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
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