Well, this is something new and exciting: electricity in the morning. I know, I know, it’s been almost six months since “twenty-four hour” electricity was installed in our house. And for the most part, it’s been reliable. But this last week has been nothing short of awful.
Sunday, however, started out promisingly. Clouds continued to fill the sky; a heavy breeze blew all morning, keeping things sweatshirt cool. And the electricity was working. It couldn’t have worked at a better time. A colleague came over yesterday asking me to type up a couple of math exams, which I was happy to do. Not only is he extraordinarily inexperienced when it comes to s, but I really needed something to do.
The math exams provided but a little distraction. By 9:00, I had finished working. Now the only problem would be printing. Since none of the teachers here has an updated anti-virus, all of them are scared shitless (and rightfully so) about viruses spreading via flash drive. The only reasonable solution now is to have things saved to CD and then copied to a computer that has the printer installed. Pain in the ass? Not really? Expensive? Not extraordinarily (about fifty cents for a blank cd here). But inconvenient? Yeah. I didn’t have much of a choice though. I made my directions very clear: buy a blank CD and talk to the assistant director about opening the office in the morning to print. We’ll see how he does.
In the meantime, the rest of the morning was quiet. I sought ways to distract myself, just looking to make it to lunch time. From there, everything would be okay.
The first few post-lunch hours were spent napping. It’s really hard to justify taking a nap having done so little work. The only way I can justify it is that we’ve been up since 5:00 and the boredom of Machanga is slowly killing us. We vowed that we would get out of here at some point this week for greener (or I guess, sandier) pastures. If nothing else, it would help us recover some of our lost sanity.
All afternoon, we tried to figure out what we should do for dinner. We kept putting off the decision, but late in the afternoon, our hand was forced. It was 5 in the afternoon, and we still had no idea what we were going to eat. We ran to the market to see what we could get our hands on. We were then faced with a slew of problems. Being Sunday, most of the stores were closed. The one store that was open didn’t have anything worthy of being dinner. And the butcher didn’t have meat and didn’t have plans to kill anything until at least tomorrow.
So we’re screwed on dinner. And on top of it, the power was out. Charming. I will say this. Given the choice between having energy in the morning or having it at night, dear god please give me energy at night. When it gets dark here, seeing our hands right in front of our face is challenging, and we would prefer to not be outside at night, when the mosquitoes come out to play.
With few options, we turned to egg fried rice for dinner. Richie decided to add fish to his. In the process of frying his fish, he set the entire frying pan on fire. This was one of the few times where living in a cinderblock house had an upside. If we had a house like the girls’ house in Vilanculos, we might not have a house anymore.
After talking to my parents, Richie and I started an episode of “The West Wing”. Everything was fine until Richie’s computer froze twice. We were tired and didn’t want to deal with the computer, so we gave up for the night.
I was up at 2:30 in the morning, dry-mouthed, awakened by a dream that involved my brother, magic socks, driving through Chicago in reverse, and a bottle of scotch. It was at this time that four things became very apparent:
1) I really need to get off of these malaria drugs.
2) It was going to be hot. There were no clouds in the sky. So much for our extra days of winter
3) It was going to be a long day.
4) Someone needs to kill the goddamn rooster that is crowing at 2:30 in the morning. It’s pitch black outside. There is no reason to be waking up anyone or anything at this hour.
All those thoughts swirled through my head as I struggled to get back to sleep. Eventually the rooster shut up and I was down for the count. Richie would tell me later that the rooster got him too. He was up and moving at 4:00 and there was no going back to sleep for him. It was definitely going to be a long day.
Things were back to normal Monday morning. The power was out again when I woke up, but came on shortly after. The colleague who was supposed to buy a CD, amazingly, did as he was told. I saved his documents, plus our grades, to disc and ran over to the school to see if I could print.
Conveniently, the school generator was pumping. This shouldn’t be a problem at all. Thoughts like that, though, can be dangerous. I saw the director and asked if it was possible to print these documents. “Oh no, this electricity is about to go away. He [my colleague] should have talked to the assistant director about this yesterday.” Funny, that’s exactly what I told him.
I was truly surprised when the electricity at the school actually did go out, just as the director had said. All of this left my colleague very concerned. After all, he wanted to give his test today. Planning is everything, right? Twelve hours too late, he talked with the assistant directors and I was able to print both his exams and our grades.
We received some surprise packages from Peace Corps just before lunch. Our quarterly newsletter as well as some magazines arrived. We already got our hands on the newsletter via email. At least the magazines will make for a couple hours of reading. I’m always shocked that Peace Corps can get us mail, mostly because there isn’t a post office anywhere close to here. Whoever is bringing this stuff up here, I’m sure they’re pissed off that they’re coming all the way to Machanga just to deliver these packets.
Richie and I went on a small mission after lunch. We ran over to Madinha’s to discuss our upcoming goodbye party. We’ll be throwing this festa in a couple weeks and we wanted to discuss prices with Madinha. We’re probably going to buy everything from her anyways, so she can give us a good estimate on what this thing is going to cost us. From her estimate, it looks like it’s going to cost a little less than we expected. Still, we’re each spending a ton of money to make this party go.
We were much better prepared for dinner tonight. I had beans soaking all day, so they’d be quick to cook in the evening. I put the fire up around 4:30 and got cooking. Naturally, the energy was out again and would stay out all the way through our meal. Richie was in bed by 8 o’clock. Just as he crawled into bed, the electricity came on. Nice timing. I refused to go to be at such an early hour. I stayed up reading for a bit before my body could take no more. I was gone by 9:15.
Tuesday was the day that we began to search for our lost sanity. We’ve lost it the last couple of days and we figured that we could find some sanity in just about any other location. The closest place for us to go was Inhassoro, so we decided that Inhassoro would be the best place the go. The less traveling we have to do in these last few weeks, the better.
The travel day was pretty typical for us. We took the good path to the river, which made me happy. When we arrived, no one else was waiting to cross. We told the boat-man that there was nobody coming down this way. He completely disregarded this news. “We’re gonna wait for a couple more people.
Eventually, he caved. He realized that I was right. There really was nobody crossing. Even by the time we made it across the river, nobody had arrived on the Machanga side.
It wasn’t a particularly pleasant ride out from Mambone to Maluvane. We didn’t have any wait time, but the car sucked. It was packed with disgusting dried fish. Richie had the good fortune of being squished right up against the fish. I definitely got the better end of the draw, sitting half in the truck and half out of the truck. Ninety minutes later, we got out of the car, Richie smelling awful and me slightly bruised.
You would think that things could only get better after a ride like that, but somehow, they got worse. The truck we got in barely started. The driver was not quite with it. He was sober, for sure, but he just really wasn’t paying attention. At one point, he tried to pull on to the road while another car was barreling right toward us. This is why we don’t want to travel more than we have to.
We did make it to Inhassoro in one piece. I’m not quite sure how. We actually beat our colleague to his own site. He was coming up from Maputo, having been at training for Moz 15’s. While we waited for him, we got in touch with another Volunteer in Inhassoro. The three of us headed to the new bakery in Inhassoro, which has also started serving pizza.
We almost felt obligated to try this pizza. We wanted to know if it stacked up to the pizza in Vilanculos. The price was certainly better, but the quality was not. Yes, we pay twice as much in Vilanculos, but the pizza is easily twice as delicious.
On the way back from lunch, I stopped by a wood artisan’s shop. I wanted to have a plaque made for our second place finish in the English theater competition. He told me to make a model of what I wanted and he could probably have it done by Thursday.
I knew what I had to do. I took the next hour to design exactly how I wanted the plaque. I wanted to make this task as simple as possible. All the craftsman has to do is copy the exact size of the piece of paper and it would be perfect. I returned an hour later to the shop, model in hand, and left the man to do his work.
While I was working on the model, our host arrived home. He was followed in by another Volunteer who lives south of Vilanculos. This was going to be a good night. Whenever we get together, we always make good food, and tonight would be no exception.
The four of us went to the market to find some goods for dinner: a couple veggies, a can of beans and a frozen chicken. I brought an avocado down from Machanga. It’s burrito night.
The burritos, as you’d expect, were delicious. The only downside was that the avocado did not survive the trip. At some point, it burst in my backpack and spoiled. This made us all a little sad, but it’s hard to be really sad when you’re eating burritos.
We didn’t stay up that late, like we usually do. We all traveled today and it showed. Maybe we’ll do a little better tomorrow.
I had a little bit of work to do on Wednesday morning. I needed to hit the internet café – the crazy fast internet café – to download some drivers for the computer I’m currently using. It’s one of the computers that were donated to the teachers of the school here, but he doesn’t really use his computer. He told me I could use it until we leave, which was exceedingly kind. What we really need is audio and video, so we can watch our shows at night. In the half-hour I had at the café, I managed to find and download both. I now have a fully functional computer. It should hold up for the next couple weeks.
One of the big advantages of Inhassoro is that it has a beach. The beach itself is better than the beach in Vilanculos. The tide doesn’t go out so far and it gets deeper faster. The problem with the ocean in Inhassoro is that it is really dirty and salty. Still, that wasn’t going to stop us. We walked over to the market to buy some snacks, then headed to the beach. The water, as expected was dirty, but it felt good. The ocean has yet to become a bathtub, like it will be in December and January. The combination of hot weather and cool ocean was perfect.
On the way back from the ocean, I stopped by the craft shop. I wanted to see what kind of progress was being made. The artisan gave me good news: he could have it done by the end of the day. “Awesome,” I said. “Can I see?” When he pulled the plaque out for me, I was only slightly horrified. He broke up two words over different lines and managed to misspell the name of the city where the competition took place, even though it was written right in front of him. I made my displeasure known and told him what to correct. He said he’d have it done by tomorrow. Good.
Late in the afternoon, the four of us headed toward the market, which is conveniently located near the chapa stop. The Volunteer who lives south of Vilanculos needed to get back home. The remaining three of us hit the market to get supplies for beans.
As usual, I did the bean-cooking. These would have been the best beans I’ve ever made, except we didn’t have any hot peppers. Even so, the food was delicious. For our entertainment, we watched “Pirate Radio”, a film about illegal radio stations playing rock music in England in the ‘60s. It wasn’t a great film – had some cheap laughs. It was a mindless movie, which was exactly what we wanted. Exhausted from a long day, we all went to bed.
We were all awake early on Thursday. Richie wanted to head back home. I had to stay because the plaque wasn’t finished. While I waited, I went to the internet café to catch up with some friends from home. It had been a while since we had talked, so I was happy to catch them. By the time my hour was finished, the plaque had been completed. Yes! It looked great. Everything was spelled correctly, on their correct lines. This should make the school happy.
I could have easily made it home had I chosen to go back, but I really didn’t want to travel today. The whole point of the trip was to not be in Machanga. Why would I go back when I can stay? So I stayed.
As long as I was in town and doing nothing, I wanted to at least make myself useful. The Volunteer with whom I was staying wanted to put a closet up in his room. The only problem was that he had all of his exams to correct. I told him that I’d be able to do it. I spent the rest of the afternoon cutting drilling into a wall, cutting bamboo, and hanging the bamboo up. It wasn’t my best work, and I told him as such, but it’s better than nothing.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet on my end. My buddy was busy grading so I just tried to stay out of his way. Amazingly, we managed to make it to almost 8 o’clock without eating dinner. While he graded, I took care of the cooking. Spaghetti was quick and easy and tasty. I watched a couple episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” before going to bed.
I was up and at it pretty early Friday morning. I didn’t have much reason to be, but by 7 o’clock, I was already wide awake. So much for getting a good night’s sleep before a travel day. I said goodbye to the Volunteer who was so generous for hosting me for a couple days and waited on the side of the road.
I didn’t have to wait too long to get a ride. Only three or four trucks passed by me before one stopped to pick me up. I had hoped that this car would make it all the way to Maluvane, my crossroads, but there was a significant crowd waiting to go back into Inhassoro.
It proved to be a blessing in disguise. A van came flying up the EN1. In fact, it blew right by me by about 100 yards. At least it stopped. I ran over to the van and asked if they would give me ride. I had to pay, but it was absolutely worth it. We made it from one crossroads to another in twenty-eight minutes, definitely the fastest time for me.
I thought my good luck was going to continue as two Land Rovers pulled up into Maluvane, heading toward Mambone. Unfortunately, both of them blew right by me. I hate people like that. After about half an hour, four of us convinced a driver to take us into town. We said that we would pay extra, but as we went toward town, we got more people. In the end, we all paid the right price.
After crossing the river, I walked back toward the school. Just as I hit the main road, a car going to the school stopped for me. There was no room in the bed of the truck, so I stood on the bumper and held on for dear life. We hit two good bumps, and I almost fell off the truck. Could have been a terrible end to an otherwise good travel day, but I managed to hold on.
All of this was done before lunchtime, which I thought was pretty impressive. Richie took care of cooking. It’s our unspoken deal: one person travels, the other person cooks.
I actually had some work to do in the afternoon. I wanted to show my students their grades for the trimester, but most of the students were not there when it was my turn to go into the classroom. I told the few students that were there to have people come to my house to see their grades.
At first, they came one by one. Then they came in pairs. Eventually, I had groups of seven or eight coming to my house. This was much better than going into the classroom. I had the classroom come to me.
Most of the students managed to make it to my house. The ones that didn’t will see their grades soon enough. Once the flow of students reduced to a trickle, I went to the market to find some food for dinner. The butcher killed a cow earlier in the day (which I wasn’t aware of). But I know that the good stuff goes quickly. I figured I’d at least ask if he still had filet, but it was hard for me to be disappointed when he said no. I resigned myself to eating lower quality beef.
We threw the beef on the barbecue, pairing it with some rice and tomato sauce. The difference between filet and this beef was noticeable, to say the least. It was still good. Just not filet good. We wrapped up the night by watching three episodes of “Modern Family”.
I slept remarkably well Friday night. I guess all I needed was a half a day of travel followed by a bit of work to get some good rest. Even after the good night of rest, I was reluctant to stay out of bed. Instead, I read a bit of “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, a book that we took up with us from Inhassoro. Really, we’re not at all desperate for new stuff to read. Really.
Things here have officially ground to a halt. Nobody did anything today – not us, not anyone. At least not anything of value.
My one activity for the day was heading into an office to see what was wrong with a computer. A colleague from last year told me that his computer wasn’t turning on. One day, it turned on; the next day it didn’t. Computers just don’t do that. I ran over to his office, didn’t do anything special – didn’t do anything, actually – and the computer turned on just fine. I’d like to say I have some magic touch, but if that were the case, my computer would still be working.
After lunch and a nice, needed shower, Richie and I went to the villa to talk to a shop owner. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be throwing a goodbye/thank you party which will require ten frozen chickens. The shop owner told us that he would have no problem getting these chickens for us before the party. Having succeeded in this, Richie and I rewarded ourselves with ice-cold sodas.
The rest of the day was just really quiet. We made some stir fry for dinner and watched a couple of episodes of “Modern Family” before turning in for the night.
Another week done, not too many more to go.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Year 2 - Week 44: Canada Invades (kinda) and the Fight Against Boredom
A successful weekend in Vilanculos behind us, it was time to head back to Machanga Sunday morning. We won't have to make this trip many more times. We'll probably make it down to Vilanculos one more time before getting out of here.
We followed our normal getting home-routine. Around 8:45, after packing our things and saying our goodbyes, we walked toward the new market/chapa stop, making brief stops to buy a newspaper and to take money from the bank. We claimed our spots in the chapa and then I headed into the market, needing bread and hoping for avocado. It's way out of season, but since Vilanculos gets so many South Africans coming through -- and thus, so many South African imports arrive -- it wasn't entirely impossible. On this day, the dream came through. Sure the avocados were five times as expensive as they would be during Mozambican avocado season, but for a chance at delicious burritos, we couldn't say no.
The ride home was for the most part uneventful, just the way we like it. We made a couple purchases in Mambone before crossing the river.
Oh, yes. Crossing the river. Normally, we walk about a kilometer from Mambone to the river, then cross the river for ten Mets, then walk another couple of kilometers from our side of the river to our house. Richie, however, is an advocate of a "better" way and I agreed to go with him. The pros are: shorter walk to the river, shorter boat ride across the river, five Mets instead of ten to cross and possibly a shorter walk. The cons are: at least two knee-high creeks that we had to cross by foot and trudging through mud for the first five to ten minutes. Now, I'm all for saving money and saving time. But to me, it wasn't worth it to save five mets and ten minutes.
Regardless, we made it home with no problems and very dirty feet. We had a master plan for food for the next couple of days -- beans tonight (with guacamole, of course), then using some leftovers for burritos on Monday. Because we didn't soak the beans, we knew they would need a while to cook. So we lit carvao, threw a pot of water on the coals, and walked to the market to buy some tomatoes and oil.
As we walked toward Madinha's for the oil, I noticed that someone with white legs was standing outside her store. Oh no. I figured this could only be South African Greg, which meant we'd probably get roped into drinking. But as we approached, three things were very clear: 1) this muzungu wasn't Greg; 2) like Greg, this guy had a big belly and was very drunk; and 3) he brought along a whole pack of muzungus with him.
There inside Madinha's store was a group of ten Canadians, all here from Alexis's church group. They're out here building a dormitory and a school out toward the EN1, even more in the middle of nowhere than we are. We tried to make a quick hit and escape, but our new drunk buddy insisted on buying us beers and food. And who are we to say no to that?
By the time we got back from the villa, the carvao had gone out and the water wasn't anywhere close to hot. Okay, we'll start again. Eventually, the beans cooked and the guacamole made them more delicious than usual. For our entertainment, we have a new show to watch: "Modern Family". It's sick comedy, which is perfect for us. I'm sure we'll be done with it by the weekend.
Monday was a pretty quiet day here. I think a lot of people were gearing up for the party tomorrow. In the meantime, we followed our now regular Monday agenda -- check NFL scores, followed by reading whatever we can get our hands on. These days, we're reading "Best American Sports Writing" from 2008, courtesy of a Volunteer in Inhassoro.
At 12:30, I ran over to school to tell my students that anyone who hadn't taken my exam could take it this afternoon at my house. Half of the four kids showed up to take the exam and they both did okay enough. In the evening, just before dinner, I ran over to the director's office to install a printer on someone's laptop.
Then, just as it got dark, we had our glorious burrito meal. The only thing that was missing from these burritos was cheese. Even so, with filet mignon as our meat and guacamole, we were very happy. Like last night, we watched a couple episodes of "Modern Family" before going to sleep.
I know it's hard to believe, but Tuesday was yet another holiday in Mozambique. Tuesday was Teachers' Day. This is probably the single biggest party day at school. And we'd be starting early.
Around 9:00, Richie and I headed over to the town plaza. If this were any other day, I wouldn't have gone, but missing today would be like missing your own birthday. The plaza was boring as usual, but had two little twists. The first was, after the national, which maybe about three-quarters of the people know, the teachers sang their "Teachers' Hymn". The second twist was, just like last year, a march through the town. And just like last year, about a quarter of the way through the march, we peeled off to meet some teachers at a bar
And so it began at 10:00. A group of about ten of us threw down at least two cases of beer over the next couple of hours. Richie ended up going home around 1, while I scored some food and talked to the Canadians back at Madinha's. At some point, a game of slamball was played. I came home in time to make some spaghetti, then laid myself out on the patio for three hours. It was just way too hot to be inside.
I woke up around 9:15 to the sound of extraordinarily loud music. The house behind ours decided that this would be a good night to test out some new speakers. I popped in my ear plugs, took a Benadryl, and promptly fell asleep.
Everybody seemed to be up and moving pretty decently on Wednesday. People seemed to pick up where they left off on Monday, and so did I. I was awake way too early for my own well-being -- 6:15. I knew I wouldn't make it too long without food. And the bread in our house had gone stale overnight, so I made some tomato sauce and spaghetti. I know, two consecutive meals of spaghetti is pathetic, but what can I do?
I was scheduled for class late in the afternoon. All I have to do is return exams and discuss the test a bit. I'm actually going to spend a fair amount of time talking about this one. I want the students' input on the difficulty of the questions, so I'll be able to prepare them better for their exams next month.
I played the waiting game all afternoon, hoping that my students would come get me early. The only problem is that most teachers are giving their exams this week, so I'm sure there won't be many free class periods. In the meantime, I gave myself a much-needed haircut. Should be good to go for the next week or ten days
While my students may have failed me in not coming to my house to get me early, I still got a win When I went over to the school at fifth period, my scheduled teaching time, the other class didn't have a teacher. Sweet - I could hand back exams all at once, go over the test all at once, be done all at once. This makes me happy.
We did not plan our dinner out very well. Nobody in the house wanted spaghetti, we didn't have any beans, and there was no way could do potatoes two meals in a row. That pretty much left us with rice. The only problem was we didn't have much rice in the house. Nonetheless, we made stir fry. We were both starving afterward. Instead of eating more, which would have required cooking, we watched two episodes of "Modern Family".
Wednesday night was my scheduled night for Larium dreams, and like clockwork, they came in full force. I had three very distinct dreams that night, but the one that stood out was when some country -- whatever country I was in -- broke out in full-blown sectarian violence. Nice way to wake up.
We didn't want a repeat of last night's dinner fiasco, so I ran to the market to buy, among other things, a lot of rice. Five kilos of rice should be enough for us for the rest of our time here. We might need one more kilo, but we are usually good for a kilo a week.
When I came back, I found myself on computer duty for the better part of the next couple hours. First, a colleague wanted to know if he could burn CDs on his computer. He seemed to believe that his computer was not capable, but these days, almost every computer can burn CDs, even in Mozambique. The same colleague also wanted to know how to make movies using Windows Movie Maker. I had never used the program, but it was pretty easy to learn.
Computer duty continued after lunch. I was supposed to go into school to control exams, but the pedagogical director told that no one would be giving an exam today. Fine. Instead, he wanted me to try to install a printer on his laptop. I told him "No problem", words I would soon be eating. This computer gave me nothing but problems. His computer was apparently missing a couple of drivers, which I tried (and failed) to download.
Two hours of work produced nothing. Can't say I didn't try. Having run out of options, I came back home and finished reading "Best American Sports Writing 2008". Richie and I both managed to kill this book within five days of getting in. And once again, we're just about out of reading material.
After a market run for a soda, we came back to get started on beans. We still had two avocados to get through. I've been stashing them in my room so Sozinho wouldn't eat them. Lord knows he would. The only thing we were missing was cheese. If only. After eating, we finished out "Modern Family" and watched an episode of "The West Wing". I know, old school.
There are no words to describe the level boredom that Richie and I hit on Friday. Our work obligations are finished. We barely have anything left to read. And to top it off, the electricity was out for the entire morning and most of the afternoon. I really don't know how we dealt with this lack of energy for the first eighteen months. Now that we have it, we're spoiled.
I don't have much to talk about, seeing as most of the day was spent trying to figure out how to kill time. It got to the point where I started dealing games of Solitaire. It's not just that I don't have a computer on which to play. The whole shuffling and dealing took up time. So did the three pages of cryptograms that I knocked out.
Eventually, Richie and I found something productive to do. We started going through our clothing, figuring out what stuff can be brought home and what stuff we're going to give away. This killed an hour, so I guess we can call that a success.
After lunch, and time-killing naps, Richie and I headed to the market, mostly for the sake of going to the market. Sure, we needed a chicken for tonight and some tomatoes for tonight and tomorrow. But knocking an hour out of our afternoon was far more important.
While I was cooking the chicken, a teacher called me, in need of some technical assistance. He was about to buy a computer second- or possibly third-hand. He wanted me to check it out to make sure that everything was running okay. With the exception of Microsoft Office not being on the computer, everything seemed okay to me.
The energy came on just in time for us to not have a romantic candlelit dinner. I don't think we can handle any more of those. We ate our chicken and rice and watched an episode of "The West Wing" before the power went out again.
Saturday looked a lot like Friday -- utter boredom, no electricity -- except there was one big difference: the weather. The last couple weeks have been hot as hell, but out of nowhere, a nice cold front moved in. I thought we might get some rain, given the 1:30 AM wake-up I got courtesy of a pair of huge thunder cracks. The rain never came, but the clouds and wind stuck around all day, a blessing for sure.
Once again, we were on the hunt for ways to kill the day. We had one small task to accomplish -- reconstructing Richie's bed. For the last year or so, Richie has thrown his mattress on the floor. The beds we have provide almost no back support (I stole a couple planks of wood from the school to help me out); the floor, apparently, was a lot more comfortable. Putting the bed together, and them post-construction clean-up took up maybe an hour.
The rest of the day was a lot of sitting, waiting for the energy to come on, praying the energy would come on, going to the market with the hope that the energy would be on when we returned, only to return to no energy.
This no energy thing could prove hugely problematic. Tonight was a scheduled cake night for us. One month to go in Machanga, forty days until we're home. Cooking spaghetti on charcoal is no problem. Baking a cake on charcoal is a whole different kind of task. I had hoped it wouldn't come to that, but by the time the spaghetti finished, we still didn't have electricity.
Baking on charcoal requires a Dutch oven. It's pretty basic: throw on pot -- the baking dish -- inside of a closed bigger pot. In theory, it should work just like an oven. In practice, it's almost impossible to control the temperature. The cake baked, for the most part. It wasn't nice and fluffy, like it should have been, but it still tasted like cake. Of course, I would have been just as happy to just eat the batter. It's all the same to me.
At least for the next forty days.
We followed our normal getting home-routine. Around 8:45, after packing our things and saying our goodbyes, we walked toward the new market/chapa stop, making brief stops to buy a newspaper and to take money from the bank. We claimed our spots in the chapa and then I headed into the market, needing bread and hoping for avocado. It's way out of season, but since Vilanculos gets so many South Africans coming through -- and thus, so many South African imports arrive -- it wasn't entirely impossible. On this day, the dream came through. Sure the avocados were five times as expensive as they would be during Mozambican avocado season, but for a chance at delicious burritos, we couldn't say no.
The ride home was for the most part uneventful, just the way we like it. We made a couple purchases in Mambone before crossing the river.
Oh, yes. Crossing the river. Normally, we walk about a kilometer from Mambone to the river, then cross the river for ten Mets, then walk another couple of kilometers from our side of the river to our house. Richie, however, is an advocate of a "better" way and I agreed to go with him. The pros are: shorter walk to the river, shorter boat ride across the river, five Mets instead of ten to cross and possibly a shorter walk. The cons are: at least two knee-high creeks that we had to cross by foot and trudging through mud for the first five to ten minutes. Now, I'm all for saving money and saving time. But to me, it wasn't worth it to save five mets and ten minutes.
Regardless, we made it home with no problems and very dirty feet. We had a master plan for food for the next couple of days -- beans tonight (with guacamole, of course), then using some leftovers for burritos on Monday. Because we didn't soak the beans, we knew they would need a while to cook. So we lit carvao, threw a pot of water on the coals, and walked to the market to buy some tomatoes and oil.
As we walked toward Madinha's for the oil, I noticed that someone with white legs was standing outside her store. Oh no. I figured this could only be South African Greg, which meant we'd probably get roped into drinking. But as we approached, three things were very clear: 1) this muzungu wasn't Greg; 2) like Greg, this guy had a big belly and was very drunk; and 3) he brought along a whole pack of muzungus with him.
There inside Madinha's store was a group of ten Canadians, all here from Alexis's church group. They're out here building a dormitory and a school out toward the EN1, even more in the middle of nowhere than we are. We tried to make a quick hit and escape, but our new drunk buddy insisted on buying us beers and food. And who are we to say no to that?
By the time we got back from the villa, the carvao had gone out and the water wasn't anywhere close to hot. Okay, we'll start again. Eventually, the beans cooked and the guacamole made them more delicious than usual. For our entertainment, we have a new show to watch: "Modern Family". It's sick comedy, which is perfect for us. I'm sure we'll be done with it by the weekend.
Monday was a pretty quiet day here. I think a lot of people were gearing up for the party tomorrow. In the meantime, we followed our now regular Monday agenda -- check NFL scores, followed by reading whatever we can get our hands on. These days, we're reading "Best American Sports Writing" from 2008, courtesy of a Volunteer in Inhassoro.
At 12:30, I ran over to school to tell my students that anyone who hadn't taken my exam could take it this afternoon at my house. Half of the four kids showed up to take the exam and they both did okay enough. In the evening, just before dinner, I ran over to the director's office to install a printer on someone's laptop.
Then, just as it got dark, we had our glorious burrito meal. The only thing that was missing from these burritos was cheese. Even so, with filet mignon as our meat and guacamole, we were very happy. Like last night, we watched a couple episodes of "Modern Family" before going to sleep.
I know it's hard to believe, but Tuesday was yet another holiday in Mozambique. Tuesday was Teachers' Day. This is probably the single biggest party day at school. And we'd be starting early.
Around 9:00, Richie and I headed over to the town plaza. If this were any other day, I wouldn't have gone, but missing today would be like missing your own birthday. The plaza was boring as usual, but had two little twists. The first was, after the national, which maybe about three-quarters of the people know, the teachers sang their "Teachers' Hymn". The second twist was, just like last year, a march through the town. And just like last year, about a quarter of the way through the march, we peeled off to meet some teachers at a bar
And so it began at 10:00. A group of about ten of us threw down at least two cases of beer over the next couple of hours. Richie ended up going home around 1, while I scored some food and talked to the Canadians back at Madinha's. At some point, a game of slamball was played. I came home in time to make some spaghetti, then laid myself out on the patio for three hours. It was just way too hot to be inside.
I woke up around 9:15 to the sound of extraordinarily loud music. The house behind ours decided that this would be a good night to test out some new speakers. I popped in my ear plugs, took a Benadryl, and promptly fell asleep.
Everybody seemed to be up and moving pretty decently on Wednesday. People seemed to pick up where they left off on Monday, and so did I. I was awake way too early for my own well-being -- 6:15. I knew I wouldn't make it too long without food. And the bread in our house had gone stale overnight, so I made some tomato sauce and spaghetti. I know, two consecutive meals of spaghetti is pathetic, but what can I do?
I was scheduled for class late in the afternoon. All I have to do is return exams and discuss the test a bit. I'm actually going to spend a fair amount of time talking about this one. I want the students' input on the difficulty of the questions, so I'll be able to prepare them better for their exams next month.
I played the waiting game all afternoon, hoping that my students would come get me early. The only problem is that most teachers are giving their exams this week, so I'm sure there won't be many free class periods. In the meantime, I gave myself a much-needed haircut. Should be good to go for the next week or ten days
While my students may have failed me in not coming to my house to get me early, I still got a win When I went over to the school at fifth period, my scheduled teaching time, the other class didn't have a teacher. Sweet - I could hand back exams all at once, go over the test all at once, be done all at once. This makes me happy.
We did not plan our dinner out very well. Nobody in the house wanted spaghetti, we didn't have any beans, and there was no way could do potatoes two meals in a row. That pretty much left us with rice. The only problem was we didn't have much rice in the house. Nonetheless, we made stir fry. We were both starving afterward. Instead of eating more, which would have required cooking, we watched two episodes of "Modern Family".
Wednesday night was my scheduled night for Larium dreams, and like clockwork, they came in full force. I had three very distinct dreams that night, but the one that stood out was when some country -- whatever country I was in -- broke out in full-blown sectarian violence. Nice way to wake up.
We didn't want a repeat of last night's dinner fiasco, so I ran to the market to buy, among other things, a lot of rice. Five kilos of rice should be enough for us for the rest of our time here. We might need one more kilo, but we are usually good for a kilo a week.
When I came back, I found myself on computer duty for the better part of the next couple hours. First, a colleague wanted to know if he could burn CDs on his computer. He seemed to believe that his computer was not capable, but these days, almost every computer can burn CDs, even in Mozambique. The same colleague also wanted to know how to make movies using Windows Movie Maker. I had never used the program, but it was pretty easy to learn.
Computer duty continued after lunch. I was supposed to go into school to control exams, but the pedagogical director told that no one would be giving an exam today. Fine. Instead, he wanted me to try to install a printer on his laptop. I told him "No problem", words I would soon be eating. This computer gave me nothing but problems. His computer was apparently missing a couple of drivers, which I tried (and failed) to download.
Two hours of work produced nothing. Can't say I didn't try. Having run out of options, I came back home and finished reading "Best American Sports Writing 2008". Richie and I both managed to kill this book within five days of getting in. And once again, we're just about out of reading material.
After a market run for a soda, we came back to get started on beans. We still had two avocados to get through. I've been stashing them in my room so Sozinho wouldn't eat them. Lord knows he would. The only thing we were missing was cheese. If only. After eating, we finished out "Modern Family" and watched an episode of "The West Wing". I know, old school.
There are no words to describe the level boredom that Richie and I hit on Friday. Our work obligations are finished. We barely have anything left to read. And to top it off, the electricity was out for the entire morning and most of the afternoon. I really don't know how we dealt with this lack of energy for the first eighteen months. Now that we have it, we're spoiled.
I don't have much to talk about, seeing as most of the day was spent trying to figure out how to kill time. It got to the point where I started dealing games of Solitaire. It's not just that I don't have a computer on which to play. The whole shuffling and dealing took up time. So did the three pages of cryptograms that I knocked out.
Eventually, Richie and I found something productive to do. We started going through our clothing, figuring out what stuff can be brought home and what stuff we're going to give away. This killed an hour, so I guess we can call that a success.
After lunch, and time-killing naps, Richie and I headed to the market, mostly for the sake of going to the market. Sure, we needed a chicken for tonight and some tomatoes for tonight and tomorrow. But knocking an hour out of our afternoon was far more important.
While I was cooking the chicken, a teacher called me, in need of some technical assistance. He was about to buy a computer second- or possibly third-hand. He wanted me to check it out to make sure that everything was running okay. With the exception of Microsoft Office not being on the computer, everything seemed okay to me.
The energy came on just in time for us to not have a romantic candlelit dinner. I don't think we can handle any more of those. We ate our chicken and rice and watched an episode of "The West Wing" before the power went out again.
Saturday looked a lot like Friday -- utter boredom, no electricity -- except there was one big difference: the weather. The last couple weeks have been hot as hell, but out of nowhere, a nice cold front moved in. I thought we might get some rain, given the 1:30 AM wake-up I got courtesy of a pair of huge thunder cracks. The rain never came, but the clouds and wind stuck around all day, a blessing for sure.
Once again, we were on the hunt for ways to kill the day. We had one small task to accomplish -- reconstructing Richie's bed. For the last year or so, Richie has thrown his mattress on the floor. The beds we have provide almost no back support (I stole a couple planks of wood from the school to help me out); the floor, apparently, was a lot more comfortable. Putting the bed together, and them post-construction clean-up took up maybe an hour.
The rest of the day was a lot of sitting, waiting for the energy to come on, praying the energy would come on, going to the market with the hope that the energy would be on when we returned, only to return to no energy.
This no energy thing could prove hugely problematic. Tonight was a scheduled cake night for us. One month to go in Machanga, forty days until we're home. Cooking spaghetti on charcoal is no problem. Baking a cake on charcoal is a whole different kind of task. I had hoped it wouldn't come to that, but by the time the spaghetti finished, we still didn't have electricity.
Baking on charcoal requires a Dutch oven. It's pretty basic: throw on pot -- the baking dish -- inside of a closed bigger pot. In theory, it should work just like an oven. In practice, it's almost impossible to control the temperature. The cake baked, for the most part. It wasn't nice and fluffy, like it should have been, but it still tasted like cake. Of course, I would have been just as happy to just eat the batter. It's all the same to me.
At least for the next forty days.
Year 2 - Week 44: Canada Invades (kinda) and the Fight Against Boredom
A successful weekend in Vilanculos behind us, it was time to head back to Machanga Sunday morning. We won't have to make this trip many more times. We'll probably make it down to Vilanculos one more time before getting out of here.
We followed our normal getting home-routine. Around 8:45, after packing our things and saying our goodbyes, we walked toward the new market/chapa stop, making brief stops to buy a newspaper and to take money from the bank. We claimed our spots in the chapa and then I headed into the market, needing bread and hoping for avocado. It's way out of season, but since Vilanculos gets so many South Africans coming through -- and thus, so many South African imports arrive -- it wasn't entirely impossible. On this day, the dream came through. Sure the avocados were five times as expensive as they would be during Mozambican avocado season, but for a chance at delicious burritos, we couldn't say no.
The ride home was for the most part uneventful, just the way we like it. We made a couple purchases in Mambone before crossing the river.
Oh, yes. Crossing the river. Normally, we walk about a kilometer from Mambone to the river, then cross the river for ten Mets, then walk another couple of kilometers from our side of the river to our house. Richie, however, is an advocate of a "better" way and I agreed to go with him. The pros are: shorter walk to the river, shorter boat ride across the river, five Mets instead of ten to cross and possibly a shorter walk. The cons are: at least two knee-high creeks that we had to cross by foot and trudging through mud for the first five to ten minutes. Now, I'm all for saving money and saving time. But to me, it wasn't worth it to save five mets and ten minutes.
Regardless, we made it home with no problems and very dirty feet. We had a master plan for food for the next couple of days -- beans tonight (with guacamole, of course), then using some leftovers for burritos on Monday. Because we didn't soak the beans, we knew they would need a while to cook. So we lit carvao, threw a pot of water on the coals, and walked to the market to buy some tomatoes and oil.
As we walked toward Madinha's for the oil, I noticed that someone with white legs was standing outside her store. Oh no. I figured this could only be South African Greg, which meant we'd probably get roped into drinking. But as we approached, three things were very clear: 1) this muzungu wasn't Greg; 2) like Greg, this guy had a big belly and was very drunk; and 3) he brought along a whole pack of muzungus with him.
There inside Madinha's store was a group of ten Canadians, all here from Alexis's church group. They're out here building a dormitory and a school out toward the EN1, even more in the middle of nowhere than we are. We tried to make a quick hit and escape, but our new drunk buddy insisted on buying us beers and food. And who are we to say no to that?
By the time we got back from the villa, the carvao had gone out and the water wasn't anywhere close to hot. Okay, we'll start again. Eventually, the beans cooked and the guacamole made them more delicious than usual. For our entertainment, we have a new show to watch: "Modern Family". It's sick comedy, which is perfect for us. I'm sure we'll be done with it by the weekend.
Monday was a pretty quiet day here. I think a lot of people were gearing up for the party tomorrow. In the meantime, we followed our now regular Monday agenda -- check NFL scores, followed by reading whatever we can get our hands on. These days, we're reading "Best American Sports Writing" from 2008, courtesy of a Volunteer in Inhassoro.
At 12:30, I ran over to school to tell my students that anyone who hadn't taken my exam could take it this afternoon at my house. Half of the four kids showed up to take the exam and they both did okay enough. In the evening, just before dinner, I ran over to the director's office to install a printer on someone's laptop.
Then, just as it got dark, we had our glorious burrito meal. The only thing that was missing from these burritos was cheese. Even so, with filet mignon as our meat and guacamole, we were very happy. Like last night, we watched a couple episodes of "Modern Family" before going to sleep.
I know it's hard to believe, but Tuesday was yet another holiday in Mozambique. Tuesday was Teachers' Day. This is probably the single biggest party day at school. And we'd be starting early.
Around 9:00, Richie and I headed over to the town plaza. If this were any other day, I wouldn't have gone, but missing today would be like missing your own birthday. The plaza was boring as usual, but had two little twists. The first was, after the national, which maybe about three-quarters of the people know, the teachers sang their "Teachers' Hymn". The second twist was, just like last year, a march through the town. And just like last year, about a quarter of the way through the march, we peeled off to meet some teachers at a bar
And so it began at 10:00. A group of about ten of us threw down at least two cases of beer over the next couple of hours. Richie ended up going home around 1, while I scored some food and talked to the Canadians back at Madinha's. At some point, a game of slamball was played. I came home in time to make some spaghetti, then laid myself out on the patio for three hours. It was just way too hot to be inside.
I woke up around 9:15 to the sound of extraordinarily loud music. The house behind ours decided that this would be a good night to test out some new speakers. I popped in my ear plugs, took a Benadryl, and promptly fell asleep.
Everybody seemed to be up and moving pretty decently on Wednesday. People seemed to pick up where they left off on Monday, and so did I. I was awake way too early for my own well-being -- 6:15. I knew I wouldn't make it too long without food. And the bread in our house had gone stale overnight, so I made some tomato sauce and spaghetti. I know, two consecutive meals of spaghetti is pathetic, but what can I do?
I was scheduled for class late in the afternoon. All I have to do is return exams and discuss the test a bit. I'm actually going to spend a fair amount of time talking about this one. I want the students' input on the difficulty of the questions, so I'll be able to prepare them better for their exams next month.
I played the waiting game all afternoon, hoping that my students would come get me early. The only problem is that most teachers are giving their exams this week, so I'm sure there won't be many free class periods. In the meantime, I gave myself a much-needed haircut. Should be good to go for the next week or ten days
While my students may have failed me in not coming to my house to get me early, I still got a win When I went over to the school at fifth period, my scheduled teaching time, the other class didn't have a teacher. Sweet - I could hand back exams all at once, go over the test all at once, be done all at once. This makes me happy.
We did not plan our dinner out very well. Nobody in the house wanted spaghetti, we didn't have any beans, and there was no way could do potatoes two meals in a row. That pretty much left us with rice. The only problem was we didn't have much rice in the house. Nonetheless, we made stir fry. We were both starving afterward. Instead of eating more, which would have required cooking, we watched two episodes of "Modern Family".
Wednesday night was my scheduled night for Larium dreams, and like clockwork, they came in full force. I had three very distinct dreams that night, but the one that stood out was when some country -- whatever country I was in -- broke out in full-blown sectarian violence. Nice way to wake up.
We didn't want a repeat of last night's dinner fiasco, so I ran to the market to buy, among other things, a lot of rice. Five kilos of rice should be enough for us for the rest of our time here. We might need one more kilo, but we are usually good for a kilo a week.
When I came back, I found myself on computer duty for the better part of the next couple hours. First, a colleague wanted to know if he could burn CDs on his computer. He seemed to believe that his computer was not capable, but these days, almost every computer can burn CDs, even in Mozambique. The same colleague also wanted to know how to make movies using Windows Movie Maker. I had never used the program, but it was pretty easy to learn.
Computer duty continued after lunch. I was supposed to go into school to control exams, but the pedagogical director told that no one would be giving an exam today. Fine. Instead, he wanted me to try to install a printer on his laptop. I told him "No problem", words I would soon be eating. This computer gave me nothing but problems. His computer was apparently missing a couple of drivers, which I tried (and failed) to download.
Two hours of work produced nothing. Can't say I didn't try. Having run out of options, I came back home and finished reading "Best American Sports Writing 2008". Richie and I both managed to kill this book within five days of getting in. And once again, we're just about out of reading material.
After a market run for a soda, we came back to get started on beans. We still had two avocados to get through. I've been stashing them in my room so Sozinho wouldn't eat them. Lord knows he would. The only thing we were missing was cheese. If only. After eating, we finished out "Modern Family" and watched an episode of "The West Wing". I know, old school.
There are no words to describe the level boredom that Richie and I hit on Friday. Our work obligations are finished. We barely have anything left to read. And to top it off, the electricity was out for the entire morning and most of the afternoon. I really don't know how we dealt with this lack of energy for the first eighteen months. Now that we have it, we're spoiled.
I don't have much to talk about, seeing as most of the day was spent trying to figure out how to kill time. It got to the point where I started dealing games of Solitaire. It's not just that I don't have a computer on which to play. The whole shuffling and dealing took up time. So did the three pages of cryptograms that I knocked out.
Eventually, Richie and I found something productive to do. We started going through our clothing, figuring out what stuff can be brought home and what stuff we're going to give away. This killed an hour, so I guess we can call that a success.
After lunch, and time-killing naps, Richie and I headed to the market, mostly for the sake of going to the market. Sure, we needed a chicken for tonight and some tomatoes for tonight and tomorrow. But knocking an hour out of our afternoon was far more important.
While I was cooking the chicken, a teacher called me, in need of some technical assistance. He was about to buy a computer second- or possibly third-hand. He wanted me to check it out to make sure that everything was running okay. With the exception of Microsoft Office not being on the computer, everything seemed okay to me.
The energy came on just in time for us to not have a romantic candlelit dinner. I don't think we can handle any more of those. We ate our chicken and rice and watched an episode of "The West Wing" before the power went out again.
Saturday looked a lot like Friday -- utter boredom, no electricity -- except there was one big difference: the weather. The last couple weeks have been hot as hell, but out of nowhere, a nice cold front moved in. I thought we might get some rain, given the 1:30 AM wake-up I got courtesy of a pair of huge thunder cracks. The rain never came, but the clouds and wind stuck around all day, a blessing for sure.
Once again, we were on the hunt for ways to kill the day. We had one small task to accomplish -- reconstructing Richie's bed. For the last year or so, Richie has thrown his mattress on the floor. The beds we have provide almost no back support (I stole a couple planks of wood from the school to help me out); the floor, apparently, was a lot more comfortable. Putting the bed together, and them post-construction clean-up took up maybe an hour.
The rest of the day was a lot of sitting, waiting for the energy to come on, praying the energy would come on, going to the market with the hope that the energy would be on when we returned, only to return to no energy.
This no energy thing could prove hugely problematic. Tonight was a scheduled cake night for us. One month to go in Machanga, forty days until we're home. Cooking spaghetti on charcoal is no problem. Baking a cake on charcoal is a whole different kind of task. I had hoped it wouldn't come to that, but by the time the spaghetti finished, we still didn't have electricity.
Baking on charcoal requires a Dutch oven. It's pretty basic: throw on pot -- the baking dish -- inside of a closed bigger pot. In theory, it should work just like an oven. In practice, it's almost impossible to control the temperature. The cake baked, for the most part. It wasn't nice and fluffy, like it should have been, but it still tasted like cake. Of course, I would have been just as happy to just eat the batter. It's all the same to me.
At least for the next forty days.
We followed our normal getting home-routine. Around 8:45, after packing our things and saying our goodbyes, we walked toward the new market/chapa stop, making brief stops to buy a newspaper and to take money from the bank. We claimed our spots in the chapa and then I headed into the market, needing bread and hoping for avocado. It's way out of season, but since Vilanculos gets so many South Africans coming through -- and thus, so many South African imports arrive -- it wasn't entirely impossible. On this day, the dream came through. Sure the avocados were five times as expensive as they would be during Mozambican avocado season, but for a chance at delicious burritos, we couldn't say no.
The ride home was for the most part uneventful, just the way we like it. We made a couple purchases in Mambone before crossing the river.
Oh, yes. Crossing the river. Normally, we walk about a kilometer from Mambone to the river, then cross the river for ten Mets, then walk another couple of kilometers from our side of the river to our house. Richie, however, is an advocate of a "better" way and I agreed to go with him. The pros are: shorter walk to the river, shorter boat ride across the river, five Mets instead of ten to cross and possibly a shorter walk. The cons are: at least two knee-high creeks that we had to cross by foot and trudging through mud for the first five to ten minutes. Now, I'm all for saving money and saving time. But to me, it wasn't worth it to save five mets and ten minutes.
Regardless, we made it home with no problems and very dirty feet. We had a master plan for food for the next couple of days -- beans tonight (with guacamole, of course), then using some leftovers for burritos on Monday. Because we didn't soak the beans, we knew they would need a while to cook. So we lit carvao, threw a pot of water on the coals, and walked to the market to buy some tomatoes and oil.
As we walked toward Madinha's for the oil, I noticed that someone with white legs was standing outside her store. Oh no. I figured this could only be South African Greg, which meant we'd probably get roped into drinking. But as we approached, three things were very clear: 1) this muzungu wasn't Greg; 2) like Greg, this guy had a big belly and was very drunk; and 3) he brought along a whole pack of muzungus with him.
There inside Madinha's store was a group of ten Canadians, all here from Alexis's church group. They're out here building a dormitory and a school out toward the EN1, even more in the middle of nowhere than we are. We tried to make a quick hit and escape, but our new drunk buddy insisted on buying us beers and food. And who are we to say no to that?
By the time we got back from the villa, the carvao had gone out and the water wasn't anywhere close to hot. Okay, we'll start again. Eventually, the beans cooked and the guacamole made them more delicious than usual. For our entertainment, we have a new show to watch: "Modern Family". It's sick comedy, which is perfect for us. I'm sure we'll be done with it by the weekend.
Monday was a pretty quiet day here. I think a lot of people were gearing up for the party tomorrow. In the meantime, we followed our now regular Monday agenda -- check NFL scores, followed by reading whatever we can get our hands on. These days, we're reading "Best American Sports Writing" from 2008, courtesy of a Volunteer in Inhassoro.
At 12:30, I ran over to school to tell my students that anyone who hadn't taken my exam could take it this afternoon at my house. Half of the four kids showed up to take the exam and they both did okay enough. In the evening, just before dinner, I ran over to the director's office to install a printer on someone's laptop.
Then, just as it got dark, we had our glorious burrito meal. The only thing that was missing from these burritos was cheese. Even so, with filet mignon as our meat and guacamole, we were very happy. Like last night, we watched a couple episodes of "Modern Family" before going to sleep.
I know it's hard to believe, but Tuesday was yet another holiday in Mozambique. Tuesday was Teachers' Day. This is probably the single biggest party day at school. And we'd be starting early.
Around 9:00, Richie and I headed over to the town plaza. If this were any other day, I wouldn't have gone, but missing today would be like missing your own birthday. The plaza was boring as usual, but had two little twists. The first was, after the national, which maybe about three-quarters of the people know, the teachers sang their "Teachers' Hymn". The second twist was, just like last year, a march through the town. And just like last year, about a quarter of the way through the march, we peeled off to meet some teachers at a bar
And so it began at 10:00. A group of about ten of us threw down at least two cases of beer over the next couple of hours. Richie ended up going home around 1, while I scored some food and talked to the Canadians back at Madinha's. At some point, a game of slamball was played. I came home in time to make some spaghetti, then laid myself out on the patio for three hours. It was just way too hot to be inside.
I woke up around 9:15 to the sound of extraordinarily loud music. The house behind ours decided that this would be a good night to test out some new speakers. I popped in my ear plugs, took a Benadryl, and promptly fell asleep.
Everybody seemed to be up and moving pretty decently on Wednesday. People seemed to pick up where they left off on Monday, and so did I. I was awake way too early for my own well-being -- 6:15. I knew I wouldn't make it too long without food. And the bread in our house had gone stale overnight, so I made some tomato sauce and spaghetti. I know, two consecutive meals of spaghetti is pathetic, but what can I do?
I was scheduled for class late in the afternoon. All I have to do is return exams and discuss the test a bit. I'm actually going to spend a fair amount of time talking about this one. I want the students' input on the difficulty of the questions, so I'll be able to prepare them better for their exams next month.
I played the waiting game all afternoon, hoping that my students would come get me early. The only problem is that most teachers are giving their exams this week, so I'm sure there won't be many free class periods. In the meantime, I gave myself a much-needed haircut. Should be good to go for the next week or ten days
While my students may have failed me in not coming to my house to get me early, I still got a win When I went over to the school at fifth period, my scheduled teaching time, the other class didn't have a teacher. Sweet - I could hand back exams all at once, go over the test all at once, be done all at once. This makes me happy.
We did not plan our dinner out very well. Nobody in the house wanted spaghetti, we didn't have any beans, and there was no way could do potatoes two meals in a row. That pretty much left us with rice. The only problem was we didn't have much rice in the house. Nonetheless, we made stir fry. We were both starving afterward. Instead of eating more, which would have required cooking, we watched two episodes of "Modern Family".
Wednesday night was my scheduled night for Larium dreams, and like clockwork, they came in full force. I had three very distinct dreams that night, but the one that stood out was when some country -- whatever country I was in -- broke out in full-blown sectarian violence. Nice way to wake up.
We didn't want a repeat of last night's dinner fiasco, so I ran to the market to buy, among other things, a lot of rice. Five kilos of rice should be enough for us for the rest of our time here. We might need one more kilo, but we are usually good for a kilo a week.
When I came back, I found myself on computer duty for the better part of the next couple hours. First, a colleague wanted to know if he could burn CDs on his computer. He seemed to believe that his computer was not capable, but these days, almost every computer can burn CDs, even in Mozambique. The same colleague also wanted to know how to make movies using Windows Movie Maker. I had never used the program, but it was pretty easy to learn.
Computer duty continued after lunch. I was supposed to go into school to control exams, but the pedagogical director told that no one would be giving an exam today. Fine. Instead, he wanted me to try to install a printer on his laptop. I told him "No problem", words I would soon be eating. This computer gave me nothing but problems. His computer was apparently missing a couple of drivers, which I tried (and failed) to download.
Two hours of work produced nothing. Can't say I didn't try. Having run out of options, I came back home and finished reading "Best American Sports Writing 2008". Richie and I both managed to kill this book within five days of getting in. And once again, we're just about out of reading material.
After a market run for a soda, we came back to get started on beans. We still had two avocados to get through. I've been stashing them in my room so Sozinho wouldn't eat them. Lord knows he would. The only thing we were missing was cheese. If only. After eating, we finished out "Modern Family" and watched an episode of "The West Wing". I know, old school.
There are no words to describe the level boredom that Richie and I hit on Friday. Our work obligations are finished. We barely have anything left to read. And to top it off, the electricity was out for the entire morning and most of the afternoon. I really don't know how we dealt with this lack of energy for the first eighteen months. Now that we have it, we're spoiled.
I don't have much to talk about, seeing as most of the day was spent trying to figure out how to kill time. It got to the point where I started dealing games of Solitaire. It's not just that I don't have a computer on which to play. The whole shuffling and dealing took up time. So did the three pages of cryptograms that I knocked out.
Eventually, Richie and I found something productive to do. We started going through our clothing, figuring out what stuff can be brought home and what stuff we're going to give away. This killed an hour, so I guess we can call that a success.
After lunch, and time-killing naps, Richie and I headed to the market, mostly for the sake of going to the market. Sure, we needed a chicken for tonight and some tomatoes for tonight and tomorrow. But knocking an hour out of our afternoon was far more important.
While I was cooking the chicken, a teacher called me, in need of some technical assistance. He was about to buy a computer second- or possibly third-hand. He wanted me to check it out to make sure that everything was running okay. With the exception of Microsoft Office not being on the computer, everything seemed okay to me.
The energy came on just in time for us to not have a romantic candlelit dinner. I don't think we can handle any more of those. We ate our chicken and rice and watched an episode of "The West Wing" before the power went out again.
Saturday looked a lot like Friday -- utter boredom, no electricity -- except there was one big difference: the weather. The last couple weeks have been hot as hell, but out of nowhere, a nice cold front moved in. I thought we might get some rain, given the 1:30 AM wake-up I got courtesy of a pair of huge thunder cracks. The rain never came, but the clouds and wind stuck around all day, a blessing for sure.
Once again, we were on the hunt for ways to kill the day. We had one small task to accomplish -- reconstructing Richie's bed. For the last year or so, Richie has thrown his mattress on the floor. The beds we have provide almost no back support (I stole a couple planks of wood from the school to help me out); the floor, apparently, was a lot more comfortable. Putting the bed together, and them post-construction clean-up took up maybe an hour.
The rest of the day was a lot of sitting, waiting for the energy to come on, praying the energy would come on, going to the market with the hope that the energy would be on when we returned, only to return to no energy.
This no energy thing could prove hugely problematic. Tonight was a scheduled cake night for us. One month to go in Machanga, forty days until we're home. Cooking spaghetti on charcoal is no problem. Baking a cake on charcoal is a whole different kind of task. I had hoped it wouldn't come to that, but by the time the spaghetti finished, we still didn't have electricity.
Baking on charcoal requires a Dutch oven. It's pretty basic: throw on pot -- the baking dish -- inside of a closed bigger pot. In theory, it should work just like an oven. In practice, it's almost impossible to control the temperature. The cake baked, for the most part. It wasn't nice and fluffy, like it should have been, but it still tasted like cake. Of course, I would have been just as happy to just eat the batter. It's all the same to me.
At least for the next forty days.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Year 2 - Week 43: My Work Here Is Done (for the most part)
Sunday was a big day in our house. Not for us, of course. Sundays are usually boring, given that everyone in this town except us goes to church. But today, there was a bit of action around here before church started. Sunday was Sozinho's baptism day, which meant he was up and moving especially. Hey, just because he's being baptized today doesn't mean he's off the hook for his household responsibilities.
My responsibilities in the morning were rather limited. The last thing Sozinho asked me for in regards to his baptism (the list has been endless) was to tie his tie for him. One of the funny parts of Mozambican fashion is that guys like their ties really short, like barely past the their chest. With such a short tie, there was no way I could tie it on myself, take it off, and throw it on Sozinho. So I had to do what my dad used to do with me: stand in front of mirror, behind Sozinho, and tie it like that. Awkward? Yes. But it got the job done.
While everyone was at church, I made a run to the market. I've decided that Sunday mornings are a really good time to go to the market because I don't have to deal with anyone. All the drunkards are not drunk (yet) and there are no crowds to plow through. After the market run, the rest of the morning was spent reading "Lullaby", which is a waste of time.
I thought I was in for a quiet afternoon. Following lunch, I had planned to just relax. But shortly after we ate, one of our colleagues came over and invited us over to his house for a celebration lunch. Someone in his family was also baptized and he wanted us to be there to celebrate. This isn't strange at all. I don't say no when someone offers me free food and drink, so I went.
With a sufficient amount of wine, beer, and food in me, I returned home to do a bit of work. I had to print out my final exam, which I'm giving on Wednesday. I had hoped to print tonight and photocopy tomorrow so I don't have to stress when there is no paper or no toner on Tuesday.
We put together a pretty tasty meal for dinner: burritos. These burritos weren't as good as usual. No guacamole and no cheese really makes a huge difference. But throwing filet in the burritos made up for the loss. Our movie for the night was "The Book of Eli", which was pretty entertaining. By the time we finished the movie, I was back to sober and ready for bed.
That didn't mean I wasn't in for some punishment. I woke up at 2 in the morning with my stomach in a not. I knew I was going to be in for a long night. Two hours, four Peptos, and six trips to the bathroom later, I was back to better. I'm blaming the day-old beans we threw into the burritos.
Monday was a holiday in Mozambican -- shocking, I know. It was Peace and Reconciliation Day. At some point over the weekend, I had told someone that I would go to the plaza for the ceremony. But after a night of very little (and very poor) sleep, I wasn't up for it.
I was, however, able to stick to the far easier commitment of changing out someone's fluorescent light bulbs for standard light bulbs. She told me that her lights hadn't been working for four months. And just now, she decided that she'd had enough.
Instead of going to the plaza, I went to the market in search of some things for the house. One of our power outlets broke and a light switch is on the way to being busted. I want to have them fixed before we leave. The only thing impeding this is the fact that nobody in this village sells the right power outlet or switch. This place could really use a decent hardware store.
I knew that today was going to be a nap day, and after lunch, I did just that. It took about half a second for me to go from awake to asleep. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting through "Lullaby". It was the kind of book that was so bad I just wanted to have it finished, kind of like "All the King's Men". The only difference was this book was about a quarter of the length of "All the King's Men".
I wanted a simple dinner tonight and Richie actually proposed spaghetti. This should sit decently in my stomach. I didn't have any problems after 4 AM, but there was no sense in risking it. Tonight we watched Robin Williams's stand-up "Weapons of Self Destruction". It wasn't as funny as I anticipated but still had some good laughs.
Monday night's sleep went much better than Tuesday's. No waking up writhing in pain. And I woke up with the knowledge that today's class would be my last lesson. From here, I give my exam and return them and that's the show.
Before I could lesson plan, I needed to run to the market. Sozinho told me that he needed more detergent and I needed to buy a ream of paper. Apparently, when I said that I needed 400 sheets of paper, that was the school's cue to not go out and get a ream of paper. Fine. Once again, I realized that if you want something done right here, you better do it yourself.
So while I was at the market, I ran over to our colleague's photocopy shop. Sitting in the shop was a stack of paper reams. I told the kid that I wanted to buy a ream and he comes back with this nonsense: "I'm not authorized to sell this paper." This just about made my head explode. I told him "There's not an option here. I'm buying this paper. Elias (the colleague) knows about this." The fact that he didn't know about it -- that he was actually hundreds of kilometers away, in Beira -- made very little difference. I was getting this paper if I had to kill the kid. Luckily, it didn't come down to knives. He just gave me the paper. Success.
Back at home, paper in hand, I got to lesson planning. Today's lesson wasn't at all about English. It was all about the exam. I wanted to outline what the kids could expect on the exam, in terms of number of questions, distribution of questions, and types of questions. Yes, this would take 45 minutes.
Right after lunch, I went into school to give the lesson that I had prepared. It went shockingly well. The types of questions that I explained were kind of complicated -- having to do with word order, punctuation, and paragraph-making. We'll see how much sticks on the exam.
Oh yes, the exam. My master plan for this year was to give parts of National Exams for each of their three finals. For this last final, I wanted to give a complete exam that was given earlier in the year. This was especially masterful because 1) I wouldn't have to think of questions; 2) it would give the students a chance to take a full exam before actually taking it November; and 3) the closest place that a person could get this exam was more than a hundred miles away.
It goes without say that someone got their hands on the exam. So much for being masterful. The kid came over asking for some help with some questions. When I saw that he had the exam, I almost had a seizure. I couldn't let him have this. That would just be unfair. I told him that I needed some time with the exam. I'll hold on to it and help him tomorrow afternoon...after the exam. It was then that he may have realized that I'd be giving this exact exam for his final. Should be interesting.
After I dealt with this kid, Richie made a run to the market to buy a chicken and I ran to the office to make photocopies. The photocopies were the easy part. The computer full of viruses was more of a challenge. It turned on just fine, but the desktop never loaded. This is the second time I've seen this problem here, only this time, the stakes were higher. This computer was full of documents pertaining to National Exams. Okay. I threw thing in safe mode, grabbed my external hard drive, and saved everything, including the school's backside.
I came home just in time to cook dinner. For the first time in a while, we grilled the chicken. Sozinho cooked rice and made salad. It was all quiet delicious. After eating, we watched "State of Play", which will probably be the winning movie for this week. Very good. While we watched, I collated and stapled together all of the exams for tomorrow. And after the movie, I got into a new book, Dante's "Inferno". I am very poorly read when it comes to classics, and this one seems pretty good.
Wednesday was D-Day here. Final exam, emphasis on final. Two more hours of sitting in class, watching kids try to cheat, and it will all be over. In the meantime, my room had to be Fort Knox. There's no way Sozinho can get his hands on those exams. I'd like to say I trust him, but I only trust him about as far as I can throw him.
All said, it was a quiet morning. No lesson to plan, no market run to make. Richie had exams in the morning. He's in for a long day: exams all morning, plus more than half of the afternoon. I only added to his work load by having him help me proctor my exam late this afternoon.
My only job for the morning was getting my hands on the money that the students are supposed to put together for the exam. I have literally given them weeks to find five Meticais. That's it. Five. And yet, when I went to get money from one of the classes, only a third of the kids had given their money. How is that possible? I'm going to have to figure this out this afternoon.
Before I could give my exams, I had to watch over one of Richie's classes. It's really sad that the only people we can trust when it comes to this stuff are each other. But it's simple: we have higher cheating standards than everyone else here. This obviously frustrates the students, and yet, they keep on trying. Richie threw out his entire class because they were all acting like shitheads. My class eventually threw me out and got Richie instead, which was for the better because I wanted to kill most of those students.
In comparison, my kids were a breeze. Richie had one class and I had the other. I told them that if anyone cheats, Richie has full permission to give zeroes, and he is not in good mood. I think they got the point. Only one kid in his class had to be moved. When that final bell rang, the only thing I could think was, My work here is done. Sure, there's still some stuff to do, but for the most part, I'm finished.
With exams done, all I had to do was correct the suckers. There were about 100 exams to be corrected. I knew this wasn't a job for tonight -- it could wait until tomorrow -- but I did want to correct the exams of the students who help teachers here. It wasn't many, six or seven at most. Sozinho did shockingly well. If he does as well on the National Exam, he will easily pass.
Once word got out that I was correcting exams, students started coming in over in groups of three or four asking for their grades. So I graded on command. If the student showed up, they could have their grade. In all, about twenty students came over. It may have prevented me from eating my chicken dinner and watching "The Hangover", but it did make good dent in my corrections for tomorrow. As soon as the movie ended, I crawled into bed, dead exhausted.
I wasn't surprised that I slept well. Straight through the night until 6 in the morning. I figured that as long as I was awake, I could get corrections done. So I corrected all morning, right up until lunch time. Sozinho wasn't the only one to do well. In his class, 83 percent of the group passed. In the other class, a pathetic 55 percent passed. This from the letters/language group. Combine, they passed at a 72 percent rate, way better than the students from last year did on National Exams. Let's hope that everyone who passed this exam passes in November and some of the borderline kids can make the jump also. If that happens, I will feel really good about giving difficult exams.
There were only two things on my schedule for the afternoon lunch and napping, two of my favorite activities. It's amazing how tiring sitting and grading can be. More mind-numbing than strenuous. Regardless, by 2 o'clock, I was down for the count. The rest of the afternoon was spent working my way through some chapters of "Dante's Inferno". The descriptions of the circles of hell have been pretty sweet.
We broke back into our stash of filet for dinner, stir-frying it with some veggies. For our entertainment, we watched a pretty bad film called "Chloe". Won't be going back to that one any time soon. Knowing that we had a long day ahead of us, it was time for bed.
Richie and I were up and moving pretty early on Friday. Between our school schedules and financial needs, I feel like it's the first time in a while that we've traveled anywhere together. There aren't a lot more of these trips, two or three tops.
The travel day started out promising. We got to the river and instead of waiting for another person to get in the canoe with us, we paid an extra 5 Mets each to go now. From there, we thought we were golden. A Land Cruiser was just about to leave and was heading to Beira. That was fine by us: we'll take that to the crossroads. But all that glitters isn't gold. The dude screwed around in Mambone for an hour before we left. There goes our shot at breaking the record for getting to Vil.
In a strange way though, it may have been a blessing. I'd much rather wait in a Land Cruiser than at the crossroads, and the timing couldn't have been better. As soon as we got to the crossroads, we got a car that was heading to Maputo. And we didn't have to pay for it. Then, as soon as we got to the crossroads for Vilanculos, another car was heading to Vil. We happily paid to be in the sedan. We still managed to make it in under five hours. Funny how a five-hour travel day is an easy day now.
Once we arrived in town we had some time to spare. Another Volunteer wanted to meet us for lunch at New York Pizza, but she had to finish up at school. Sucker. We got some shopping done before heading over for delicious pizza lunch. It never fails to make us happy and full.
We had big plans for the evening, but before that, I needed a nap. I only fell asleep for fifteen or twenty minutes, but man did it help. In the hour or so that we had, four of us played "Phase 10", a great rummy-type game. We only got about half way through the game. If we have time, we'll finish tomorrow.
Our big plans for the night were watching rugby at Smugglers hotel. I know, kind of ridiculous. Besides it being an entertaining game, it was actually a good learning opportunity. One of our colleagues in Inhassoro (who was in town) played rugby at UCLA, so he was able to explain all the things that I hadn't picked up. Given America's love of violent, hard-hitting sports, it's kind of a surprise that more Americans don't like rugby.
After watching rugby, we split into two groups. One group, the tired group, heading home for the night. Meanwhile, a group of about six of us went out to a bar called Tropical to continue the party. And party we did. I knew exactly when I hit my breaking point, but another Volunteer (and one of my best friends here) didn't. By the end of the night, I ended up as babysitter, which was fine by me. I've been taken care of plenty of time in these situations. It all evens out. Once she was asleep, I fell asleep very quickly. And without the dreaded Spins.
I only got four hours of sleep Friday night, but at least it was good sleep. I woke up with a bit of a headache, but that should be expected. My friend, on the other hand, woke up unaware of what had happened for a good portion of the evening. We spent about an hour reconstructing her evening before she fell asleep.
On the other hand, I was up and moving. I knew at the other Vil house that there were plans for pancakes and ocean. I could definitely get on board with that. I got a sweet ride from one side of town to the other, saving me about twenty minutes of walking. One of the Volunteers made some pretty killer pancakes from scratch while we waited for the tide to go out.
A brief explanation. In most situations, one would wait for the tide to come in to go swimming. But on this section of beach, there isn't a lot of beach, just a lot of craggy rocks. There's not much point in fighting with the rocks. It's worth the wait to step on nice soft sand. Unfortunately, we waited a bit too long. The tide in Vil goes out forever. We had to walk almost a mile just to get to a decent patch of ocean. Once we got there, it was beautiful. The water isn't bathtub warm yet. And it was just cool enough to feel good under the hot heat of the sun.
Tired, sun burnt, and hungry, five of us went scavenging for food. We came across a take-away chicken place. In theory, take-away is Mozambican fast-food. In practice, not so much. We waited a good 90 minutes for our chicken. It was good chicken, but not worth the wait.
From there, Richie and I split off to head to the other Vil house. I had the keys and phone of the girl who I babysat for and we knew she would want these things back. But when we got to her house, she was nowhere to be found. We sat around for a while before finally getting in touch with her roommate. They didn't plan on coming back before dinner, which was fine because we had plans on meeting them for dinner.
The plan was to go to a place called Complexo Alemanha. We've been to this restaurant before, but just recently, they started serving pizza. We wanted to see how this pizza stacked up to New York Pizza. But by the time 7:00 rolled around, all of us were too tired and unmotivated to go anywhere. Instead, we ordered New York Pizza, which has free delivery. Don't judge me for eating pizza back-to-back days.
The rest of the night was, as expected, quiet. We drank socially, not gluttonously, and just talked while sitting in a tree house. It was a nice relaxing way to end the week.
My responsibilities in the morning were rather limited. The last thing Sozinho asked me for in regards to his baptism (the list has been endless) was to tie his tie for him. One of the funny parts of Mozambican fashion is that guys like their ties really short, like barely past the their chest. With such a short tie, there was no way I could tie it on myself, take it off, and throw it on Sozinho. So I had to do what my dad used to do with me: stand in front of mirror, behind Sozinho, and tie it like that. Awkward? Yes. But it got the job done.
While everyone was at church, I made a run to the market. I've decided that Sunday mornings are a really good time to go to the market because I don't have to deal with anyone. All the drunkards are not drunk (yet) and there are no crowds to plow through. After the market run, the rest of the morning was spent reading "Lullaby", which is a waste of time.
I thought I was in for a quiet afternoon. Following lunch, I had planned to just relax. But shortly after we ate, one of our colleagues came over and invited us over to his house for a celebration lunch. Someone in his family was also baptized and he wanted us to be there to celebrate. This isn't strange at all. I don't say no when someone offers me free food and drink, so I went.
With a sufficient amount of wine, beer, and food in me, I returned home to do a bit of work. I had to print out my final exam, which I'm giving on Wednesday. I had hoped to print tonight and photocopy tomorrow so I don't have to stress when there is no paper or no toner on Tuesday.
We put together a pretty tasty meal for dinner: burritos. These burritos weren't as good as usual. No guacamole and no cheese really makes a huge difference. But throwing filet in the burritos made up for the loss. Our movie for the night was "The Book of Eli", which was pretty entertaining. By the time we finished the movie, I was back to sober and ready for bed.
That didn't mean I wasn't in for some punishment. I woke up at 2 in the morning with my stomach in a not. I knew I was going to be in for a long night. Two hours, four Peptos, and six trips to the bathroom later, I was back to better. I'm blaming the day-old beans we threw into the burritos.
Monday was a holiday in Mozambican -- shocking, I know. It was Peace and Reconciliation Day. At some point over the weekend, I had told someone that I would go to the plaza for the ceremony. But after a night of very little (and very poor) sleep, I wasn't up for it.
I was, however, able to stick to the far easier commitment of changing out someone's fluorescent light bulbs for standard light bulbs. She told me that her lights hadn't been working for four months. And just now, she decided that she'd had enough.
Instead of going to the plaza, I went to the market in search of some things for the house. One of our power outlets broke and a light switch is on the way to being busted. I want to have them fixed before we leave. The only thing impeding this is the fact that nobody in this village sells the right power outlet or switch. This place could really use a decent hardware store.
I knew that today was going to be a nap day, and after lunch, I did just that. It took about half a second for me to go from awake to asleep. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting through "Lullaby". It was the kind of book that was so bad I just wanted to have it finished, kind of like "All the King's Men". The only difference was this book was about a quarter of the length of "All the King's Men".
I wanted a simple dinner tonight and Richie actually proposed spaghetti. This should sit decently in my stomach. I didn't have any problems after 4 AM, but there was no sense in risking it. Tonight we watched Robin Williams's stand-up "Weapons of Self Destruction". It wasn't as funny as I anticipated but still had some good laughs.
Monday night's sleep went much better than Tuesday's. No waking up writhing in pain. And I woke up with the knowledge that today's class would be my last lesson. From here, I give my exam and return them and that's the show.
Before I could lesson plan, I needed to run to the market. Sozinho told me that he needed more detergent and I needed to buy a ream of paper. Apparently, when I said that I needed 400 sheets of paper, that was the school's cue to not go out and get a ream of paper. Fine. Once again, I realized that if you want something done right here, you better do it yourself.
So while I was at the market, I ran over to our colleague's photocopy shop. Sitting in the shop was a stack of paper reams. I told the kid that I wanted to buy a ream and he comes back with this nonsense: "I'm not authorized to sell this paper." This just about made my head explode. I told him "There's not an option here. I'm buying this paper. Elias (the colleague) knows about this." The fact that he didn't know about it -- that he was actually hundreds of kilometers away, in Beira -- made very little difference. I was getting this paper if I had to kill the kid. Luckily, it didn't come down to knives. He just gave me the paper. Success.
Back at home, paper in hand, I got to lesson planning. Today's lesson wasn't at all about English. It was all about the exam. I wanted to outline what the kids could expect on the exam, in terms of number of questions, distribution of questions, and types of questions. Yes, this would take 45 minutes.
Right after lunch, I went into school to give the lesson that I had prepared. It went shockingly well. The types of questions that I explained were kind of complicated -- having to do with word order, punctuation, and paragraph-making. We'll see how much sticks on the exam.
Oh yes, the exam. My master plan for this year was to give parts of National Exams for each of their three finals. For this last final, I wanted to give a complete exam that was given earlier in the year. This was especially masterful because 1) I wouldn't have to think of questions; 2) it would give the students a chance to take a full exam before actually taking it November; and 3) the closest place that a person could get this exam was more than a hundred miles away.
It goes without say that someone got their hands on the exam. So much for being masterful. The kid came over asking for some help with some questions. When I saw that he had the exam, I almost had a seizure. I couldn't let him have this. That would just be unfair. I told him that I needed some time with the exam. I'll hold on to it and help him tomorrow afternoon...after the exam. It was then that he may have realized that I'd be giving this exact exam for his final. Should be interesting.
After I dealt with this kid, Richie made a run to the market to buy a chicken and I ran to the office to make photocopies. The photocopies were the easy part. The computer full of viruses was more of a challenge. It turned on just fine, but the desktop never loaded. This is the second time I've seen this problem here, only this time, the stakes were higher. This computer was full of documents pertaining to National Exams. Okay. I threw thing in safe mode, grabbed my external hard drive, and saved everything, including the school's backside.
I came home just in time to cook dinner. For the first time in a while, we grilled the chicken. Sozinho cooked rice and made salad. It was all quiet delicious. After eating, we watched "State of Play", which will probably be the winning movie for this week. Very good. While we watched, I collated and stapled together all of the exams for tomorrow. And after the movie, I got into a new book, Dante's "Inferno". I am very poorly read when it comes to classics, and this one seems pretty good.
Wednesday was D-Day here. Final exam, emphasis on final. Two more hours of sitting in class, watching kids try to cheat, and it will all be over. In the meantime, my room had to be Fort Knox. There's no way Sozinho can get his hands on those exams. I'd like to say I trust him, but I only trust him about as far as I can throw him.
All said, it was a quiet morning. No lesson to plan, no market run to make. Richie had exams in the morning. He's in for a long day: exams all morning, plus more than half of the afternoon. I only added to his work load by having him help me proctor my exam late this afternoon.
My only job for the morning was getting my hands on the money that the students are supposed to put together for the exam. I have literally given them weeks to find five Meticais. That's it. Five. And yet, when I went to get money from one of the classes, only a third of the kids had given their money. How is that possible? I'm going to have to figure this out this afternoon.
Before I could give my exams, I had to watch over one of Richie's classes. It's really sad that the only people we can trust when it comes to this stuff are each other. But it's simple: we have higher cheating standards than everyone else here. This obviously frustrates the students, and yet, they keep on trying. Richie threw out his entire class because they were all acting like shitheads. My class eventually threw me out and got Richie instead, which was for the better because I wanted to kill most of those students.
In comparison, my kids were a breeze. Richie had one class and I had the other. I told them that if anyone cheats, Richie has full permission to give zeroes, and he is not in good mood. I think they got the point. Only one kid in his class had to be moved. When that final bell rang, the only thing I could think was, My work here is done. Sure, there's still some stuff to do, but for the most part, I'm finished.
With exams done, all I had to do was correct the suckers. There were about 100 exams to be corrected. I knew this wasn't a job for tonight -- it could wait until tomorrow -- but I did want to correct the exams of the students who help teachers here. It wasn't many, six or seven at most. Sozinho did shockingly well. If he does as well on the National Exam, he will easily pass.
Once word got out that I was correcting exams, students started coming in over in groups of three or four asking for their grades. So I graded on command. If the student showed up, they could have their grade. In all, about twenty students came over. It may have prevented me from eating my chicken dinner and watching "The Hangover", but it did make good dent in my corrections for tomorrow. As soon as the movie ended, I crawled into bed, dead exhausted.
I wasn't surprised that I slept well. Straight through the night until 6 in the morning. I figured that as long as I was awake, I could get corrections done. So I corrected all morning, right up until lunch time. Sozinho wasn't the only one to do well. In his class, 83 percent of the group passed. In the other class, a pathetic 55 percent passed. This from the letters/language group. Combine, they passed at a 72 percent rate, way better than the students from last year did on National Exams. Let's hope that everyone who passed this exam passes in November and some of the borderline kids can make the jump also. If that happens, I will feel really good about giving difficult exams.
There were only two things on my schedule for the afternoon lunch and napping, two of my favorite activities. It's amazing how tiring sitting and grading can be. More mind-numbing than strenuous. Regardless, by 2 o'clock, I was down for the count. The rest of the afternoon was spent working my way through some chapters of "Dante's Inferno". The descriptions of the circles of hell have been pretty sweet.
We broke back into our stash of filet for dinner, stir-frying it with some veggies. For our entertainment, we watched a pretty bad film called "Chloe". Won't be going back to that one any time soon. Knowing that we had a long day ahead of us, it was time for bed.
Richie and I were up and moving pretty early on Friday. Between our school schedules and financial needs, I feel like it's the first time in a while that we've traveled anywhere together. There aren't a lot more of these trips, two or three tops.
The travel day started out promising. We got to the river and instead of waiting for another person to get in the canoe with us, we paid an extra 5 Mets each to go now. From there, we thought we were golden. A Land Cruiser was just about to leave and was heading to Beira. That was fine by us: we'll take that to the crossroads. But all that glitters isn't gold. The dude screwed around in Mambone for an hour before we left. There goes our shot at breaking the record for getting to Vil.
In a strange way though, it may have been a blessing. I'd much rather wait in a Land Cruiser than at the crossroads, and the timing couldn't have been better. As soon as we got to the crossroads, we got a car that was heading to Maputo. And we didn't have to pay for it. Then, as soon as we got to the crossroads for Vilanculos, another car was heading to Vil. We happily paid to be in the sedan. We still managed to make it in under five hours. Funny how a five-hour travel day is an easy day now.
Once we arrived in town we had some time to spare. Another Volunteer wanted to meet us for lunch at New York Pizza, but she had to finish up at school. Sucker. We got some shopping done before heading over for delicious pizza lunch. It never fails to make us happy and full.
We had big plans for the evening, but before that, I needed a nap. I only fell asleep for fifteen or twenty minutes, but man did it help. In the hour or so that we had, four of us played "Phase 10", a great rummy-type game. We only got about half way through the game. If we have time, we'll finish tomorrow.
Our big plans for the night were watching rugby at Smugglers hotel. I know, kind of ridiculous. Besides it being an entertaining game, it was actually a good learning opportunity. One of our colleagues in Inhassoro (who was in town) played rugby at UCLA, so he was able to explain all the things that I hadn't picked up. Given America's love of violent, hard-hitting sports, it's kind of a surprise that more Americans don't like rugby.
After watching rugby, we split into two groups. One group, the tired group, heading home for the night. Meanwhile, a group of about six of us went out to a bar called Tropical to continue the party. And party we did. I knew exactly when I hit my breaking point, but another Volunteer (and one of my best friends here) didn't. By the end of the night, I ended up as babysitter, which was fine by me. I've been taken care of plenty of time in these situations. It all evens out. Once she was asleep, I fell asleep very quickly. And without the dreaded Spins.
I only got four hours of sleep Friday night, but at least it was good sleep. I woke up with a bit of a headache, but that should be expected. My friend, on the other hand, woke up unaware of what had happened for a good portion of the evening. We spent about an hour reconstructing her evening before she fell asleep.
On the other hand, I was up and moving. I knew at the other Vil house that there were plans for pancakes and ocean. I could definitely get on board with that. I got a sweet ride from one side of town to the other, saving me about twenty minutes of walking. One of the Volunteers made some pretty killer pancakes from scratch while we waited for the tide to go out.
A brief explanation. In most situations, one would wait for the tide to come in to go swimming. But on this section of beach, there isn't a lot of beach, just a lot of craggy rocks. There's not much point in fighting with the rocks. It's worth the wait to step on nice soft sand. Unfortunately, we waited a bit too long. The tide in Vil goes out forever. We had to walk almost a mile just to get to a decent patch of ocean. Once we got there, it was beautiful. The water isn't bathtub warm yet. And it was just cool enough to feel good under the hot heat of the sun.
Tired, sun burnt, and hungry, five of us went scavenging for food. We came across a take-away chicken place. In theory, take-away is Mozambican fast-food. In practice, not so much. We waited a good 90 minutes for our chicken. It was good chicken, but not worth the wait.
From there, Richie and I split off to head to the other Vil house. I had the keys and phone of the girl who I babysat for and we knew she would want these things back. But when we got to her house, she was nowhere to be found. We sat around for a while before finally getting in touch with her roommate. They didn't plan on coming back before dinner, which was fine because we had plans on meeting them for dinner.
The plan was to go to a place called Complexo Alemanha. We've been to this restaurant before, but just recently, they started serving pizza. We wanted to see how this pizza stacked up to New York Pizza. But by the time 7:00 rolled around, all of us were too tired and unmotivated to go anywhere. Instead, we ordered New York Pizza, which has free delivery. Don't judge me for eating pizza back-to-back days.
The rest of the night was, as expected, quiet. We drank socially, not gluttonously, and just talked while sitting in a tree house. It was a nice relaxing way to end the week.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Year 2 - Week 42: The Most Expensive Roach Motel
Did I do something wrong? Did I have a sign on my back asking for people to push my buttons? Whatever it was brought together many forces of evil -- drunk dudes, money requests, tailgaters, loud music -- which contributed to a fairly miserable day.
The day started out with a market run. Evening being on my own for the day, we didn't have enough food in the house for me to survive. As soon as I made it into the market, I was stopped by a clearly drunk man. My only questions was why he got started so late. After all, it was 8 o'clock in the morning. This guy starts speaking to me, in broken English no less, and starts asking me all sorts of questions. Eventually, he tells me that he's looking for friends. Quite frankly, I don't want any more friends here. I'm happy with the friends I have and I'm checking out in a couple weeks. Either way, I told him that he could come to my house to talk. He probably won't even remember the conversation.
The rest of the morning was blissfully quiet. I read a bit of "White Teeth" before preparing for lunch. After lunch, I needed to go back to the market to pick up some phone credit for our internet connection. 200 yards outside of the school, I was stopped by another clearly drunk man who also tried to speak English with me. He asked me if I wanted to walk to the market with him. "No, I really don't." And that was that.
Once again, I had no luck in the first moments of my market run. The first person I saw in the market asked me for money. Haven't people figured out, after two years, that the muzungus don't give money to people? Why even bother asking? I bought enough phone credit to survive a couple days and made my way home.
Whatever bad luck I had getting in the market decided to follow me out of the market. 100 yards out, I hear "blah blah muzungu blah muzungu". Of course, I turned my head to see who this was. I don't know why I bothered to look at these faces of evil. Instead of paying attention to them, I sped up my gait. Given that we Americans walk faster that any Mozambican, this should have been enough to ditch them. Then again, I didn't count on them literally running after me to walk with me. No problem, I'll just play The Ignoring Game until they leave.
Except they never left. Eight women and children followed me all the way to the school. I sped up, they sped up. I slowed down, they slowed down. All. The way. Back. Eventually, maybe 100 steps from my house, they said "Tchau". I didn't even bother paying attention.
Richie, meanwhile, spent the day hauling back to Machanga from Inhambane. He arrived home around 5:30. I had already started cooking dinner -- cheese steaks. It was a night for celebration: today, we are less than two months from being home. As usual, we celebrated with cake. We were so close to having the thing baked, then the power went out. No problem: I threw together a Dutch oven, which should be good enough to get the thing cooked. Naturally, as soon as it got hot, the energy got back on. At least we had cake. We finished the night with a couple episodes of "Sons of Anarchy".
Or so we thought we had finished the night. Apparently some other people had cause for celebration. The house behind ours decided that it would be a good night for a dance party. From 10 o'clock until at least 2 in the morning, music blared at wall-shaking volume. At 2, I gave in and grabbed the ear plugs I had in my bag. Ah, silence. I quickly fell asleep after that.
For the second week in a row, I was really happy not to have work on Monday. It would have been disastrous if I had to teach today. Even with the ear plugs, I didn't get a good night's sleep. They can stop the sounds beautiful, but they can't stop the early sunlight from seeping into the house. I stayed in bed for a couple hours reading "White Teeth".
By 9:00, I had been up for a few hours and I was hungry like no other. Obviously, I couldn't make eggs for breakfast, so I turned to our oldie but goodie -- French Toast. It should hold me over for the rest of the morning. While I waited until lunch, i kept on in the book.
I thought I had put yesterday's bad luck behind me, but apparently I was wrong. Evil manifested itself today in bad eggs. Of the dozen eggs that I bought yesterday, seven of them were rotten. Well that fuckin sucks. At least we had enough good ones for lunch.
The afternoon was wonderfully quiet. I spent a fair portion of it napping. I've never been so happy to have a power outage. It meant perfect silence. Once I awoke, I spent some solving cryptograms, at one point nailing ten in a row.
Other than the lack of cake, the night pretty much went the same way as last night. We made beans for dinner, and mercifully finished the season of "Sons of Anarchy". I have no idea how this show got a second season. I don't think I'll be watching it.
Not only was Monday night quiet, but it was also cold. After a few hot nights, I was so sure that we were done with cold weather that I put away my blanket. My bad. I pulled the blanket off my shelves and had a beautiful night of sleep.
The winter weather stuck around for most of the morning Tuesday. Beside the sound of rain falling on our roof, the only noise I heard all morning came from my parents on the other end of a phone call.
I spent a bit of the Tuesday morning lesson-planning. This is our last full week of school and there are still some things I need to get through. I've spent so much time on verbs this trimester that I've pretty much ignored other parts of speech. I wanted to at least cover prepositions before they take their exam. T
After two quick classes, I was free for the afternoon. So was Richie. And so was Ussene, one of our partners in crime. This never ends of well. I joked with Richie that we should go get tanked in the villa. He wholeheartedly agreed. We then roped in Ussene. They were ready to go immediately, but I wanted to finish the last chapter of "White Teeth" before leaving. Thirty minutes later, we were on the move.
The rest of the afternoon is mostly a blur. Over the course of the next couple hours, the three of us knocked off a case of beer. Just another Tuesday in Machanga.
We came home just in time for dinner. Before the drinking bonanza began, I bought a frozen chicken. While we drank, the chicken defrosted. We roasted it and it turned out okay. Not our best work, but given our state of sobriety, we didn't really care. We watched a movie which was so bad that I'm not going to bother mentioning its title, and went to bed.
Wednesday morning was once again quiet. And once again it was grey, cold, and rainy. It wasn't a good rain. This rain will make absolutely no difference in the level of our well, but at least it's not hot outside.
I prepared for class late in the morning, hoping that my students would come get me immediately after lunch. But after lunch, one hour became two and two became three and I was never rescued. Between classes, Richie came home and told me that my students were just sitting there. Fuckers. Whatever.
I later found out what was going on. They had some sort of meeting with the director and they were just waiting for him. The meeting -- as I should have expected -- ran late, which pushed back my class a little bit.
After class, one of the girls in that group told me that she had to go to Beira and would miss the exam. Nope, she's not. I gave her two options: she could take the test now or take it when she gets back. Shockingly, she opted for now. She spent the next two hours in my house taking the exam and didn't do too badly (by Mozambican standards). She still needs to improve a bit, but I think she can pass come November.
Once she was gone, Richie and I moved into dinner mode. We made spaghetti for dinner with a cheese sauce packet. For our entertainment, we watched "The Crazies". At least it wasn't the worst movie we've seen all week.
While I hung around Thursday morning, I was doing some stuff on the internet and listening to music. My computer was hurting. The sound wasn't good, it was processing slow. And then a small roach crawled out of one of the USB ports. This isn't the first time this has happened, but today I decided would be the last. I grabbed a screwdriver and went to work.
What I saw was only mildly disturbing. There were no fewer than ten little roaches inside of my computer. And one of the wires was pretty frayed. There was no putting it together. This computer is officially dead. It just couldn't hold out for these last six weeks.
I wasn't too stressed about it. I had everything backed up a couple weeks ago. All of my music and pictures are in tact. I only lost one document of value and I should be able to get all that information back.
It's funny. If this kind of week had happened last year, it might have thrown me over the edge. But being so close to the end, having had plenty of these weeks before, knowing that I can't have that many more, I can't be too worried.
Class went pretty well today. It was the same lesson as yesterday's -- prepositions of time. There have been at least two or three questions involving these prepositions on every national exam from the past few years. These should be free points.
Richie and I made a market run late in the afternoon. We weren't looking for much in particular. We mostly just wanted to kill an hour or so.
For dinner, we went with something new: cinnamon lentils. We have had lentils before and they're pretty tasty. I figured if lentils are good and cinnamon is good, then cinnamon lentils should be pretty tasty. They were mediocre. Eh, whatever.the night was saved with "Extraordinary Measures", pretty good (and PG) movie about a guy trying to find a cure for Pompe Disease.
The cold nights disappeared again, leaving us sweating at night. It didn't matter to us. We knew that when we woke up on Friday, we could say something for the first time in two years: "We're going home next month." Feels good. Feels right.
With a bounce in my step, I walked over to the market in search of beef. We wanted to celebrate. When I got to the butcher's, the kid working there told me the cow would be killed this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Wonderful -- honesty appreciated.
I came home and prepared my last lesson, once again on prepositions. I took a ball and can into the classroom and played "Where is the ball?" with my students. They caught on quickly, though they had a hard time differentiating "off" and "out of". I explained it at least three times. I think most of them eventually figured it out.
After class, Richie and I returned to the market, hoping that the cow would be dead. But no cow was to be found. As long as we were there, I talked to the butcher, telling him I wanted another two kilos of filet. No problem, said he, come back tomorrow around noon. No problem.
Good thing we still had some beef left over in the freezer. We defrosted our remaining filet and threw it in a very tasty (and easy to chew) stir fry. Our movie of the night was "From Paris With Love". I was skeptical, but it was really good. I spent the rest of the night in Chuck Palahniuk's "Lullaby", an easy-to-read novel.
Saturday picked up right where Friday left off: with my book and without filet. I had great hope on Satuday. Yesterday, I managed to turn on a different laptop that was in need of XP. I called one of my students from last year who had an XP disc. Great -- should be up and running in no time. I gathered my things and headed across the river to Mambone.
But some great force of evil decided to show itself once again. When I got to Mambone, the computer wouldn't turn on. Why? Why?! I came home with the discs, holding out hope that it would turn on eventually.
After lunch, Richie and I headed to the market. We got there at 12:40, keeping in mind The 40-Minutes-Late rule. When we arrived, the butcher was sitting around eating. "No cow, no meat. Come back later in the afternoon." Fine. As long as we were in the market -- and had a bunch of money with us -- Richie thought scotch would be a good idea tonight. I'm in.
The afternoon was spent trying to turn on this last laptop, but the thing wouldn't cooperate. At least there's still one functioning laptop in this house. Let's hope it holds out until we leave.
We put up beans late in the afternoon. I wasn't holding out much hope for filet, and we weren't going to eat it tonight anyway, given that we just had steak last night. Regardless, I went over to the market late in the afternoon and there it was: a dead cow. It was so freshly killed that the butchers were still pulling the hide off of it. I could have easily come back an hour later, but decided to watch.
There are a few things I learned from watching. One: A cow's stomach (or rather stomachs) is HUGE! Two: once you take its four stomachs out, there's not really a lot of cow left. Three: the steak that we so love comes right off the spine. And four: it was not as bloody as I expecting. Mind you, I missed the actual killing. I've seen that before, and the streets run red when a cow is killed. But once they get to the gutting and carving, it's a shockingly clean process.
Anyways, I came back home with another two kilos of filet. This should last us a good couple weeks. In the meantime, we had beans to eat tonight and they were tasty as usual.
While we cooked dinner, I got a call from my host mom. She has a new Trainee staying at her house. A Moz 15! Just another sign that we're almost done.
Then the scotch was opened. As soon as we opened the bottle, I got a call from a fellow scotch-lover in the states: one of my best friends Joe. It was an unexpected call, which are really the best the kind. We talked for a good while, which meant I had to play catch-up with Richie and Ussene.
After knocking off the bottle (and a beer), we came back home. Richie went right to bed. I knocked off the leftovers from dinner and quickly followed. Just another boring night in Machanga
The day started out with a market run. Evening being on my own for the day, we didn't have enough food in the house for me to survive. As soon as I made it into the market, I was stopped by a clearly drunk man. My only questions was why he got started so late. After all, it was 8 o'clock in the morning. This guy starts speaking to me, in broken English no less, and starts asking me all sorts of questions. Eventually, he tells me that he's looking for friends. Quite frankly, I don't want any more friends here. I'm happy with the friends I have and I'm checking out in a couple weeks. Either way, I told him that he could come to my house to talk. He probably won't even remember the conversation.
The rest of the morning was blissfully quiet. I read a bit of "White Teeth" before preparing for lunch. After lunch, I needed to go back to the market to pick up some phone credit for our internet connection. 200 yards outside of the school, I was stopped by another clearly drunk man who also tried to speak English with me. He asked me if I wanted to walk to the market with him. "No, I really don't." And that was that.
Once again, I had no luck in the first moments of my market run. The first person I saw in the market asked me for money. Haven't people figured out, after two years, that the muzungus don't give money to people? Why even bother asking? I bought enough phone credit to survive a couple days and made my way home.
Whatever bad luck I had getting in the market decided to follow me out of the market. 100 yards out, I hear "blah blah muzungu blah muzungu". Of course, I turned my head to see who this was. I don't know why I bothered to look at these faces of evil. Instead of paying attention to them, I sped up my gait. Given that we Americans walk faster that any Mozambican, this should have been enough to ditch them. Then again, I didn't count on them literally running after me to walk with me. No problem, I'll just play The Ignoring Game until they leave.
Except they never left. Eight women and children followed me all the way to the school. I sped up, they sped up. I slowed down, they slowed down. All. The way. Back. Eventually, maybe 100 steps from my house, they said "Tchau". I didn't even bother paying attention.
Richie, meanwhile, spent the day hauling back to Machanga from Inhambane. He arrived home around 5:30. I had already started cooking dinner -- cheese steaks. It was a night for celebration: today, we are less than two months from being home. As usual, we celebrated with cake. We were so close to having the thing baked, then the power went out. No problem: I threw together a Dutch oven, which should be good enough to get the thing cooked. Naturally, as soon as it got hot, the energy got back on. At least we had cake. We finished the night with a couple episodes of "Sons of Anarchy".
Or so we thought we had finished the night. Apparently some other people had cause for celebration. The house behind ours decided that it would be a good night for a dance party. From 10 o'clock until at least 2 in the morning, music blared at wall-shaking volume. At 2, I gave in and grabbed the ear plugs I had in my bag. Ah, silence. I quickly fell asleep after that.
For the second week in a row, I was really happy not to have work on Monday. It would have been disastrous if I had to teach today. Even with the ear plugs, I didn't get a good night's sleep. They can stop the sounds beautiful, but they can't stop the early sunlight from seeping into the house. I stayed in bed for a couple hours reading "White Teeth".
By 9:00, I had been up for a few hours and I was hungry like no other. Obviously, I couldn't make eggs for breakfast, so I turned to our oldie but goodie -- French Toast. It should hold me over for the rest of the morning. While I waited until lunch, i kept on in the book.
I thought I had put yesterday's bad luck behind me, but apparently I was wrong. Evil manifested itself today in bad eggs. Of the dozen eggs that I bought yesterday, seven of them were rotten. Well that fuckin sucks. At least we had enough good ones for lunch.
The afternoon was wonderfully quiet. I spent a fair portion of it napping. I've never been so happy to have a power outage. It meant perfect silence. Once I awoke, I spent some solving cryptograms, at one point nailing ten in a row.
Other than the lack of cake, the night pretty much went the same way as last night. We made beans for dinner, and mercifully finished the season of "Sons of Anarchy". I have no idea how this show got a second season. I don't think I'll be watching it.
Not only was Monday night quiet, but it was also cold. After a few hot nights, I was so sure that we were done with cold weather that I put away my blanket. My bad. I pulled the blanket off my shelves and had a beautiful night of sleep.
The winter weather stuck around for most of the morning Tuesday. Beside the sound of rain falling on our roof, the only noise I heard all morning came from my parents on the other end of a phone call.
I spent a bit of the Tuesday morning lesson-planning. This is our last full week of school and there are still some things I need to get through. I've spent so much time on verbs this trimester that I've pretty much ignored other parts of speech. I wanted to at least cover prepositions before they take their exam. T
After two quick classes, I was free for the afternoon. So was Richie. And so was Ussene, one of our partners in crime. This never ends of well. I joked with Richie that we should go get tanked in the villa. He wholeheartedly agreed. We then roped in Ussene. They were ready to go immediately, but I wanted to finish the last chapter of "White Teeth" before leaving. Thirty minutes later, we were on the move.
The rest of the afternoon is mostly a blur. Over the course of the next couple hours, the three of us knocked off a case of beer. Just another Tuesday in Machanga.
We came home just in time for dinner. Before the drinking bonanza began, I bought a frozen chicken. While we drank, the chicken defrosted. We roasted it and it turned out okay. Not our best work, but given our state of sobriety, we didn't really care. We watched a movie which was so bad that I'm not going to bother mentioning its title, and went to bed.
Wednesday morning was once again quiet. And once again it was grey, cold, and rainy. It wasn't a good rain. This rain will make absolutely no difference in the level of our well, but at least it's not hot outside.
I prepared for class late in the morning, hoping that my students would come get me immediately after lunch. But after lunch, one hour became two and two became three and I was never rescued. Between classes, Richie came home and told me that my students were just sitting there. Fuckers. Whatever.
I later found out what was going on. They had some sort of meeting with the director and they were just waiting for him. The meeting -- as I should have expected -- ran late, which pushed back my class a little bit.
After class, one of the girls in that group told me that she had to go to Beira and would miss the exam. Nope, she's not. I gave her two options: she could take the test now or take it when she gets back. Shockingly, she opted for now. She spent the next two hours in my house taking the exam and didn't do too badly (by Mozambican standards). She still needs to improve a bit, but I think she can pass come November.
Once she was gone, Richie and I moved into dinner mode. We made spaghetti for dinner with a cheese sauce packet. For our entertainment, we watched "The Crazies". At least it wasn't the worst movie we've seen all week.
While I hung around Thursday morning, I was doing some stuff on the internet and listening to music. My computer was hurting. The sound wasn't good, it was processing slow. And then a small roach crawled out of one of the USB ports. This isn't the first time this has happened, but today I decided would be the last. I grabbed a screwdriver and went to work.
What I saw was only mildly disturbing. There were no fewer than ten little roaches inside of my computer. And one of the wires was pretty frayed. There was no putting it together. This computer is officially dead. It just couldn't hold out for these last six weeks.
I wasn't too stressed about it. I had everything backed up a couple weeks ago. All of my music and pictures are in tact. I only lost one document of value and I should be able to get all that information back.
It's funny. If this kind of week had happened last year, it might have thrown me over the edge. But being so close to the end, having had plenty of these weeks before, knowing that I can't have that many more, I can't be too worried.
Class went pretty well today. It was the same lesson as yesterday's -- prepositions of time. There have been at least two or three questions involving these prepositions on every national exam from the past few years. These should be free points.
Richie and I made a market run late in the afternoon. We weren't looking for much in particular. We mostly just wanted to kill an hour or so.
For dinner, we went with something new: cinnamon lentils. We have had lentils before and they're pretty tasty. I figured if lentils are good and cinnamon is good, then cinnamon lentils should be pretty tasty. They were mediocre. Eh, whatever.the night was saved with "Extraordinary Measures", pretty good (and PG) movie about a guy trying to find a cure for Pompe Disease.
The cold nights disappeared again, leaving us sweating at night. It didn't matter to us. We knew that when we woke up on Friday, we could say something for the first time in two years: "We're going home next month." Feels good. Feels right.
With a bounce in my step, I walked over to the market in search of beef. We wanted to celebrate. When I got to the butcher's, the kid working there told me the cow would be killed this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Wonderful -- honesty appreciated.
I came home and prepared my last lesson, once again on prepositions. I took a ball and can into the classroom and played "Where is the ball?" with my students. They caught on quickly, though they had a hard time differentiating "off" and "out of". I explained it at least three times. I think most of them eventually figured it out.
After class, Richie and I returned to the market, hoping that the cow would be dead. But no cow was to be found. As long as we were there, I talked to the butcher, telling him I wanted another two kilos of filet. No problem, said he, come back tomorrow around noon. No problem.
Good thing we still had some beef left over in the freezer. We defrosted our remaining filet and threw it in a very tasty (and easy to chew) stir fry. Our movie of the night was "From Paris With Love". I was skeptical, but it was really good. I spent the rest of the night in Chuck Palahniuk's "Lullaby", an easy-to-read novel.
Saturday picked up right where Friday left off: with my book and without filet. I had great hope on Satuday. Yesterday, I managed to turn on a different laptop that was in need of XP. I called one of my students from last year who had an XP disc. Great -- should be up and running in no time. I gathered my things and headed across the river to Mambone.
But some great force of evil decided to show itself once again. When I got to Mambone, the computer wouldn't turn on. Why? Why?! I came home with the discs, holding out hope that it would turn on eventually.
After lunch, Richie and I headed to the market. We got there at 12:40, keeping in mind The 40-Minutes-Late rule. When we arrived, the butcher was sitting around eating. "No cow, no meat. Come back later in the afternoon." Fine. As long as we were in the market -- and had a bunch of money with us -- Richie thought scotch would be a good idea tonight. I'm in.
The afternoon was spent trying to turn on this last laptop, but the thing wouldn't cooperate. At least there's still one functioning laptop in this house. Let's hope it holds out until we leave.
We put up beans late in the afternoon. I wasn't holding out much hope for filet, and we weren't going to eat it tonight anyway, given that we just had steak last night. Regardless, I went over to the market late in the afternoon and there it was: a dead cow. It was so freshly killed that the butchers were still pulling the hide off of it. I could have easily come back an hour later, but decided to watch.
There are a few things I learned from watching. One: A cow's stomach (or rather stomachs) is HUGE! Two: once you take its four stomachs out, there's not really a lot of cow left. Three: the steak that we so love comes right off the spine. And four: it was not as bloody as I expecting. Mind you, I missed the actual killing. I've seen that before, and the streets run red when a cow is killed. But once they get to the gutting and carving, it's a shockingly clean process.
Anyways, I came back home with another two kilos of filet. This should last us a good couple weeks. In the meantime, we had beans to eat tonight and they were tasty as usual.
While we cooked dinner, I got a call from my host mom. She has a new Trainee staying at her house. A Moz 15! Just another sign that we're almost done.
Then the scotch was opened. As soon as we opened the bottle, I got a call from a fellow scotch-lover in the states: one of my best friends Joe. It was an unexpected call, which are really the best the kind. We talked for a good while, which meant I had to play catch-up with Richie and Ussene.
After knocking off the bottle (and a beer), we came back home. Richie went right to bed. I knocked off the leftovers from dinner and quickly followed. Just another boring night in Machanga
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