some bug spray and peanut butter, we induced the sucker. This wasn't some ugly rat: just a little field mouse, probably trying to avoid hawks, owls, and snakes. We liberated him into the wild again. We'll let nature take its course.
As long as I had the suitcases outside, I figured it would be a good opportunity to do a massive clean-up. I went through my bag and tossed out some ancient, unnecessary things. I swept, mopped, flipped my mattress, simply made my room a nicer place. It was a good way to spend the morning.
I had class immediately after lunch, just the way I like it. I had a repeat of the lesson I taught yesterday, followed by a brief preparation for their midterm. I'm praying to whatever deities are out there that these kids do better the second time around with this content.
Following class, I made a run to the market in search of beef. Sure, we still have filet sitting in the freezer, but we want to use that for special occasions. For regular meals, we'll take low-grade stuff. Even this cut of beef, though, wasn't terrible. It goes without say that we've had a lot worse. With the beef, I made a tasty stir fry for the three of us. And like the rest of the week, I ended my night with “Sons of Anarchy” and “White Teeth”.
Friday morning appeared to be a normal morning. I went to the market to pick up some eggs, swung to the other side of town to buy bread – nothing special. But then, as I walked into the house, I was called over to someone's house. I thought I had heard my name. It's just the source that surprised me. After almost two years, I have finally won the heart of Bucket Girl.
A brief history is necessary here. In the first few months we were here, Richie and I were sitting on our porch (as we tend to do), staring blankly out into open. It was then that we saw Gida, the nine-month-old daughter of one our colleagues, nearly go head over heals into a bucket. With reason, we found this hilarious and in a very Seinfeldian way, we dubbed her “Bucket Girl”.
Now, over the course of our stay, Gida has gone through many stages with us. At first, it was utter fear. We couldn't get within 50 feet of her without her crying. Then she moved into the ignoring stage: we were dead to her. After a few months of that, there was embarrassment. We'd get little smiles, but she'd always shy away. All the while, I've been trying to win her over with cookies and other various sweets. If she ends up diabetic, it's me who is to blame.
And then today, as I walked into my ho use, we hit the friendship stage. The following is my first conversation with two-and-a-half year old Bucket Girl.
B.G. “Lee. Estou a pedir bolacha”. I am asking for a cookie.
Me “de chocolate?”
B.G – (nods).
Me – “Okay, espera.” Wait. I go to my house and grab two Girl Scout Thin Mints, then hand 'em over to Bucket Girl.
Mother of B.G. – “Diz obrigado”. Say thank you. Goes to show that no matter where you go, certain things are constant.
B.G. – “Obrigado”.
My heart is aflutter. I have won over Bucket Girl. I can call my Peace Corps Service a success.
The rest of the day could be a complete disaster – it might be, with an exam coming up – and I'd still declare this day a victory.
I squeezed in a shower while Richie was cooking lunch. I was due. My feet we a disturbing shade of brown. Cleaned and, after lunch, full, I went over to the school to give my last ever midterm in this country. Shed a tear I will not.
Three hours of standing around, by in large uneventful. I no longer look for cheaters. The kids' eyes can wander all they want. Now that I'm printing multiple versions of the same exam, I no longer have to catch cheaters. The test will do it for me. Most of the kids seem to have figured this out, but there will surely be a few who don't realize what I'm up to.
As soon as I finished in the school, I came over to correct the exams. I want to have these suckers finished before dinner. As it turns out, only one girl cheated. She ended up with a 15%, only because I didn't change the order of the answers on three of the questions. It's a tough road to passing this trimester for her after that performance. Aside from her and a couple other non-cheaters, the students did very well. There were at least five perfect scores over the ninety-some students.
I was on my own for the rest of the students. Richie crossed the river to Mambone and will continue south to Inhambane tomorrow. After talking to my grandfather for a bit, I cooked up some spaghetti for myself. There would be no “Sons of Anarchy tonight” – watching this alone would be like drinking a bottle of scotch alone, a sure sign of depression or at least boredom – so I skipped right to “White Teeth”.
The night was strangely – blissfully – cold. I knew I had slept well when the first thing I heard in the morning was Sozinho asking me to unlike the door.
Saturday was yet another holiday in the Mozambican calendar, this time Armed Forces Day. I was in bed, reading, when I got a text message from Priscilla, the Brazilian volunteer who replaced Alexis. “Are you coming to the celebration?” I gave her my standard answer – “No need to go, they're all the same”. She would later tell me that moments after I sent that message, one of the dance groups that danced a couple weeks ago came out to the dance to the exact same song. I feel redeemed.
I did, however, tell her that I'd meet her over at Madinha's late in the morning. When I went over, I was met by six colleagues sitting outside drinking beer. 11 o'clock is an appropriate hour to drink, right? Shortly after I arrived, Priscilla and a colleague of hers arrived. After talking for a bit, we fell into stereotypical Mozambican roles – the girls went to cook, and I joined my colleagues, throwing down glass after glass of beer.
There was a payoff for sticking around almost four hours at Madinha's. She and the girls prepared lunch and I was apparently included on this. Nice. I will always take free food, especially beef. I ate two plates of food, then jumped on my bike, heading for home.
The rest of the afternoon was quiet. I think everyone – including myself – was resting up for the big night ahead.
I had fully intended to go out again in the evening. I prepared myself as best as I could – water, Gatorade, food – but by 8:45, I was exhausted. There was no way I'd make it to 11, just to s
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Year 2 - Week 40: Top Cuts
With English theater taking place this weekend and my boss heading to Mambone early in the week, I knew that I'd be busy. I just didn't know how busy I would be.
The work began Sunday morning with preparations for English theater. One of the scenes of the play takes place in South African diamond mines. It's not really enough to have a sign that says “South Africa Mining Co.”; we needed props. I went on the hunt for some thin tree branches to make pick axes. The picks were secured with wire and covered with black plastic bags and packing tape to make them look metallic. Considering the resources, they turned out well.
That little task kept me busy all the well until lunch. A little after lunch, we got a visit from the new Brazilian volunteer here. She is the person who replaced Alexis. She's here for a year which means – finally – we'll be leaving before someone else here. We told her the same thing as Alexis – our house is open if she ever just needs to get away from the orphanage.
I spent a little bit of the afternoon continuing in “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”. Unlike Richie, I think the book – for the most part – is pretty good. It has some painfully slow parts, but otherwise it's enjoyable. Later in the afternoon, I fired up the carvao and cooked beans.
Wedged in between phone calls from my grandmother and parents, Richie and I had dinner. I don't know what I did right this time, but these beans were probably the best beans I've cooked here. People are quick to knock rice and beans as a meal, but it's probably the healthiest and tastiest thing we eat here. It's not like it's just rice and beans with nothing added. It requires no oil, is high in protein and fiber and uses lots of veggies.
For our entertainment tonight, we watched “The Hurt Locker”. It was good, but not Oscar-worthy. I haven't seen “Avatar” yet, but from what I heard, it sounds amazing. As for other movies that came out last year, I liked “Up in the Air” and “The Blind Side” more than “The Hurt Locker”. In my humble opinion, “The Hurt Locker” winning Best Picture was as much of an anti-war political statement as Obama winning the Nobel having accomplished nothing as president.
I didn't sleep particularly well on Sunday night, but what else is new? This time, it was a combination of the beans getting to my stomach and the Larium getting to my head. Good thing I had a crazy busy day ahead.
I was scheduled to go into English theater practice on Monday morning, but the timing interfered with a higher priority: a quick trip to Mambone. My boss was in town to check out a couple of houses for the soon-to-arrive Moz 15s. He brought some meds up for me. In exchange, I passed off some paperwork and Peace Corps books to him. The trip, maybe four or five kilometers in total, took up the entire morning.
As long as I was in the sun and sweaty, I figured I'd knock out two more tasks. I went to buy bread but there was no bread. I would have bought it in Mambone, but I had almost no money left after paying our energy bill and shopping. The second task was much more successful. I figured that while I was paying my bill, I could bring back bills for the other teachers here. Before rewarding myself with lunch, I handed the bills out too all the teachers.
All of that work should have earned me a nap, but there was more work to be done. While I was in Mambone, Sozinho went out to find me some bamboo to hold up some English theater signs. I spent the next couple hours cutting down and taping up bamboo to paper. They're far from perfect, but they'll do.
I took a brief break from sign-making to go hunting. Yes, hunting. For the last couple of days, there has been a rat in our bathroom. I have yet to see it, so as far as I'm concerned, ignorance is bliss. But everyone else has seen it. We tried to bait it with chicken bones and peanut butter, but the little guy wouldn't come out. We sat waiting for a couple hours, but he never appeared. Good thing we have the time to waste.
Late in the afternoon, I got back to sign-making. I had one last sign to draw and secure with bamboo. It was maybe an hour of work. I though that I was done for the day, but just after dinner, my English theater counterpart came over to write up a permission slip for our actors and actresses. There are plenty of things I can do in Portuguese, but formal letter writing is not among those skills.
Being busy all day was clearly the solution for getting a good night's sleep. For the first time in weeks, I managed to sleep through the night.
I continued riding the wave of business into Tuesday morning. The little shop that sells bread finally got a shipment in from Mambone. After the bread run, I took a couple minutes to write up a summary of our play for the people who will be judging the plays. My productive morning finished up with lesson planning for the day.
Class went alright today. I had two quick classes, back to back. The lesson was on phrasal verbs with “look”. I think it went well because I was able to make fun of some students to get across the point. One girl came in really late. Normally she has hair extensions, but today, she came in with a head shaved perfectly smooth. So I got to write on the board “It looks like Albertina lost her hair”. Everyone in the class laughed, but her. Mind you, she looked beautiful. She didn't laugh because she didn't understand what I wrote because she wasn't in class. Eventually, someone explained it to her. You'd think you wouldn't be able to see people so dark-skinned blush, but this girl's cheeks turned bright pink. In the other class, I had Sozinho to pick on: “Sozinho looks like a monkey.” Once again, everyone appreciated this except for the target.
Upon my return from class, I got stopped by a teacher who needed some help solving some math problems. Good thing he's teaching math, huh? They were actually pretty tough problems. All of them involved logarithms and substitution, from which I am years removed. I got a brief review of how logarithms work, then got cracking on the problems. I got the answers for all three, but was only able to truly solve one. One of them, I knew I couldn't resolve. The third one, however, I knew could be solved but just wasn't sure how. This was going to kill me.
I tried to solve that problem for thirty minutes, but came away empty-handed. Maybe a nap would help. At least I got myself a bit of rest. Once awake, I dove into “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. A wanted to read this before “A.H.W.O.S.G.” but got caught up into the Eggers book. I read until the energy came on, at which time I ran over to the office to print out the permission slips for the kids.
The night was way longer than I wanted it to be. We had a pretty good stir fry for dinner and watched “Up” afterward. “Up” was way better than “The Hurt Locker” from last week. One of these days, an animated film is going to win Best Picture. It probably should have been this one. After the movie, I crawled into bed to do some more reading until about 10 o'clock. When I turned the lights out, I was wide awake. The nap from earlier did me in. I rolled around for two hours before I decided to make myself useful. At midnight, I grabbed the math problem I had been working on and solved it in about five minutes. Maybe that was on my mind because within a couple minutes of solving the problem, I was sound asleep.
Wednesday started with an English theater that lasted all morning. This was our last day of practice before we head to Chimoio on Friday, so my colleague and I wanted to make sure that everything was running as smoothly as possible. We ran through the play maybe seven or eight times, until we were satisfied. We both believe that it's a top-three play. We'll see this weekend.
Theater practice brought me right up to lunch, which was convenient because I was starving. Even though Richie and I both teach late – he begins third period, I begin fifth – we both wanted to be done eating by 12:30 because of the huge possibility that our students want us to teach early. While I waited, prayed that my students would come to get me early, I typed up a document that a student had asked me to type.
Finally, around third period, the student who asked me to type the document came by – both to see if the document had been typed and if I could come into class to teach. Yes and yes. We're marching on with phrasal verbs, at least through next week. Today's phrasal verbs all involved the verb “take”. There are only about a thousand phrasal verbs with “take”. I could already the hear the “Teacher! Enough!” complaints, so I chose eight common, easy ones.
I wanted to get out of the house after class, so I ran to the market looking for nothing in particular. We needed some things, but nothing that couldn't wait. I walked over to the butchery to see if they had any beef and I hit the jackpot. The butcher had been saving filet for someone, but he was running hours late (go figure) and the butcher wanted money now. Really? Filet? I'll take two kilos of that.
I did a bit of reading before getting dinner ready. This was going to be a glorious night of eating. Sozinho told me he wanted to cook the meat. I laughed at him. He would probably live up to his nickname and ruin it. I wasn't going to let him to do that. Not to my glorious filet mignon. I cut, seasoned and barbecued. It was the best meat we've had in this country. I'm really happy I bought two kilos of it. Most of it is still sitting in our friend's freezer.
Richie crashed shortly after dinner. I did a bit of reading before following suit.
It was a pretty quiet morning on Thursday. I read for a little bit before realizing that I still hadn't resolved the issue of how we would be getting to Chimoio. A school car from Mangunde is supposed to take us, but we've heard nothing about it. I talked to the person responsible for arranging these things. It took a bit of teeth-pulling, but by lunchtime, I had an answer. The car would arrive sometime tomorrow morning and we'd be on our way.
I had class immediately after lunch. This was the same lesson as yesterday, but for the other class. They seemed to pick it up as easily as the first group. As anticipated, I got one “Teacher! Enough!” complaint. “How are we going to pass the midterm? There are thirty verbs to remember!” Clearly, he was not around for my diatribe a couple weeks ago, when I told them that they should all be studying maybe fifteen minutes every night.
I ran to the market after class to pick up some supplies for dinner. We're doing beans, but we were missing onions, a vital ingredient, and needed eggs for tomorrow. I only had to wait an hour between returning home and starting the fire to get cooking.
While the beans cooked, I ran over to the school office to print out a document for one of my students. I told him to come by in the morning to pick it up, but I wouldn't be around. I'm sure he'll be happy to get his hands on it from whomever.
The beans, as usual, we're delicious. I would eat rice and beans every night, but too much beans can actually lead to blindness. It's a shame because aside from this, it is a perfect meal. For our entertainment tonight, we watched “Sons of Anarchy”. It's a pretty shitty show – bad plot lines, really bad writing, and worse yet acting – but we're probably going to suffer through the entire season.
I woke up on the early end Friday morning. It's not that I was anticipating the car arriving early – I thought it would be here between 8:30 and 9; I just had some things I needed to do before getting out of here, like showering and packing. I was wrong with my estimation. The car rolled up at 9:07. Can't complain about that. Also can't complain about the fact that all of my students were already at school when the car arrived. It's all about anticipation: I told them to be at school at 8:00. My guess is that most of them arrived around 8:45.
There were ten of us going up to Chimoio, with only four seats in the truck. The other six of us piled into the back of the truck. The first 60 kilometers down the dirt road was pretty miserable. Once we hit pavement, it was smooth sailing. We stopped in Muxungue for some delicious egg sandwiches. It was here that we were told that we'd have to go into Mangunde to swap drivers.
Whatever. It set us back two hours and we had to endure another fifty kilometers of dirt road, but it was fine. If there was any upside, it's that I was able to check my email, thanks to Mangunde's wifi connection and my iTouch.
From Mangunde, things went by quickly. We had maybe another three hours in the car before we arrived in Chimoio. We got the kids settled into their rooms. Naturally, they were all glued to the televisions. There was no rest for me, though. After taking a shower, I got right back to work.
For at least a couple hours, we were busy hounding the staff of the hotel to get dinner going. The didn't realize that people were on the road all day and we wanted to eat at a normal hour. The first of two groups ended up eating at 8:00. The kitchen staff was moving ineffectively. Three people were working on putting together a food of plate: one person serving, one person holding the plate, one person running the plate outside. I decided to take over this operation, putting together an assembly line. This newly-found efficiency prompted a marriage proposal from one of the women working in the kitchen. I told her that she just wanted me for my kitchen skills.
The second shift ran much smoother. While the first group finished up, I helped wash dishes and put the next round of plates together. The second group had no wait time, which is how it should be.
The fight continued after dinner. The hotel was really screwing us on price. We were not really receiving what we were paying for. And they just dropped the price increase on us without warning. We yelled and negotiated for half an hour, eventually getting half of the plates at a reduced price.
The last thing we had to do was put together small sandwiches for the students for breakfast. It was a stressful day to say the least, and I wasn't even the one most stressed. Bryan, our colleague in Mangunde, was in charge of the whole event. You could only imagine the stress he was under. Once everyone was fed and in bed, I took him out for a beer or two as a reward.
The big day finally arrived for our students. Everybody was up and out of the hotel around 7 o'clock. We walked over to the theater, about 20 minutes away. I think all of the students were overwhelmed by how big the place was. By around 8:30, we got the show started. Machanga would be performing second, which was nice for us. We'd get it done right away, the kids wouldn't have to think about what they were doing, and I could be of help to Bryan for the rest of the afternoon.
Our kids did really well. We had two minor mistakes, but otherwise things went very well. I couldn't have asked for it to run much smoother. And yet, as is human nature, the kids were all worried about the mistakes they made.
After our students went, I wasn't able to watch any of the plays. First I was busy organizing – then cleaning – snack. Following snack, I ran into town to find Bryan to help him with lunch. We got lunch to the students around 12:45, then I got all the lunch stuff cleaned up.
The timing worked out pretty well. I got everything squared away right when the plays ended. The judges took their sweet time determining the places. Amazingly, the judges started at last place. We were all blown away by this. As the judges read the school names, Machanga was never mentioned. There's a chance that we could actually win. We got to the top three without being mentioned. “Number three – New Horizons School”. Crap, we could actually win. “Number two – Machanga”.
The students were happy. Really happy. They were probably a little disappointed that they didn't win – and that they were so close to winning – but it's hard to be sad about it. They placed second out of 14 schools. And when you take into account that so many of the schools have so many good (Zimbabwean) English speakers, it's even more amazing. Whatever disappointment our students had was quickly erased when the judges announced that one of our students (deservedly) won best actor.
I had planned on taking care of some shopping, but that plan was quickly erased when someone proposed getting a drink. Of course, the situation quickly devolved. A bottle of Jameson was brought out, more beers rolled out. Eight hours later, we were all pretty toasted. I ate dinner around midnight. I had to wait almost an hour for my chicken, but I can't complain. It was too good of a week to end on a bad note.
The work began Sunday morning with preparations for English theater. One of the scenes of the play takes place in South African diamond mines. It's not really enough to have a sign that says “South Africa Mining Co.”; we needed props. I went on the hunt for some thin tree branches to make pick axes. The picks were secured with wire and covered with black plastic bags and packing tape to make them look metallic. Considering the resources, they turned out well.
That little task kept me busy all the well until lunch. A little after lunch, we got a visit from the new Brazilian volunteer here. She is the person who replaced Alexis. She's here for a year which means – finally – we'll be leaving before someone else here. We told her the same thing as Alexis – our house is open if she ever just needs to get away from the orphanage.
I spent a little bit of the afternoon continuing in “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”. Unlike Richie, I think the book – for the most part – is pretty good. It has some painfully slow parts, but otherwise it's enjoyable. Later in the afternoon, I fired up the carvao and cooked beans.
Wedged in between phone calls from my grandmother and parents, Richie and I had dinner. I don't know what I did right this time, but these beans were probably the best beans I've cooked here. People are quick to knock rice and beans as a meal, but it's probably the healthiest and tastiest thing we eat here. It's not like it's just rice and beans with nothing added. It requires no oil, is high in protein and fiber and uses lots of veggies.
For our entertainment tonight, we watched “The Hurt Locker”. It was good, but not Oscar-worthy. I haven't seen “Avatar” yet, but from what I heard, it sounds amazing. As for other movies that came out last year, I liked “Up in the Air” and “The Blind Side” more than “The Hurt Locker”. In my humble opinion, “The Hurt Locker” winning Best Picture was as much of an anti-war political statement as Obama winning the Nobel having accomplished nothing as president.
I didn't sleep particularly well on Sunday night, but what else is new? This time, it was a combination of the beans getting to my stomach and the Larium getting to my head. Good thing I had a crazy busy day ahead.
I was scheduled to go into English theater practice on Monday morning, but the timing interfered with a higher priority: a quick trip to Mambone. My boss was in town to check out a couple of houses for the soon-to-arrive Moz 15s. He brought some meds up for me. In exchange, I passed off some paperwork and Peace Corps books to him. The trip, maybe four or five kilometers in total, took up the entire morning.
As long as I was in the sun and sweaty, I figured I'd knock out two more tasks. I went to buy bread but there was no bread. I would have bought it in Mambone, but I had almost no money left after paying our energy bill and shopping. The second task was much more successful. I figured that while I was paying my bill, I could bring back bills for the other teachers here. Before rewarding myself with lunch, I handed the bills out too all the teachers.
All of that work should have earned me a nap, but there was more work to be done. While I was in Mambone, Sozinho went out to find me some bamboo to hold up some English theater signs. I spent the next couple hours cutting down and taping up bamboo to paper. They're far from perfect, but they'll do.
I took a brief break from sign-making to go hunting. Yes, hunting. For the last couple of days, there has been a rat in our bathroom. I have yet to see it, so as far as I'm concerned, ignorance is bliss. But everyone else has seen it. We tried to bait it with chicken bones and peanut butter, but the little guy wouldn't come out. We sat waiting for a couple hours, but he never appeared. Good thing we have the time to waste.
Late in the afternoon, I got back to sign-making. I had one last sign to draw and secure with bamboo. It was maybe an hour of work. I though that I was done for the day, but just after dinner, my English theater counterpart came over to write up a permission slip for our actors and actresses. There are plenty of things I can do in Portuguese, but formal letter writing is not among those skills.
Being busy all day was clearly the solution for getting a good night's sleep. For the first time in weeks, I managed to sleep through the night.
I continued riding the wave of business into Tuesday morning. The little shop that sells bread finally got a shipment in from Mambone. After the bread run, I took a couple minutes to write up a summary of our play for the people who will be judging the plays. My productive morning finished up with lesson planning for the day.
Class went alright today. I had two quick classes, back to back. The lesson was on phrasal verbs with “look”. I think it went well because I was able to make fun of some students to get across the point. One girl came in really late. Normally she has hair extensions, but today, she came in with a head shaved perfectly smooth. So I got to write on the board “It looks like Albertina lost her hair”. Everyone in the class laughed, but her. Mind you, she looked beautiful. She didn't laugh because she didn't understand what I wrote because she wasn't in class. Eventually, someone explained it to her. You'd think you wouldn't be able to see people so dark-skinned blush, but this girl's cheeks turned bright pink. In the other class, I had Sozinho to pick on: “Sozinho looks like a monkey.” Once again, everyone appreciated this except for the target.
Upon my return from class, I got stopped by a teacher who needed some help solving some math problems. Good thing he's teaching math, huh? They were actually pretty tough problems. All of them involved logarithms and substitution, from which I am years removed. I got a brief review of how logarithms work, then got cracking on the problems. I got the answers for all three, but was only able to truly solve one. One of them, I knew I couldn't resolve. The third one, however, I knew could be solved but just wasn't sure how. This was going to kill me.
I tried to solve that problem for thirty minutes, but came away empty-handed. Maybe a nap would help. At least I got myself a bit of rest. Once awake, I dove into “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. A wanted to read this before “A.H.W.O.S.G.” but got caught up into the Eggers book. I read until the energy came on, at which time I ran over to the office to print out the permission slips for the kids.
The night was way longer than I wanted it to be. We had a pretty good stir fry for dinner and watched “Up” afterward. “Up” was way better than “The Hurt Locker” from last week. One of these days, an animated film is going to win Best Picture. It probably should have been this one. After the movie, I crawled into bed to do some more reading until about 10 o'clock. When I turned the lights out, I was wide awake. The nap from earlier did me in. I rolled around for two hours before I decided to make myself useful. At midnight, I grabbed the math problem I had been working on and solved it in about five minutes. Maybe that was on my mind because within a couple minutes of solving the problem, I was sound asleep.
Wednesday started with an English theater that lasted all morning. This was our last day of practice before we head to Chimoio on Friday, so my colleague and I wanted to make sure that everything was running as smoothly as possible. We ran through the play maybe seven or eight times, until we were satisfied. We both believe that it's a top-three play. We'll see this weekend.
Theater practice brought me right up to lunch, which was convenient because I was starving. Even though Richie and I both teach late – he begins third period, I begin fifth – we both wanted to be done eating by 12:30 because of the huge possibility that our students want us to teach early. While I waited, prayed that my students would come to get me early, I typed up a document that a student had asked me to type.
Finally, around third period, the student who asked me to type the document came by – both to see if the document had been typed and if I could come into class to teach. Yes and yes. We're marching on with phrasal verbs, at least through next week. Today's phrasal verbs all involved the verb “take”. There are only about a thousand phrasal verbs with “take”. I could already the hear the “Teacher! Enough!” complaints, so I chose eight common, easy ones.
I wanted to get out of the house after class, so I ran to the market looking for nothing in particular. We needed some things, but nothing that couldn't wait. I walked over to the butchery to see if they had any beef and I hit the jackpot. The butcher had been saving filet for someone, but he was running hours late (go figure) and the butcher wanted money now. Really? Filet? I'll take two kilos of that.
I did a bit of reading before getting dinner ready. This was going to be a glorious night of eating. Sozinho told me he wanted to cook the meat. I laughed at him. He would probably live up to his nickname and ruin it. I wasn't going to let him to do that. Not to my glorious filet mignon. I cut, seasoned and barbecued. It was the best meat we've had in this country. I'm really happy I bought two kilos of it. Most of it is still sitting in our friend's freezer.
Richie crashed shortly after dinner. I did a bit of reading before following suit.
It was a pretty quiet morning on Thursday. I read for a little bit before realizing that I still hadn't resolved the issue of how we would be getting to Chimoio. A school car from Mangunde is supposed to take us, but we've heard nothing about it. I talked to the person responsible for arranging these things. It took a bit of teeth-pulling, but by lunchtime, I had an answer. The car would arrive sometime tomorrow morning and we'd be on our way.
I had class immediately after lunch. This was the same lesson as yesterday, but for the other class. They seemed to pick it up as easily as the first group. As anticipated, I got one “Teacher! Enough!” complaint. “How are we going to pass the midterm? There are thirty verbs to remember!” Clearly, he was not around for my diatribe a couple weeks ago, when I told them that they should all be studying maybe fifteen minutes every night.
I ran to the market after class to pick up some supplies for dinner. We're doing beans, but we were missing onions, a vital ingredient, and needed eggs for tomorrow. I only had to wait an hour between returning home and starting the fire to get cooking.
While the beans cooked, I ran over to the school office to print out a document for one of my students. I told him to come by in the morning to pick it up, but I wouldn't be around. I'm sure he'll be happy to get his hands on it from whomever.
The beans, as usual, we're delicious. I would eat rice and beans every night, but too much beans can actually lead to blindness. It's a shame because aside from this, it is a perfect meal. For our entertainment tonight, we watched “Sons of Anarchy”. It's a pretty shitty show – bad plot lines, really bad writing, and worse yet acting – but we're probably going to suffer through the entire season.
I woke up on the early end Friday morning. It's not that I was anticipating the car arriving early – I thought it would be here between 8:30 and 9; I just had some things I needed to do before getting out of here, like showering and packing. I was wrong with my estimation. The car rolled up at 9:07. Can't complain about that. Also can't complain about the fact that all of my students were already at school when the car arrived. It's all about anticipation: I told them to be at school at 8:00. My guess is that most of them arrived around 8:45.
There were ten of us going up to Chimoio, with only four seats in the truck. The other six of us piled into the back of the truck. The first 60 kilometers down the dirt road was pretty miserable. Once we hit pavement, it was smooth sailing. We stopped in Muxungue for some delicious egg sandwiches. It was here that we were told that we'd have to go into Mangunde to swap drivers.
Whatever. It set us back two hours and we had to endure another fifty kilometers of dirt road, but it was fine. If there was any upside, it's that I was able to check my email, thanks to Mangunde's wifi connection and my iTouch.
From Mangunde, things went by quickly. We had maybe another three hours in the car before we arrived in Chimoio. We got the kids settled into their rooms. Naturally, they were all glued to the televisions. There was no rest for me, though. After taking a shower, I got right back to work.
For at least a couple hours, we were busy hounding the staff of the hotel to get dinner going. The didn't realize that people were on the road all day and we wanted to eat at a normal hour. The first of two groups ended up eating at 8:00. The kitchen staff was moving ineffectively. Three people were working on putting together a food of plate: one person serving, one person holding the plate, one person running the plate outside. I decided to take over this operation, putting together an assembly line. This newly-found efficiency prompted a marriage proposal from one of the women working in the kitchen. I told her that she just wanted me for my kitchen skills.
The second shift ran much smoother. While the first group finished up, I helped wash dishes and put the next round of plates together. The second group had no wait time, which is how it should be.
The fight continued after dinner. The hotel was really screwing us on price. We were not really receiving what we were paying for. And they just dropped the price increase on us without warning. We yelled and negotiated for half an hour, eventually getting half of the plates at a reduced price.
The last thing we had to do was put together small sandwiches for the students for breakfast. It was a stressful day to say the least, and I wasn't even the one most stressed. Bryan, our colleague in Mangunde, was in charge of the whole event. You could only imagine the stress he was under. Once everyone was fed and in bed, I took him out for a beer or two as a reward.
The big day finally arrived for our students. Everybody was up and out of the hotel around 7 o'clock. We walked over to the theater, about 20 minutes away. I think all of the students were overwhelmed by how big the place was. By around 8:30, we got the show started. Machanga would be performing second, which was nice for us. We'd get it done right away, the kids wouldn't have to think about what they were doing, and I could be of help to Bryan for the rest of the afternoon.
Our kids did really well. We had two minor mistakes, but otherwise things went very well. I couldn't have asked for it to run much smoother. And yet, as is human nature, the kids were all worried about the mistakes they made.
After our students went, I wasn't able to watch any of the plays. First I was busy organizing – then cleaning – snack. Following snack, I ran into town to find Bryan to help him with lunch. We got lunch to the students around 12:45, then I got all the lunch stuff cleaned up.
The timing worked out pretty well. I got everything squared away right when the plays ended. The judges took their sweet time determining the places. Amazingly, the judges started at last place. We were all blown away by this. As the judges read the school names, Machanga was never mentioned. There's a chance that we could actually win. We got to the top three without being mentioned. “Number three – New Horizons School”. Crap, we could actually win. “Number two – Machanga”.
The students were happy. Really happy. They were probably a little disappointed that they didn't win – and that they were so close to winning – but it's hard to be sad about it. They placed second out of 14 schools. And when you take into account that so many of the schools have so many good (Zimbabwean) English speakers, it's even more amazing. Whatever disappointment our students had was quickly erased when the judges announced that one of our students (deservedly) won best actor.
I had planned on taking care of some shopping, but that plan was quickly erased when someone proposed getting a drink. Of course, the situation quickly devolved. A bottle of Jameson was brought out, more beers rolled out. Eight hours later, we were all pretty toasted. I ate dinner around midnight. I had to wait almost an hour for my chicken, but I can't complain. It was too good of a week to end on a bad note.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Year 2 - Week 39: Sprawl (Flatland)
Buzzing, warm, and flat. Machanga is taking its sweet time transitioning to the hot season, and I couldn't be happier about it. The days have been noticeably warmer, but the nights are perfect for sleeping. The only thing impeding me from a perfect night's sleep -- other than my sad excuses for a mattress -- is the buzzing of mosquitoes. This isn't small thing. The mosquitoes have invaded and they love to make plenty of noise. Something had to be done about this.
I walked over to the market before the sun got too high overhead to buy some bug spray. As I walked over, I couldn't help but notice how flat Machanga has become over the last couple of weeks. The soil has yielded everything it can for this growing season. Now, everyone is preparing for the next rainy season. That means controlled burns and sending the animals out to the fields. Goats and cows are fattening themselves up on dying corn stalks. (they're happy now. If only they knew their final destination...). Nebraska-on-Rio-Save is rapidly being reduced into a sprawl of dirt paths.
While at the market, I bought a toothbrush for the first time in two years. That's not to say that I haven't been changing my brushes on a regular basis. I came here armed with ten brushes, using one every ten weeks. Now, 100 weeks in, I was out of toothbrushes. This is the first and only toothbrush I'll buy here.
Before I could commence the mosquito genocide, I cleaned up my room. The last thing I need is a pile dead mosquitoes on top of my shoes and laundry bag. With a nice graveyard prepared, I shut the door and went crazy. The bug spray smells awful -- I may have increased my chances at some sort of cancer -- but man, it does the job.
Spraying was just the first of three phases in the mosquito slaughter. The second and more important of this task required a needle and thread. The mesh covering my windows has been badly torn. The opening provided a perfect entry-point/getaway for those bloodsucking creatures. Using a piece of my mosquito net and a piece of capulana, Richie and I began patching up the window. I don't know how effective it will be, but it can't be worse than what has been.
We managed to finish about half the job when we realized that it was already 1 o'clock. Damn. We lit carvao and got some lunch in.
Richie disappeared for a little in the afternoon. I think he ran to the market, but I'm never sure where he vanishes to when he decides to walk around. I roped Sozinho into helping me out with the second half of my window. The job was finished around 3 o'clock.
On a normal day, all of this progress would have earned me a nap, but there was still more to do. Around 4:30, I lit carvao once again to make beans. I failed on this front today -- completely forgot to add garlic, a truly vital ingredient. After eating we watched "She's Out of Your League". We had slightly elevated hopes for this movie -- we figured there had to be a hot girl in it -- but it was a pretty shitty film. I ended my night with a bit of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius".
I definitely slept better Sunday night. Maybe that had to do with the death of 100 or so mosquitoes. I woke up refreshed, motivated, ready for work. Unfortunately, the work that I had to do would be utterly depressing. Another stack of exams sat waiting for my red pen. After two hours of work, the results were clear: the science students, as usual, dominated the languages students. They scored about 4% higher than the languages kids and had a passing rate that was doubly better. Still, less than half the kids passed. This is going to require a speech later in the week.
The price of bread went up today, from 5 Mets per roll to 6. It's not a huge hit for us. The truth is, we'll probably just eat less bread. But coupled with other price increases, it's going to be a huge hit for a lot of Mozambicans. I don't know how they're going to handle it.
Because of a holiday tomorrow, Richie was able to cancel class this morning, but he couldn't avoid class in the afternoon. While he was in class, I kept myself busy with some small tasks. I had to punch grades into a spreadsheet and I also fixed up another window that had some holes. Satisfied with my work, I settled back into "A.H.W.O.S.G" (the title is just way too long to type out every time).
When Richie came back from the market, we did our regular "what should we do for dinner" dance. We were hoping for beef in the market, and decided on chicken as a back-up. The only problem: there was neither beef nor chicken in the market. Thank goodness we still had frozen chicken breast in our neighbor's freezer. We defrosted the chicken, through it in tomato sauce for pasta and had a tasty dinner. While watching "Shutter Island" -- which was one fucked up movie -- we made a cake, a celebration for not having to work tomorrow.
Tuesday was a national holiday in Mozambique: Lusaka Accord Day. For some reason, I decided to go to the town plaza for the ceremony. About half way through, I remembered why I never come to these things – they're always exactly the same. After the ceremony a government official gave a speech. I'm convinced that it's a standard speech with the date and holiday name changed. Following the speech was some dancing by the same groups that always danced. Ten minutes into the dancing, Richie and I had had enough.
On the way back to the house, something incredible happened. My glorious Rainbow sandals broke. In six years of wearing Rainbows, I have never had a sandal break. Sure, they get worn down, but the strap on these actually snapped. It was amazing. And depressing. My day is ruined. Only a post-lunch nap could make me feel better.
After my nap, I went over to the market to buy a new pair of sandals. These sandals are definitely not as comfortable as my Rainbows (R.I.P), and they are certainly not appropriate for the classroom. Still, I refuse to wear socks in this country and thankfully, I have another pair of sandals that are classroom appropriate. While at the market, I also bought some chicken cocktail sausages to be used for dinner.
Once I got back, Richie declared that he wanted fish together. Looks like I'm on my own with those chicken sausages. I made some rice, stir-fried some veggies and had a delicious dinner. After dinner, we watched “Up in the Air”, the best movie we've seen this week.
I had an English theater meeting on Wednesday morning. It's official: I should never show up on time for these meetings. I was there at 8:30 as usual, but none of my students were there. I came back to the house to pick up some work and went back. By that time, two students had arrived. We didn't get going until 9:30.
It's a good thing the kids have pretty much nailed their lines because I would have gone nuts otherwise. The timing of the play is also perfect. Now we just have to put together the proper clothing and we'll be good to go for next weekend.
When I came back from theater, I decided to prepare a lesson for class in the afternoon. I still wasn't sure if I was going to actually give the lesson. It depends on how long test correction takes and how demoralized the students are.
Shortly after lunch, a students came by my house to ask me to give class early. Naturally I said okay. I went over to the room and posted the answers on the blackboard. The kids were a little confused that I had posted for answer sheets. Then they realized that there were four different exams. Oops. They were probably wondering why I was so lax on wandering eyes. Now they knew.
It took an hour to go over the exam, and then I gave my spiel. I asked how many of them studied for the exam; no hands went up. Nice. Maybe that has something to do with everyone failing. They were defeated. They had mentally checked out for the day. A lesson would be of no use.
I came back from class at the perfect time to cook beans. I salvaged a bit of carvao from lunch to restart carvao. These beans were much better than Sunday's edition. Small victories. For our entertainment, we watched “The invention of Lying”. Back to shitty movies. I saved the night with a bit of “A.H.W.O.S.G”.
For most of the week, I haven't been able to sleep through the night. I've been waking up at 2:00 or so, dehydrated. Tonight was no different. Up at 2:08 AM. Lovely. I threw down a glass of water and slept until 7:30, with a brief wake-up around 5:00. It's not a sustainable schedule.
While I sat around the house in the morning, my phone rang. It was a strange hour for a phone call: 9:30. It was especially strange since that call was coming from California, just past midnight there. On the other end of the line were my brother and sister, fumbling around on speaker phone. I don't know how much ground we covered over the course of the conversation, but I do know that I probably remember the conversation a little more clearly than they do.
I spent the rest of the morning doing some English theater work. Signs needed to be designed and colored in. Richie said I was just bored. This was somewhat true. But it also had to be done. It kept me busy until lunch time.
I was scheduled for class right after lunch, at 12:30. I had the same gameplan as yesterday: just returning exams. I know these kids are going to be to frustrated by their grades to power through with a lesson. I gave the same speech as I did yesterday? “Who studied? More than 15 minutes? More than 30 minutes?” There was no need to go beyond that; nobody studied more than a half-hour for my exam. And they wonder why they failed.
After class, Richie and I headed to the market to make some dinner purchases. Word had gone around town that a cow would be slaughtered at some point in the afternoon. When we got there, the cow was all cut up, decapitated, meat sitting on it's hide. Yummy. It looked like there was a lot of good beef left so I asked for two kilos instead of our standard one. Ah, the power of having access to a freezer.
When I got home, I got to work on the meat, cutting it up into meal-sized chunks. The meat cut like butter, a good sign. There was no sense in discussing what we would do with this beef. Invariably, we just dance around the subject, leaving it to the other person to decide. I made the executive decision tonight: stir fry.
The beef was absolutely delicious. Tender, easy to chew, went down easy. It's the first time in a while that we've had a good cut of beef. I was especially happy with my decision to buy two kilos. We didn't want to wreck this night with a shitty movie. We looked through the reviews of the movies we had and found a movie with a good review – “Defendor”. We were skeptical, but it was actually pretty good.
Friday morning meant English theater practice. As usual, I showed up right on time at 8:30. Of course, no one was a round. At least I came prepared: I brought a book with me this time. We didn't get started until almost 10:00. This is getting frustrating, especially since we only have a week until the competition.
While I was at theater practice, Richie was on the road to Inhassoro. He was all but out of money. And with me going to Chimoio next weekend, he definitely would not have survived until our next payday.
The only upside to starting practice so late was that we finished right in time to make lunch. I had a full afternoon in front of me after lunch. Four classes, one right after the other. Or so they were scheduled to be that way. The first two went off as scheduled, but my when I went in for my third hour, another teacher was giving a test. And after that, another teacher wanted to give a lesson. Fine, whatever. I told a student to come get me when they were ready.
It was almost 4 o'clock by the time they came to get me. Apparently, plenty of students thought Friday meant weekend. Of the fifty students that were supposed to be in that class, exactly fifteen stuck around for English. I say again: and they wonder why they fail my exams. I had to reward these students. I gave each of them an extra ten percent on their exams. For at least five of them, this was the difference between failing and passing.
Richie was back at home by the time I got out of class around 5:15. He was tired, sunburnt, and covered in dirt. I knew I would be in charge of dinner tonight. We dug into our neighbor's freezer and pulled out some of our remaining beef. He needed a victory. I needed a victory. We went with cheese steaks. Victory! After dinner tonight, we watched “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”. It wasn't terrible, but there are certainly better movies out, I'm sure (I hope...).
Another night, another 2 AM wake-up. I'm over this.
We were supposed to have English theater practice this morning at 8:30, but I had forgotten about some teachers meeting at 8. Of course, this meant 8:40, and naturally, I wouldn't be attending the meeting. But it did mean English theater practice would have to be pushed to the afternoon.
I kept myself busy making some props for the play. In the play, there are a couple of scenes with some miners. To make it look good, we wanted to give them some tools. As such, my morning was spent with a Leatherman (way better than a Swiss Army Knife) making some mining tools. Considering the complete lack of resources, I think they came out well.
We rescheduled practice for 1:30 which in all likelihood meant 2 o'clock. This gave me plenty of time to eat lunch before heading over to the school – book in hand – at 1:30.
Then the waiting began. I waited. A couple more students arrived. We waited. A few more arrived. We waited. By 2:30, seven out of eight students were there. It took the last student another hour to get there. New record for tardiness.
The worst of it was, once everyone was there, they weren't taking it seriously. This with six days until we had to Chimoio. My counterpart on eye let them know our displeasure. We gave some directions on how we wanted things and they eventually got it together.
The evening was quieter than usual. Richie was locked away in his room well past our normal dinner time. I figured I was on my own for dinner. I didn't want to put together anything special, so I used one of my boxes of Mac and Cheese. Always good to have something easy on reserve. A bit later, a colleague came over wanting some information on physics. He didn't realize that the internet doesn't just give answers to problems. Yes, the internet may have tons of information, but it's not a substitute for thinking.
By 9 o'clock he was gone, just in time for me to go to bed.
I walked over to the market before the sun got too high overhead to buy some bug spray. As I walked over, I couldn't help but notice how flat Machanga has become over the last couple of weeks. The soil has yielded everything it can for this growing season. Now, everyone is preparing for the next rainy season. That means controlled burns and sending the animals out to the fields. Goats and cows are fattening themselves up on dying corn stalks. (they're happy now. If only they knew their final destination...). Nebraska-on-Rio-Save is rapidly being reduced into a sprawl of dirt paths.
While at the market, I bought a toothbrush for the first time in two years. That's not to say that I haven't been changing my brushes on a regular basis. I came here armed with ten brushes, using one every ten weeks. Now, 100 weeks in, I was out of toothbrushes. This is the first and only toothbrush I'll buy here.
Before I could commence the mosquito genocide, I cleaned up my room. The last thing I need is a pile dead mosquitoes on top of my shoes and laundry bag. With a nice graveyard prepared, I shut the door and went crazy. The bug spray smells awful -- I may have increased my chances at some sort of cancer -- but man, it does the job.
Spraying was just the first of three phases in the mosquito slaughter. The second and more important of this task required a needle and thread. The mesh covering my windows has been badly torn. The opening provided a perfect entry-point/getaway for those bloodsucking creatures. Using a piece of my mosquito net and a piece of capulana, Richie and I began patching up the window. I don't know how effective it will be, but it can't be worse than what has been.
We managed to finish about half the job when we realized that it was already 1 o'clock. Damn. We lit carvao and got some lunch in.
Richie disappeared for a little in the afternoon. I think he ran to the market, but I'm never sure where he vanishes to when he decides to walk around. I roped Sozinho into helping me out with the second half of my window. The job was finished around 3 o'clock.
On a normal day, all of this progress would have earned me a nap, but there was still more to do. Around 4:30, I lit carvao once again to make beans. I failed on this front today -- completely forgot to add garlic, a truly vital ingredient. After eating we watched "She's Out of Your League". We had slightly elevated hopes for this movie -- we figured there had to be a hot girl in it -- but it was a pretty shitty film. I ended my night with a bit of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius".
I definitely slept better Sunday night. Maybe that had to do with the death of 100 or so mosquitoes. I woke up refreshed, motivated, ready for work. Unfortunately, the work that I had to do would be utterly depressing. Another stack of exams sat waiting for my red pen. After two hours of work, the results were clear: the science students, as usual, dominated the languages students. They scored about 4% higher than the languages kids and had a passing rate that was doubly better. Still, less than half the kids passed. This is going to require a speech later in the week.
The price of bread went up today, from 5 Mets per roll to 6. It's not a huge hit for us. The truth is, we'll probably just eat less bread. But coupled with other price increases, it's going to be a huge hit for a lot of Mozambicans. I don't know how they're going to handle it.
Because of a holiday tomorrow, Richie was able to cancel class this morning, but he couldn't avoid class in the afternoon. While he was in class, I kept myself busy with some small tasks. I had to punch grades into a spreadsheet and I also fixed up another window that had some holes. Satisfied with my work, I settled back into "A.H.W.O.S.G" (the title is just way too long to type out every time).
When Richie came back from the market, we did our regular "what should we do for dinner" dance. We were hoping for beef in the market, and decided on chicken as a back-up. The only problem: there was neither beef nor chicken in the market. Thank goodness we still had frozen chicken breast in our neighbor's freezer. We defrosted the chicken, through it in tomato sauce for pasta and had a tasty dinner. While watching "Shutter Island" -- which was one fucked up movie -- we made a cake, a celebration for not having to work tomorrow.
Tuesday was a national holiday in Mozambique: Lusaka Accord Day. For some reason, I decided to go to the town plaza for the ceremony. About half way through, I remembered why I never come to these things – they're always exactly the same. After the ceremony a government official gave a speech. I'm convinced that it's a standard speech with the date and holiday name changed. Following the speech was some dancing by the same groups that always danced. Ten minutes into the dancing, Richie and I had had enough.
On the way back to the house, something incredible happened. My glorious Rainbow sandals broke. In six years of wearing Rainbows, I have never had a sandal break. Sure, they get worn down, but the strap on these actually snapped. It was amazing. And depressing. My day is ruined. Only a post-lunch nap could make me feel better.
After my nap, I went over to the market to buy a new pair of sandals. These sandals are definitely not as comfortable as my Rainbows (R.I.P), and they are certainly not appropriate for the classroom. Still, I refuse to wear socks in this country and thankfully, I have another pair of sandals that are classroom appropriate. While at the market, I also bought some chicken cocktail sausages to be used for dinner.
Once I got back, Richie declared that he wanted fish together. Looks like I'm on my own with those chicken sausages. I made some rice, stir-fried some veggies and had a delicious dinner. After dinner, we watched “Up in the Air”, the best movie we've seen this week.
I had an English theater meeting on Wednesday morning. It's official: I should never show up on time for these meetings. I was there at 8:30 as usual, but none of my students were there. I came back to the house to pick up some work and went back. By that time, two students had arrived. We didn't get going until 9:30.
It's a good thing the kids have pretty much nailed their lines because I would have gone nuts otherwise. The timing of the play is also perfect. Now we just have to put together the proper clothing and we'll be good to go for next weekend.
When I came back from theater, I decided to prepare a lesson for class in the afternoon. I still wasn't sure if I was going to actually give the lesson. It depends on how long test correction takes and how demoralized the students are.
Shortly after lunch, a students came by my house to ask me to give class early. Naturally I said okay. I went over to the room and posted the answers on the blackboard. The kids were a little confused that I had posted for answer sheets. Then they realized that there were four different exams. Oops. They were probably wondering why I was so lax on wandering eyes. Now they knew.
It took an hour to go over the exam, and then I gave my spiel. I asked how many of them studied for the exam; no hands went up. Nice. Maybe that has something to do with everyone failing. They were defeated. They had mentally checked out for the day. A lesson would be of no use.
I came back from class at the perfect time to cook beans. I salvaged a bit of carvao from lunch to restart carvao. These beans were much better than Sunday's edition. Small victories. For our entertainment, we watched “The invention of Lying”. Back to shitty movies. I saved the night with a bit of “A.H.W.O.S.G”.
For most of the week, I haven't been able to sleep through the night. I've been waking up at 2:00 or so, dehydrated. Tonight was no different. Up at 2:08 AM. Lovely. I threw down a glass of water and slept until 7:30, with a brief wake-up around 5:00. It's not a sustainable schedule.
While I sat around the house in the morning, my phone rang. It was a strange hour for a phone call: 9:30. It was especially strange since that call was coming from California, just past midnight there. On the other end of the line were my brother and sister, fumbling around on speaker phone. I don't know how much ground we covered over the course of the conversation, but I do know that I probably remember the conversation a little more clearly than they do.
I spent the rest of the morning doing some English theater work. Signs needed to be designed and colored in. Richie said I was just bored. This was somewhat true. But it also had to be done. It kept me busy until lunch time.
I was scheduled for class right after lunch, at 12:30. I had the same gameplan as yesterday: just returning exams. I know these kids are going to be to frustrated by their grades to power through with a lesson. I gave the same speech as I did yesterday? “Who studied? More than 15 minutes? More than 30 minutes?” There was no need to go beyond that; nobody studied more than a half-hour for my exam. And they wonder why they failed.
After class, Richie and I headed to the market to make some dinner purchases. Word had gone around town that a cow would be slaughtered at some point in the afternoon. When we got there, the cow was all cut up, decapitated, meat sitting on it's hide. Yummy. It looked like there was a lot of good beef left so I asked for two kilos instead of our standard one. Ah, the power of having access to a freezer.
When I got home, I got to work on the meat, cutting it up into meal-sized chunks. The meat cut like butter, a good sign. There was no sense in discussing what we would do with this beef. Invariably, we just dance around the subject, leaving it to the other person to decide. I made the executive decision tonight: stir fry.
The beef was absolutely delicious. Tender, easy to chew, went down easy. It's the first time in a while that we've had a good cut of beef. I was especially happy with my decision to buy two kilos. We didn't want to wreck this night with a shitty movie. We looked through the reviews of the movies we had and found a movie with a good review – “Defendor”. We were skeptical, but it was actually pretty good.
Friday morning meant English theater practice. As usual, I showed up right on time at 8:30. Of course, no one was a round. At least I came prepared: I brought a book with me this time. We didn't get started until almost 10:00. This is getting frustrating, especially since we only have a week until the competition.
While I was at theater practice, Richie was on the road to Inhassoro. He was all but out of money. And with me going to Chimoio next weekend, he definitely would not have survived until our next payday.
The only upside to starting practice so late was that we finished right in time to make lunch. I had a full afternoon in front of me after lunch. Four classes, one right after the other. Or so they were scheduled to be that way. The first two went off as scheduled, but my when I went in for my third hour, another teacher was giving a test. And after that, another teacher wanted to give a lesson. Fine, whatever. I told a student to come get me when they were ready.
It was almost 4 o'clock by the time they came to get me. Apparently, plenty of students thought Friday meant weekend. Of the fifty students that were supposed to be in that class, exactly fifteen stuck around for English. I say again: and they wonder why they fail my exams. I had to reward these students. I gave each of them an extra ten percent on their exams. For at least five of them, this was the difference between failing and passing.
Richie was back at home by the time I got out of class around 5:15. He was tired, sunburnt, and covered in dirt. I knew I would be in charge of dinner tonight. We dug into our neighbor's freezer and pulled out some of our remaining beef. He needed a victory. I needed a victory. We went with cheese steaks. Victory! After dinner tonight, we watched “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”. It wasn't terrible, but there are certainly better movies out, I'm sure (I hope...).
Another night, another 2 AM wake-up. I'm over this.
We were supposed to have English theater practice this morning at 8:30, but I had forgotten about some teachers meeting at 8. Of course, this meant 8:40, and naturally, I wouldn't be attending the meeting. But it did mean English theater practice would have to be pushed to the afternoon.
I kept myself busy making some props for the play. In the play, there are a couple of scenes with some miners. To make it look good, we wanted to give them some tools. As such, my morning was spent with a Leatherman (way better than a Swiss Army Knife) making some mining tools. Considering the complete lack of resources, I think they came out well.
We rescheduled practice for 1:30 which in all likelihood meant 2 o'clock. This gave me plenty of time to eat lunch before heading over to the school – book in hand – at 1:30.
Then the waiting began. I waited. A couple more students arrived. We waited. A few more arrived. We waited. By 2:30, seven out of eight students were there. It took the last student another hour to get there. New record for tardiness.
The worst of it was, once everyone was there, they weren't taking it seriously. This with six days until we had to Chimoio. My counterpart on eye let them know our displeasure. We gave some directions on how we wanted things and they eventually got it together.
The evening was quieter than usual. Richie was locked away in his room well past our normal dinner time. I figured I was on my own for dinner. I didn't want to put together anything special, so I used one of my boxes of Mac and Cheese. Always good to have something easy on reserve. A bit later, a colleague came over wanting some information on physics. He didn't realize that the internet doesn't just give answers to problems. Yes, the internet may have tons of information, but it's not a substitute for thinking.
By 9 o'clock he was gone, just in time for me to go to bed.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Year 2 - Week 38: Great Expectations (I should know better by now...)
Something bad was bound to happen.
After an absolutely perfect day yesterday, there was no way that I could have a good day on Sunday. It started almost as soon as I woke up. In coming down to Vilanculos, I had hoped that I could update anti-virus on my laptop. When I took my laptop outside though, it wouldn't turn on. It turned on just fine when it was plugged in, but now it won't turn on. Great. Battery is shot. Again. There was a time - about six weeks ago - that I seriously considered bringing this computer home. It had been working decently. Then the video playback got choppy. Now this. Looks like this computer might meet another broomstick.
To clear my head, I made a run to the market to pick up some food for lunch. There was no need for epic negotiation today. I know the price of vegetables and at this point, most of the market people recognize me. I came back prepared to make some egg sandwiches for lunch.
Even though I slept well last night, I still felt tired. Maybe it was the heat. Hot season is officially in full swing here. Maybe it was just the frustration of dealing with a busted computer. Either way, after lunch, I was ready for a nap. It didn't take long. As soon as I hit the mattress, I was out cold for a solid two hours.
My day was almost salvaged late in the afternoon. I ran over to my tailor's shop to pick up a new shirt. He did a beautiful job on it and in just one day. Nice job, Alexandre. I came back to the girls' house looking forward to a conversation with my parents and pizza. The phone call, as usual, was lovely. Right in the middle of it, the pizza man came, but with only one pizza. Where's my pizza? They didn't have my toppings. Fine, bring a different pizza. Thirty minutes later, my new pizza arrived. I devoured it as we watched dinosaurs on "Jurrasic Park" devour people. Considering when that movie was made, the dinosaurs look shockingly good. Imagine what they could do with CGI today.
The silver lining to a bad day is that the next day is usually better. I wanted to hit to an internet cafe to try to update my anti-virus and read email. There were two options: do my shopping, then head to Inhassoro to hit the awesome internet cafe there; or hit the internet cafe here, get my shopping done, then take the chapa back to Mambone. Lucky for me, the internet cafe in Vil was open. Unluckily, the internet wasn't fast enough to update anti-virus. Either way, I was happy. I got everything else done and I was able to chat with some night-owl friends.
With a little time to kill before the chapa left, I got my shopping done. I needed to by big paper for Richie so he could give his exams. Then I dipped into the market to see if there was anything special and -- wait, what is that? Avocado?! Yes! Yes! Yes! Avocado season continues! Looks like we're doing Mexican food tonight.
The chapa ride to Mambone was largely uneventful. As more people piled in, the cobrador had the audacity to propose sitting five people. The other people in my row expressed their displeasure about this, but the cobrador was adamant. Then I did something I have barely done in this country: I spoke up. "I'm the biggest person in this chapa," -- which was true -- "there's no way a fifth person is sitting back here". With that, we sat "comfortably" four to a row.
I had no wait time at the river, which was fortunate considering I was the only person there. Once I arrived on the other side, the river was so low and the shore so slick with mud that I couldn't get to the path that leads back to our house. I had to scale a small cliff just to get to another path. Awesome.
I was absolutely exhausted and hungry when I got back to the house around 3 o'clock. Richie had made extra food for lunch. I don't know if he planned on eating it later, but I didn't care. I was hungry, and when I see food, no one is going to stop me. When he came back from class, he wasn't sad to see his food again.
The food fest continued after a short respite. We went with full-on Mexican food: rice, salsa, beans (from a can), meat, tortillas, and of course guacamole! Following dinner, we watched a couple episodes of "Glee" before crashing.
After a good night's sleep, I took a look at what I had planned on teaching, and wasn't at all happy with my plans. The phrasal verbs that I wanted to teach today not only had very narrow usage, but also didn't have good Portuguese equivalents. My gut said that this would be a disaster of a lesson, so I decided to change it.
That decision proved to be brilliant once I got in the classroom. The kids did a pretty good job of picking up on the six phrasal verbs I give them. I shudder at the thought of what would have happened had I gone with my original lesson plan.
Following class, I realized it was time to get back on the workout train. Having been gone the whole weekend, I didn't have the chance to work out. I know that the longer I put it off, the more difficult it is to get back into. After the workout, I was outside drinking my protein shake when one of our colleagues called me over. He needed help solving a math problem. I knew how to solve it but for some reason, I kept getting stuck. Finally, after a couple of minutes, it hit me and I had the answer. Victory.
For the first time in a while, we had shrimp for dinner. I don't know if shrimp are officially out of season, but we haven't seen them for a while. And it seems that we didn't get nearly as much as we have in the past. Regardless, we were happy to have shrimp because if we didn't have them, we would have eaten couvi, a meal we generally struggle through, then regret after. Thrown in with some pasta, it made for a tasty meal. After eating, we sat back for a couple of episodes of "Glee". Before falling asleep, I then started on another mammoth book, Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". RIchie gave it a not-so-positive review. I figure it can't be worse than "All the King's Men".
I woke up Wednesday morning to the sound of my phone ringing, ready for another day of English theater practice. As usual, I showed up right at 8:30. I don't know why I even bother when I know everyone else is going to be late. We know the 40-minute rule applies to just about everything here. Whenever something is scheduled for a certain time, add 40 minutes to it, and that will be the actually start time. This worked almost perfectly today. We got started at 9:08, 38 minutes after our scheduled start time.
Practice lasted for about 90 minutes. Most of the kids are doing a really good job. Seven out of eight of them have their lines memorized, but one girl is still bumbling along. I'm hoping she gets it together in the next couple weeks. Aside from that little issue, the play seems to be coming along. If they can speak loudly, I believe they have a chance to win.
Wednesday proved to be a very busy day. I'm giving the first midterm of this trimester on Friday, and it wasn't going to write itself. Of the thirty phrasal verbs I have taught these first few weeks, almost all of them will appear on the exam. This is a test of study skills. If they reviewed their notes for maybe thirty minutes, they'll do just fine. If not, it's going to be a bloodbath. This will also be the first time that I'll be giving the students a "bubble sheet" to fill out. I figure it's better to have them practice now than go into the National Exam cold. The only problem with the bubble sheet is that it will be remarkably easy to cheat. In the end, it will be their funeral: I'll be giving four different forms of the test. Looking at a neighbor's sheet will certainly lead to failure.
I was slated to teach the last two periods of the afternoon, but I had a feeling that I wouldn't have to wait that long. I think that I have taught early almost every Wednesday. There was no reason to believe that I would have to wait until 4:00 today. My assumption was proved right around 3:00. Two students came by asking for me to come in to teach. Absolutely. Class I guess went okay. I asked my students if they did their difficult (and rarely given) homework assignment of writing two sentences. Three students did it. Looks like they'll be getting extra credit on the midterm.
While I was in class, a pot of beans sat on the stove. We wanted a delicious meal tonight. After all, there was cause for celebration. With this day in the past, we have only one more full month in Mozambique. Of course, we still have twenty-nine days this month and twenty-three in November, buy ya know, we take our victories when we can get them. The beans were delicious, and to top it off, we made some chocolate cake. While the cake sat in the oven, we watched "Grown Ups", a film with a whole bunch of funny people. I bought it in Vil, thinking it would be okay. After we watched it, we agreed that it probably went straight to DVD.
After such a productive Wednesday, I had a shockingly quiet Thursday morning. I didn't have any preparation for class to do. I didn't have any exams to write. So I sat around reading an old magazine in the morning.
It was nice to have that bit of down time because the afternoon would be a little busier. I went into class first period of the afternoon to give my lesson. The students were relieved to hear that this lesson wouldn't be on the exam. It wouldn't be particulary fair to them. I gave the same lesson as yesterday, including a small bit on how to fill out their answer sheet.
I was on the receiving end of some good fortune late in the afternoon. Somebody was working on the energy in the school, which allowed me to print and photocopy my exams in the afternoon instead of at night. While I was in the office, I handed over a copy of the answer sheet to the school director and left a copy on the computer. Now all of the teachers can wreak havoc on their students with long, boring multiple choice exams.
Our evening was slightly depressing. We have come to the end of the season of "Glee". We watched thirteen episodes in four days. Very sad. At least we know that the next time we see glee, we'll be in America. After dinner and "Glee", I continued on the newest book. It has a huge introduction, which I finally got through. Maybe this weekend, I'll get to start on the actual book.
Friday was a busy day all around. As I've come to expect, English theater practice started late. Still, I went in at 8:30. I can always hope. One of the students had to go the hospital before practice, which made things interesting. My counterpart went to Beira yesterday -- why, I don't know -- so I was on my own with the students. Someone had to fill in for the student, so ended up reading his lines. I think all the students, especially the girls, got really timid when we had scenes together. It was pretty funny.
I managed to get a workout in before cooking lunch. I'm in for a busy afternoon, so I knew working out then wouldn't be possible. Following lunch, it was off to the classroom.
This was an interesting test, for a lot of reasons. First, the content is not the easiest stuff in the world. Still, no one came to my house to ask questions about the content, so I'm under the assumption that they basically understand. Second, as mentioned early, it's the first time that they'll be using an answer sheet for a multiple choice exam. And third, I'm going to be very lax when it comes to controlling this exam. I don't care if a student looks at his or her neighbor's paper because the exams are different. I really feel sorry for the poor saps who depend on their neighbors for answers. It's going to be a rough exam for them.
I wanted to get the exams corrected as soon as possible. With an answer sheet, it shouldn't take so long. I was wrong. Painfully wrong. The students did miserably. There were plenty of students who received less than 25 percent low even by Mozambican education standards. And yet, the test was fair. Two students received 18 out of 20. It's pretty clear who studied.
I got through the first class and had to stop. It was just too depressing. In the first class, 22 percent passed the exam, and the average score was failing. I cringed thinking about how bad it would have been had those two students not received 18.
There was only one thing that could get me out of this depression: scotch. After dinner, Richie, another colleague and I headed out to the villa to do some drinking. Some colleagues were already there when we arrived. I bought the bottle of scotch and we got to work. In two hours, the thing was gone and my head was spinning badly. At least I wasn't thinking about the exam anymore.
I woke up Saturday morning feeeling miserable, as expected. There was more than just a hangover though. My head and neck were invaded by mosquitoes last night. I guess that's what I get for passing out on my floor for a couple hours.
Even though I was far from 100%, I still had some responsibilities to take care of on Saturday. I had an English theater meeting at 8:30, which naturally started at 9. I had the kids practice outside today. They need to start using louder voices. And as a bonus, it felt a lot better to be outside than trapped in a tiny classroom.
Once practice ended, it was right back to bed until 12:30. Finally, I felt like I had recovered. Richie decided to go with potato pancakes to fill our empty stomachs and I could not have agreed more with that decision. After lunch, the rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet. I read a bit of an "Economist" and caught up on some real news, but other than that, I can't say we did much.
Late in the afternoon, we sent Sozinho to the market to buy beef. We knew this was a gamble. If there was no beef in the market, we'd have to pull out something magical for dinner. Of course, there was no beef today. So we opened our last can of turkey and made stirfry. With no more episodes of "Glee" to watch, we watched a movie called "She's Out of Your League". It was okay. We had higher expectations, but it came up well short.
Story of my week.
After an absolutely perfect day yesterday, there was no way that I could have a good day on Sunday. It started almost as soon as I woke up. In coming down to Vilanculos, I had hoped that I could update anti-virus on my laptop. When I took my laptop outside though, it wouldn't turn on. It turned on just fine when it was plugged in, but now it won't turn on. Great. Battery is shot. Again. There was a time - about six weeks ago - that I seriously considered bringing this computer home. It had been working decently. Then the video playback got choppy. Now this. Looks like this computer might meet another broomstick.
To clear my head, I made a run to the market to pick up some food for lunch. There was no need for epic negotiation today. I know the price of vegetables and at this point, most of the market people recognize me. I came back prepared to make some egg sandwiches for lunch.
Even though I slept well last night, I still felt tired. Maybe it was the heat. Hot season is officially in full swing here. Maybe it was just the frustration of dealing with a busted computer. Either way, after lunch, I was ready for a nap. It didn't take long. As soon as I hit the mattress, I was out cold for a solid two hours.
My day was almost salvaged late in the afternoon. I ran over to my tailor's shop to pick up a new shirt. He did a beautiful job on it and in just one day. Nice job, Alexandre. I came back to the girls' house looking forward to a conversation with my parents and pizza. The phone call, as usual, was lovely. Right in the middle of it, the pizza man came, but with only one pizza. Where's my pizza? They didn't have my toppings. Fine, bring a different pizza. Thirty minutes later, my new pizza arrived. I devoured it as we watched dinosaurs on "Jurrasic Park" devour people. Considering when that movie was made, the dinosaurs look shockingly good. Imagine what they could do with CGI today.
The silver lining to a bad day is that the next day is usually better. I wanted to hit to an internet cafe to try to update my anti-virus and read email. There were two options: do my shopping, then head to Inhassoro to hit the awesome internet cafe there; or hit the internet cafe here, get my shopping done, then take the chapa back to Mambone. Lucky for me, the internet cafe in Vil was open. Unluckily, the internet wasn't fast enough to update anti-virus. Either way, I was happy. I got everything else done and I was able to chat with some night-owl friends.
With a little time to kill before the chapa left, I got my shopping done. I needed to by big paper for Richie so he could give his exams. Then I dipped into the market to see if there was anything special and -- wait, what is that? Avocado?! Yes! Yes! Yes! Avocado season continues! Looks like we're doing Mexican food tonight.
The chapa ride to Mambone was largely uneventful. As more people piled in, the cobrador had the audacity to propose sitting five people. The other people in my row expressed their displeasure about this, but the cobrador was adamant. Then I did something I have barely done in this country: I spoke up. "I'm the biggest person in this chapa," -- which was true -- "there's no way a fifth person is sitting back here". With that, we sat "comfortably" four to a row.
I had no wait time at the river, which was fortunate considering I was the only person there. Once I arrived on the other side, the river was so low and the shore so slick with mud that I couldn't get to the path that leads back to our house. I had to scale a small cliff just to get to another path. Awesome.
I was absolutely exhausted and hungry when I got back to the house around 3 o'clock. Richie had made extra food for lunch. I don't know if he planned on eating it later, but I didn't care. I was hungry, and when I see food, no one is going to stop me. When he came back from class, he wasn't sad to see his food again.
The food fest continued after a short respite. We went with full-on Mexican food: rice, salsa, beans (from a can), meat, tortillas, and of course guacamole! Following dinner, we watched a couple episodes of "Glee" before crashing.
After a good night's sleep, I took a look at what I had planned on teaching, and wasn't at all happy with my plans. The phrasal verbs that I wanted to teach today not only had very narrow usage, but also didn't have good Portuguese equivalents. My gut said that this would be a disaster of a lesson, so I decided to change it.
That decision proved to be brilliant once I got in the classroom. The kids did a pretty good job of picking up on the six phrasal verbs I give them. I shudder at the thought of what would have happened had I gone with my original lesson plan.
Following class, I realized it was time to get back on the workout train. Having been gone the whole weekend, I didn't have the chance to work out. I know that the longer I put it off, the more difficult it is to get back into. After the workout, I was outside drinking my protein shake when one of our colleagues called me over. He needed help solving a math problem. I knew how to solve it but for some reason, I kept getting stuck. Finally, after a couple of minutes, it hit me and I had the answer. Victory.
For the first time in a while, we had shrimp for dinner. I don't know if shrimp are officially out of season, but we haven't seen them for a while. And it seems that we didn't get nearly as much as we have in the past. Regardless, we were happy to have shrimp because if we didn't have them, we would have eaten couvi, a meal we generally struggle through, then regret after. Thrown in with some pasta, it made for a tasty meal. After eating, we sat back for a couple of episodes of "Glee". Before falling asleep, I then started on another mammoth book, Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". RIchie gave it a not-so-positive review. I figure it can't be worse than "All the King's Men".
I woke up Wednesday morning to the sound of my phone ringing, ready for another day of English theater practice. As usual, I showed up right at 8:30. I don't know why I even bother when I know everyone else is going to be late. We know the 40-minute rule applies to just about everything here. Whenever something is scheduled for a certain time, add 40 minutes to it, and that will be the actually start time. This worked almost perfectly today. We got started at 9:08, 38 minutes after our scheduled start time.
Practice lasted for about 90 minutes. Most of the kids are doing a really good job. Seven out of eight of them have their lines memorized, but one girl is still bumbling along. I'm hoping she gets it together in the next couple weeks. Aside from that little issue, the play seems to be coming along. If they can speak loudly, I believe they have a chance to win.
Wednesday proved to be a very busy day. I'm giving the first midterm of this trimester on Friday, and it wasn't going to write itself. Of the thirty phrasal verbs I have taught these first few weeks, almost all of them will appear on the exam. This is a test of study skills. If they reviewed their notes for maybe thirty minutes, they'll do just fine. If not, it's going to be a bloodbath. This will also be the first time that I'll be giving the students a "bubble sheet" to fill out. I figure it's better to have them practice now than go into the National Exam cold. The only problem with the bubble sheet is that it will be remarkably easy to cheat. In the end, it will be their funeral: I'll be giving four different forms of the test. Looking at a neighbor's sheet will certainly lead to failure.
I was slated to teach the last two periods of the afternoon, but I had a feeling that I wouldn't have to wait that long. I think that I have taught early almost every Wednesday. There was no reason to believe that I would have to wait until 4:00 today. My assumption was proved right around 3:00. Two students came by asking for me to come in to teach. Absolutely. Class I guess went okay. I asked my students if they did their difficult (and rarely given) homework assignment of writing two sentences. Three students did it. Looks like they'll be getting extra credit on the midterm.
While I was in class, a pot of beans sat on the stove. We wanted a delicious meal tonight. After all, there was cause for celebration. With this day in the past, we have only one more full month in Mozambique. Of course, we still have twenty-nine days this month and twenty-three in November, buy ya know, we take our victories when we can get them. The beans were delicious, and to top it off, we made some chocolate cake. While the cake sat in the oven, we watched "Grown Ups", a film with a whole bunch of funny people. I bought it in Vil, thinking it would be okay. After we watched it, we agreed that it probably went straight to DVD.
After such a productive Wednesday, I had a shockingly quiet Thursday morning. I didn't have any preparation for class to do. I didn't have any exams to write. So I sat around reading an old magazine in the morning.
It was nice to have that bit of down time because the afternoon would be a little busier. I went into class first period of the afternoon to give my lesson. The students were relieved to hear that this lesson wouldn't be on the exam. It wouldn't be particulary fair to them. I gave the same lesson as yesterday, including a small bit on how to fill out their answer sheet.
I was on the receiving end of some good fortune late in the afternoon. Somebody was working on the energy in the school, which allowed me to print and photocopy my exams in the afternoon instead of at night. While I was in the office, I handed over a copy of the answer sheet to the school director and left a copy on the computer. Now all of the teachers can wreak havoc on their students with long, boring multiple choice exams.
Our evening was slightly depressing. We have come to the end of the season of "Glee". We watched thirteen episodes in four days. Very sad. At least we know that the next time we see glee, we'll be in America. After dinner and "Glee", I continued on the newest book. It has a huge introduction, which I finally got through. Maybe this weekend, I'll get to start on the actual book.
Friday was a busy day all around. As I've come to expect, English theater practice started late. Still, I went in at 8:30. I can always hope. One of the students had to go the hospital before practice, which made things interesting. My counterpart went to Beira yesterday -- why, I don't know -- so I was on my own with the students. Someone had to fill in for the student, so ended up reading his lines. I think all the students, especially the girls, got really timid when we had scenes together. It was pretty funny.
I managed to get a workout in before cooking lunch. I'm in for a busy afternoon, so I knew working out then wouldn't be possible. Following lunch, it was off to the classroom.
This was an interesting test, for a lot of reasons. First, the content is not the easiest stuff in the world. Still, no one came to my house to ask questions about the content, so I'm under the assumption that they basically understand. Second, as mentioned early, it's the first time that they'll be using an answer sheet for a multiple choice exam. And third, I'm going to be very lax when it comes to controlling this exam. I don't care if a student looks at his or her neighbor's paper because the exams are different. I really feel sorry for the poor saps who depend on their neighbors for answers. It's going to be a rough exam for them.
I wanted to get the exams corrected as soon as possible. With an answer sheet, it shouldn't take so long. I was wrong. Painfully wrong. The students did miserably. There were plenty of students who received less than 25 percent low even by Mozambican education standards. And yet, the test was fair. Two students received 18 out of 20. It's pretty clear who studied.
I got through the first class and had to stop. It was just too depressing. In the first class, 22 percent passed the exam, and the average score was failing. I cringed thinking about how bad it would have been had those two students not received 18.
There was only one thing that could get me out of this depression: scotch. After dinner, Richie, another colleague and I headed out to the villa to do some drinking. Some colleagues were already there when we arrived. I bought the bottle of scotch and we got to work. In two hours, the thing was gone and my head was spinning badly. At least I wasn't thinking about the exam anymore.
I woke up Saturday morning feeeling miserable, as expected. There was more than just a hangover though. My head and neck were invaded by mosquitoes last night. I guess that's what I get for passing out on my floor for a couple hours.
Even though I was far from 100%, I still had some responsibilities to take care of on Saturday. I had an English theater meeting at 8:30, which naturally started at 9. I had the kids practice outside today. They need to start using louder voices. And as a bonus, it felt a lot better to be outside than trapped in a tiny classroom.
Once practice ended, it was right back to bed until 12:30. Finally, I felt like I had recovered. Richie decided to go with potato pancakes to fill our empty stomachs and I could not have agreed more with that decision. After lunch, the rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet. I read a bit of an "Economist" and caught up on some real news, but other than that, I can't say we did much.
Late in the afternoon, we sent Sozinho to the market to buy beef. We knew this was a gamble. If there was no beef in the market, we'd have to pull out something magical for dinner. Of course, there was no beef today. So we opened our last can of turkey and made stirfry. With no more episodes of "Glee" to watch, we watched a movie called "She's Out of Your League". It was okay. We had higher expectations, but it came up well short.
Story of my week.
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