Year 1 - Week 37: The Purple Disc Revolution

For the first time in a while, I truly had nothing to do. By the end of last week, I had caught up on grading exams. My new tech geeks wanted a break from lessons, to be continued on Monday. All I really had to do on Sunday was go to market. I headed over in the late hours of the morning with the desire to arrive back home right around lunch time.

My nap yesterday ruined any opportunity of having a good night’s sleep. Once I was finished with lunch, I was exhausted. I forced myself to stay awake through the afternoon, knowing that I would sleep like a baby during the night. Unlike previous afternoons when I had time, this afternoon proved productive. I spent a good bit of time studying GRE vocab. I have nearly finished studying for this part of the exam. Hopefully I’ll be done by the end of the month or the first weekend of September, giving me plenty of time to nail down the writing section.

Dinner, though it was delicious, was largely irrelevant for me tonight. Chili was just the appetizer for a glorious night ahead. The deluge of calls started with my parents, continued with one of my best friends, and ended at a couple minutes after 10 with my brother. It was great to catch up with everyone, especial the last two callers, with whom I haven’t talked in a while. Up later than usual and having already studied earlier in the day, I blew out my candle and went to bed.

I woke up Monday morning laughing. The Larium struck again in a most hilarious way. The dream was so good and so vivid that I had to write down what happened. My sister was getting married to some German hippie chick. There were flutes playing and at some point, a video about them came on. The Germans asked for the video to be played in German first and their request was accepted. Once this happened, my grandparents left to beat the traffic out. Eventually, the party split into two, one for my sister’s side of the family and one for the other girl’s side. Apparently, though, the party was impossible to find. Along the way, my sister stole cake from a bakery and eventually we ended up at Leo Tolstoy’s house. Fuckin Larium.

I tried to fall back into the dream but it wasn’t meant to be. I awoke once again around 8:00 and when I went outside, I found my student Afonso waiting for me. I had an 8:00 meeting with the English theater students. I expected this to mean 8:30, but shockingly, he managed to gather a quorum by 8:00. My students my not learn English well, but god damnit they are going to learn to be on time.

The meeting was quick – all they have to do is make copies of the play for themselves, and they don’t need my help to do that. While they made copies, I ran over to the house to pick up my computer and get going on my computer project. Today, we looked at tables, not exactly my specialty. I would rather use Excel for this kind of stuff, but it’s important for them to know how to use them. The class ran late – until about 11:15 – forcing me to act quickly to make lunch. I got lucky with getting carvão going, prepped while the coals got hot, and ate, all in less than 30 minutes, probably record time.

Classes went beautifully today. After giving an exam to one group of 12th graders, I continued with my students on a march through past tense. For this day, we looked at verbs in the past tense with “if”, like “If my students studied more, they would not fail my ridiculously easy exams”. They picked it up surprisingly quickly and I was able to end my day a bit early.

Once the energy came on, I had a new student come over to learn some tech stuff. I’m happy to help him with it – heck, I’m happy to help anyone with that kind of stuff – but it gets tough at night. I had been working straight through since 8 AM and I’ll I really wanted to do was eat and listen to music. The last thing I wanted to do was prattle more about computer stuff. But a promise is a promise, so I worked with him for about 20 minutes before giving him the boot.

Other than the one visitor, the night was pretty quiet. I spent a good portion of the night listening to the new Pete Yorn album. I’m trying to get on board with it, but I don’t think it’s his strongest work.

My sister called me Tuesday morning, a very nice start to my day. We talked for a good while until it was nearly midnight California time. I haven’t talked to her in a while. She says she’s a bad sister, but we all lead busy lives.

I was happily correcting exams when my neighbor – a math teacher – came over for some help. He had some problem that involved successions, something I relearned a few months ago with one of my classes. But this problem was a tricky one. I worked at it for about 30 minutes, resolving one part but not the entire thing. I was left frustrated, but like any good puzzle, I would come back to it.

Classes were okay today. One set of twelfth graders got a lesson on using past tense in “if” statements. My eleventh graders got a lesson on preterit imperfect – “I used to teach English in America” – which they picked up with ease. And my second set of twelfth graders took their exam.

In between two of my classes, I watched one of my colleagues (and friends) finish up his chemistry class. He had demonstrated the first of two problems and wanted the students to do the second one themselves. As they finished up, he walked around the class to see how they had done. “Lixo! Lixo! Lixo!” – “Trash! Trash! Trash!” Not exactly the positive reinforcement I like to use.

One hundred more exams to grade and then I’m done for a couple of weeks. I got to it immediately, hoping to get through a small chunk of them. I set my sights at half way through the first class, and then I would give myself a break. Conveniently, I got to a failing test right at the half way point, giving me even more reason to give it a break. The wind blowing hard, I threw on a sweatshirt, plugged in the iPod ad took a stroll around the school.

Usually the afternoons, once school is over, is pretty quiet. Maybe there is a football game going on, which of course draws the attention of everyone, but other than that, people pretty much relax. So what I saw confused and delighted me: groups of kids in huge circles throwing our fuchsia Frisbees. The Frisbee revolution has taken over Machanga. I joined in on the fun, throwing the occasional trick throw to the delight of on-lookers. Once the energy came on, I made my glorious exit.

Before I started dinner, I committed myself to solving the math problem. I got itchingly close, even getting the right answer with an educated guess. The teacher’s book confirmed my answer albeit with no directions on how to solve it. With no mathematical proof, I was frustrated. I put it down for the night to sleep on it.

Afonso came over again tonight, this time way overstaying his welcome. I don’t mind having people over here, but not until 8:00 at night. Certain social cues that we are accustomed to – like completely ignoring someone in order to get them to leave – just don’t apply here. Eventually, I just told him “I need some time alone”. And like that he was gone. I watched an episode of “Scrubs” and went to bed.

I always thought that “sleep on it” was a funny phrase. Until this morning. I woke up Wednesday and like a vision I had the answer to the math problem. A little tricky substitution and I had the mathematical proof I was looking for. I marched over to the school office to find the teacher and smiling, relieved, showed my work.

If I had time this morning, I would have gone to the market, but I was lacking any big chunk of time. The English theatre kids had a meeting. They started their rehearsals, and considering it was the first day, it was pretty good. They have already memorized some of the lines. The play is running at about 12 minutes right now, and they still have to add some small transition scenes to get it to about 16 minutes. Even for my brightest students, it’s a lot of English.

After the theatre meeting, I was left about an hour to relax before cooking lunch. Fresh out of eggs – and just about everything else – I went to the low-resource pasta standby. The carbs got me through my classes, which went okay. Some of the students in my terrible class have the terrible habit of sending text messages while in class. They know that I can’t stand this. Usually I would transfer air time from their phones to mine, but they rarely have credit. I didn’t even bother to check this time; instead I just threw chalk at them and that stopped them in their tracks.

Finally with a bit of time, I was able to go to the market. I stocked up on all the regular goodies and got myself an almost cold soda. Once I got home, I didn’t even sort out my groceries. I went back to the field where the kids were playing yesterday to find even more kids playing. They love to laugh at each other when the fail miserably. Everybody is an expert until the Frisbee comes to them. I stayed with until the energy came on.

I had two students over for tech lessons tonight, but I just wasn’t up for it. I was exhausted and dehydrated. I told Afonso that he would be teaching class tonight; that worked out gloriously. I could relax and prep dinner while he explained in a combination of Portuguese and Ndau (local dialect) how to navigate around Microsoft Word. Gotta love sustainability.

Having learned my lesson from last night, I gave Afonso the boot again around 7:30 just before eating dinner. The rest of the night, to my delight, was quiet. With about 30 minutes of energy left, I watched an episode of “Scrubs” before checking out for the night.

I was sleeping a beautiful sleep when I heard the noise that might bother me more than any other sound here, even more than roosters: “Cença!” “Cença!” It’s not even a word: it’s short for “licença” and if said in a complete phrase would be “Com licença” or “Da licença”. It’s the basic equivalent of “Excuse me” or a knock on the door. Children especially exploit this half-word, often standing at the door of my neighbor, shrieking the word for minutes on end until they realize, yes, there really is no one home.

Today, I was the target. One of my students, minutes into the exam on Tuesday, told me he was feeling sick and asked to take the test later in the week. I was suspicious but I figured I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. He told me he would take the test Thursday morning. Had he not shown, I would have given him a zero. But like a good student, he showed up, and to my surprise, he showed up at the hour he said he would.

I corrected his test right after he finished and he did just fine. About an hour later, another student came by to take the test. I had low expectations for this student: he has passed exactly one exam this year. Even with low expectations, he managed not to meet them. He managed to accomplish a feat that no one had accomplished this year: a non-cheating zero. Out of 25 questions, he got 25 questions wrong. It was shockingly poor. When he said that he “didn’t know anything” on the test, I didn’t think he meant it literally. Of course, it shouldn’t be so shocking. As soon as he finished the test, he told me that he wouldn’t be in class that day. It’s awfully hard to learn the material if you are never in class. I can’t feel sorry for students like him.

Other than the two students coming over, it was a quiet morning. I corrected a few more tests and mostly just hung around before cooking up lunch.

Classes were quick and easy today. Outside of two classes, one to 11th graders and one to 12th graders, the rest of my afternoon was handing back exams. The students from these two groups were mostly satisfied with their grades – one class had a pass rate of 77%, the other 84% – and had few questions about the exam. Due to the lack of questions, I was done early.

It was a beautiful afternoon. A few clouds in the sky and a slight breeze kept the heat to a minimum and made for perfect Frisbee conditions. I went over to the field near the students’ dorms to find once again a crew of Frisbee players. I tossed it around with them until the energy came on, and then returned home.

While at the field, Afonso asked me if he could come over tonight to do some tech work. I told him yes, but he had to leave at 7:00. This last week has helped me figure out how to deal with visitors. One of the downsides of living at school is that we never leave work. It can make for terribly long days. But with a line drawn in the sand, it can help alleviate some of the pain. Once he left, I cooked up dinner and sorted out the two packages that arrived this afternoon.

One of my co-workers asked me if I wanted to go out “for a beer or two” and I figured, what the hell, why not. Just before the energy went out, four of us headed for the vila. Well, one our two beers led to seven or eight between the four of us and I was ready to go home. My co-worker said that numbers seven and eight were the last two, but out came two more. This frustrated me, mostly because I don’t like being blatantly lied to (does anyone?). I walked out in a bluster and was followed out but one of the four in the party. I told her I was tired and wanted to sleep, which was true. It was midnight and I was exhausted. But not too exhausted to fire up charcoal at 12:15 and cook delicious macaroni and cheese before going to sleep.

Unlike yesterday, I woke up on my own terms around 8:15 on Friday. I was a little dizzy, but far from hung over. Choosing to leave was a good decision. Had I continued, even with just those two beers, I would not be feeling good today. I wanted to get some work done in the morning. There are still 44 exams waiting to be corrected. But there was much to do in the morning – dishes to be done, water to be pumped, bread to be purchased – with no one here to help. By the time I finished with all the household stuff, it was already 11:00, prep time for lunch.

I had an easy day ahead of me. All I had to do was return two sets of exams, a total of maybe thirty minutes of work. Unfortunately, today I had to face the class with a 42% pass rate. It’s tough for me to yell at them – I’m not much of a yeller in English, let alone in a foreign language – but I certainly laid it out for them explicitly. The were the worst-performing group out of six. And not by a little: no other class had worse than a 70% pass rate. As expected, when I asked for questions about the test, there were none. For a class that doesn’t know much, they sure know it all.

Richie sent me a text early in the afternoon telling me that he would be back tonight. This was good news for both of us. I was ready have someone back in the house, and Richie’s travel time would be cut from two days to one. He told me, though, not to wait for him for dinner. This opened up the opportunity to try something new: homemade ravioli. The pasta was shockingly easy to make, but getting the little suckers to fold over was tough. It wasn’t a complete failure. There is a lot of room for improvement, but for the first time, I’m encouraged. Before the night was over, I talked to my grandfather for the first time in a while and watched an episode of “Scrubs”.

I didn’t know when Richie got back to the house, but I was long asleep by the time he arrived. It was a little strange to go to bed in an empty house and wake up to someone with it. The words I heard as soon as I woke up though rang a familiar tone: “I hate this place so much”. He rolled in after midnight and, with the music that blared all night outside, he didn’t get much sleep.

The music took its toll on me also. I was sleeping soundly until 2:30, but from then until 8, I was up at least once in a hour. Having no responsibility, I stayed in bed until 8:30.

I was not nearly as useless as Richie was today. After reading magazines for most of the morning, I made an afternoon market run while Richie napped. Shortly following, with Richie awake, we threw around the Frisbee for a bit before the energy came on.

The evening was strange to say the least. For one, we ate eggs and potato pancakes – our normal lunch – for dinner. Not only did we not have any food for lunch, but we figured that the potatoes could prepare us for a night of drinking. However, nothing could prepare us for the new “Brüno” movie. Following “Borat”, it couldn’t be terrible. While it has some hilarious moments, it’s not nearly as good as “Borat”, but if you have a strong stomach, it’s worth it.

When the power when out, our night began. We locked down the house and headed to the vila to drink with some colleagues with whom we don’t usually drink. It was all good fun. Between the two of us, we forked out three dollars total and were both feeling good afterward. We got back to the house around 12:30, both tired and ready to put ourselves and the week to rest.

Year 1 - Week 36: Geek Squad

I woke up on Sunday excited. After holding on to the laptops for a couple of weeks in an effort to try to Portuguese-ize the computers, I finally gave up. I did all that I could do, for better or for worse, and today was the day that the teachers would get their computers. I packed up the computers and happily presented the computers to the teachers.

The first lesson took place underneath a couple of trees. Is there anything more Peace Corps cliché than that? The first lesson was as basic as you could imagine: how to open up the computer, how to turn the thing on, how to turn the thing off, over and over again. It’s a simple thing, but it’s absolutely necessary.

I was just as excited to get the computers off my hands as they were to take them. They’ve been taking up way too much space in my small room and now that they are with the teachers, they are no longer my responsibility. The brief, simple lesson absolutely exhausted me. The combination of their lack of computer experience and my lack of computer vocabulary in Portuguese wiped me out. There was only one reasonable solution to my tiredness: a post-lunch nap of epic proportion.

When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was for a couple of minutes. They were an awesome few minutes. But after getting myself back together, I realized, oh yes, I’m still in Machanga. Sad.

At least there was turkey chili to make the night better. Richie has been carrying more than his fair share of the cooking load and I know that with the week ahead, he’s going to have a lot of responsibility. With that in mind, I took over the cooking duties for the night. I’d say it came out pretty well. After a couple of episodes of “Arrested Development” and a bit of candle-lit reading, it was time for bed.

I’d be damned if I gave those computers out without giving the teachers proper instruction, so Monday morning, the classes began. Having a bunch of teachers lined up, laptops on table, learning to use them properly, is really a beautiful sight. I ran them through the basics of Microsoft Word. They are lessons that will have to be repeated over and over and over again, but with experience, they will be indelible. The lesson lasted for a solid hour and a half, and the teachers left eagerly awaiting tomorrow’s lesson. After the teachers left, I ran to the director’s house to install some programs for him.

The lesson was as valuable for them as it was for me. I learned more vocabulary in one day than I’ve learned in the last few months. Okay, yea, it’s really specific vocabulary that I most likely won’t use anywhere else, but for the here and now, it’s really practical.

Lunch was purely secondary today (although it was delicious). But there really was little time between finishing with the computer classes and starting the job I’m (kind of) paid for. Teaching is nice and all, but helping out with all of this computer stuff is a lot more rewarding. It feels tangible. With that in mind, I’m going to make the most of it. Once the energy came on, I started putting together a Portuguese-English dictionary of computer terms and in the long term, I’d like to put together a full curriculum for computer classes.

Tuesday was probably the most productive day I’ve had as a Volunteer. It only took nine months. The entire morning ran like clockwork. After washing dishes in the morning, I plotted out my students’ exam for the coming week. The test is going to be in the exact format that we have been practicing all week, so in theory, it should be easy. Their only real responsibility for the exam is to memorize the past tense of the list of verbs I gave them.

I finished writing up the exam within minutes of 9:30, the designated time for computer classes. Having taught some basic Microsoft Word skills yesterday, I thought it would be best to put some of those skills to use today. I had the teachers type up a roll call list. I remembered how painstaking it was to watch the students type these things up in the beginning of the year. I figured that it would be most productive for them to type up something that they will actually make in the future.

In Mozambique, typing up a class list requires a lot more than just names. There’s a whole process of identifying where the school is, what government it is under, etc. It made for a perfect header. This was matched by a footer with a place for the director’s signature. In the body, we had the names, but we alphabetized them and numbered them. These are skills that we take for granted but are completely new to them. When we were done, the director, appreciating his work, let loose a hardy laugh when he realized how easy it was (or how much extra work they did in February).

The afternoon didn’t go quite as well as the morning. After actually teaching a couple of class periods, I wanted to have some fun with my other class. I wrote out the lyrics to Jack Johnson’s “Do You Remember”. The song is full of irregular past tense verbs, so I thought it would be a good exercise for my students. After all, they only get to hear one English voice here; my music is just an extra person for them to hear. Sadly, my speakers gave out at jut the wrong time.

The truth is that was the only thing that went wrong all day. I planned out a math lesson for tomorrow before eating. We made a fake sauce packet with pasta and watched “Be Kind Rewind”, a comedy that I could best label as so-so. And just before bed, I studied some GRE vocab.

If Tuesday was the most productive day I had, Wednesday was easily the busiest day. I woke up to a terrible sound on Wednesday morning: an alarm. I told a colleague that I would cover his math classes for the day. He said that he wanted to see how I teach, and I gladly accepted it. I figured it may help him. Plus I’ve wanted to teach math since Day 1 here, but there is such a lack of English teachers that there was no way for it to happen. The only downside to it was that the classes started at the completely unreasonable hour of 7:00.

The classes all went well. By the third class, I had students almost jumping out of their chairs to volunteer to do problems on the board, a gratifying feeling to say the least. I wish my English students were so eager to participate. The three hours of math were just the beginning of an overly busy teaching day. Immediately following the math classes, I ran over to the computer lab to give some more lessons. Unfortunately, two of the teachers were not able to make it, so I had a small class of two. It was probably for the better: it was a detail-heavy lesson. But all in all, it went well.

By 11:00, I had spoken four solid hours of Portuguese and I was wiped. Lunch mostly refreshed me and lucky for me, all I had to do was give a test. I decided that it would be best to see how ridiculously moronic one of my classes is. They usually get the exam last, but this week, they will be getting it first. And it showed. One girl tried to cheat with a cell phone (I caught it) and when I graded the exams, I went between laughing and crying. The average grade was 51% and the pass rate was 44%. Stellar.

Depressed from grading 33 mostly pathetic exams, Richie and I ate a delicious chili dinner and watched a couple episodes of “Arrested Development”, a good end to a long day.

Thursday morning means market run. There was not a lot to buy but the run still needed to be made. And it needed to be made before 9:30. After all, I had a computer lesson to give. The director and assistant director, who both missed the class yesterday, took the same class today. Once we finished reproducing the “Economist” article, the director gave the same hearty laugh he gave on Tuesday.

The class finished earlier than I expected, giving me a little bit of time to correct some exams. Considering how bad the first class did, the second class couldn’t do as poorly, right? Much to my relief only 25% of this class failed the exam (as opposed to the pathetic 56% fail rate of the first class).

Having given the class to my Wednesday students first, I had no need to give classes for the rest of the week for them. I couldn’t return exams, even though I had them corrected, because I still had to give the same exam to one other class next week. Knowing how crooked that group of kids is, I’m sure they would pass their exams over to the next class so they could memorize the answers.

With one class cancelled, I was left to give one more class before two other groups took the exam. This time, I made two unique versions of the exams. I’m sure some of my students crapped themselves when they saw that the questions they had were different than the questions from yesterday. And like yesterday, I had one cheater. This time, it was a more traditional cheating job: notes in the book bag. The best one, though, was a girl who was scurrying to right a cheat sheet on her hand as I stood next to her. It was before the exam, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Right after the exam finished, I started correcting, and the exams fell into the same depressing pattern: the language track kids getting absolutely destroyed. It kind of made me sick, and once the energy came on, I knew it was time to give up on grading.

Afonso, my 12th grade student who is learning computer stuff at night, came over as arranged. After turning him down the last couple of nights, I promised him that he could come over. What we didn’t count on was another student who needed some documents typed hope. How gloriously perfect. The two of them worked together while Richie and I cooked up dinner. The rest of the night was usual. We had enough time four two episodes of “Arrested Development” before the lights went out.

I was right back to grading Friday morning. I had one and a half more classes to get through. This time, though, I knew better. I put the exam of one of my best students as the last exam, so I could at least go out on a good note. Much to Richie’s disappointment, she did not let me down: she got 100%.

The rest of my day was shockingly quiet. For the first time all week, I didn’t have a tech class to give. The teachers were in some sort of meeting, one that we of course did not participate in. So I got in some quality patio time with the Kakuro book. With classes once again cancelled, the afternoon followed suit. I did some GRE studying as well as read an “Economist” for the hundredth time.

Richie was gone for the better part of the day. He decided to go over to Mambone with one of his “girlfriends”. He regretted that decision. But while he was there, he came up clutch and found bell pepper, which would go beautifully in stir fry.

Two cars of muzungus showed up in the afternoon. It’s always suspicious when white people come here. We were expecting this group. The Brazilian church Brothers were in town to give their monthly class on something. I’ve only gone to one, mostly because it’s stuff we don’t need to know.

We had an invite to go out drinking with some teachers and of course we took it up. It wasn’t our usual get-wasted-‘til-you-can’t-drink group. Instead, Richie and I drank our two beers and walked out of the bar mostly sober.

The Brazilian Brothers gave their little talk around 8 in the morning. Richie decided to go. For me, this was a prime opportunity to get some work done. Because they like to use PowerPoint presentations, they have to use energy. And I did not want to spend my entire evening typing up an exam for one of the teachers. The timing was almost perfect. I had written 26 of the 27 questions before the energy went out.

The cars that rolled in yesterday rolled out shortly after the speech, and Richie left with them. Richie has a conference in Maputo, so once again, I’m alone for a solid week. The afternoon was pretty boring. After cooking up lunch, I split my time between Kakuro and a nap, which ended up being a bad idea. It could have been a productive afternoon of studying; instead it went to waste.

Cooking dinner for one, just as it was last time, was depressing. I don’t feel as bad, though, when I make spaghetti. Richie is still burnt out on pasta, and I think I can eat it for every meal. The rest of my night was surprisingly busy. I cleaned up the exam I typed in the morning, wrote up a couple emails to be sent later, and briefly talked with my brother, who made me plenty jealous in describing where he was: Dodger Stadium, with my dad.

The call went up until the lights went out, and mentally, I was ready to go to sleep. But my nap did me in. I was up until midnight, and the whole time, all I could think about were Dodger Dogs. I will get my brother for this…

Year 1 - Week 35: When Nothing is Better than Something

Year 1 – Week 35: When Nothing is Better Than Something

There were eight murders in Machanga last night between 3 AM and 4 AM. The weapon was my hand. The victims were mosquitoes that were stupid enough to venture in, on, or around my bed net. It’s clear that they wanted to die anyway. Mosquitoes are one of the less joyful things about Machanga, right up there with being 100 kilometers away from a bank and a severe lack of cold beer, and it actually brings me joy to kill them.

Starting with the obvious, the little fuckers bite. And because I have a tendency to pick scabs, they leave scars that look like little bullet wounds. Further, they are amazingly loud at night. Once our energy goes off, all we can hear are mosquitoes outside and it sounds like Armageddon is around the corner. But the grievance that earns them death is their entrance into a bed net. It’s not just that they bite and we hear the buzzing – that would be enough; but mosquitoes, for some reason I do not know, like to fly right into your ear at the very moment that you are about to fall asleep. Invariably, this leads to us boxing our ears hoping to kill the bloodsucker. For this, they must die. At this rate, by the time we leave Machanga, Richie and I will have personally killed every mosquito and eradicated malaria in the area.

Other than the hour-long killing spree, the night passed peacefully. Unlike yesterday morning, I had no obligations, no meetings, no nothing. This would be a good day for giving up. But before I could crawl back into bed, there was a little house work and some studying to do. The house received a full cleaning – dishes, sweeping and mopping – and it almost ended up clean. No matter how many times or how well we sweep, there is always more dirt to be found, and that just gets frustrating. At least the mopping makes the floor clean enough that we don’t feel the dirt when we walk in the house. Once the cleaning was done, it was nearly time to eat.

After a filling meal and falling into a bit of a food coma, I tried to wake up my mind to study. I broke out the Kakuro book and, for the first time in about a week, actually finished a puzzle. I don’t know if the puzzles are getting harder or I’m getting stupider, but good lord, I needed that boost in confidence. My mind sharpened, I got down to studying GRE vocab. It’s a slow process, especially since my motivation level is pretty low right now. But I’m pretty close to having added 300 new words. There aren’t that many more to go, so I’m not so concerned.

By the time I was finally ready to give up for a nap, it was already too late. I can’t nap at 4:30 and decide to go to sleep at midnight. Hah! That’s not one of the options. In fact there are no options when it comes to bed time. So I trudged through the rest of the afternoon with a magazine.

One of my students came over when the energy came on. He wanted to continue to learn how to use a computer and we were happy to oblige until dinner time. Richie started him out while I helped out our school director with some computer stuff. It’s going to be nice once I can give these teachers consistent computer lessons. At some point, they will be able to do most things for themselves and won’t have to turn to me or Richie for tiny things.

While my student tinkered around on the computer, I helped him a bit and Richie took care of cooking chili. Chili takes a long time to cook, so we didn’t get to eat until almost 8:00. This was quite beneficial in reality: we had enough time for two episodes of “Arrested Development” before the energy went out. Reading by candlelight, I managed to stay up until 10 o’clock before going to bed.

I had an unusually full work day on Monday. The English theatre students wanted to meet at 8 in the morning. So we showed up around 9 AM and most of the students still weren’t there. By 9:20, everyone arrived and we were ready to go. The students broke up into groups and started writing their play.

Once they got rolling, Richie stuck with the kids while I went on the hunt for bread. There are two places where we can buy delicious Mambone bread: in the market, which is a bit away, and a little store that is really close to the school. I walked over to the close market, but “Não pão”. So I made the long walk to the market under the hot sun. Once again, não pão. All they had was terrible Machanga bread. I figured that crappy Machanga bread was better than no bread at all.

I was wrong. It’s been so long since we’ve had Machanga bread that we forgot how awful it really was. I really should not have bought enough bread for two days. But we couldn’t waste it, so we painfully made our way through almost all of the bread. We got through most of it, but by the end, we were so sick of it, we gave up.

The meeting and the bread hunt took up almost all of the morning. We at our regular lunch with irregular Machanga bread before heading off to another week of work. Classes went alright. This was the third lesson of past tense for my twelfth graders and the fourth for eleventh graders, so they are starting to pick it up decently. It shouldn’t be this difficult because they are not learning any new structures, only new vocabulary. Sometimes, though, I take for granted the fact that even if I didn’t learn how to actually speak during high school Spanish, I got a good understanding of structure. Even though these kids do get Portuguese lessons, I don’t think that they learn structure.

I came back from class to a curious sight: Richie sitting under the tree with a bunch of teachers. Usually, I can find him on the patio. There could only be one thing going on – drinking. So at 5:30, we start drinking wine out of coffee cups. Very classy. We drank until 8:00, only interrupted by a call from my parents. Delicious French fries and “Arrested Development” made our night complete.

Outside of the dry-mouth, spinning wake-up at midnight, I slept a lovely, mosquito-free sleep. The students for English theatre planned to meet on Wednesday, so I was off the hook for morning. Richie ran to the market and I thoroughly cleaned up the house. I was bored to the point that I even gave the chairs a good washing.

Richie returned with glorious Mambone bread and we were back in business. We made a vow that given the choice between Machanga bread and no bread, we will always go with no bread.

Class today went quickly, even though I had five consecutive teaching periods. For some reason, teaching three single classes followed by a double feels faster than it actually is. We threw around the Frisbee, with some kids joining us, before the energy came on. After prepping for dinner, I helped out a teacher transfer some documents from one computer to another so they could be printed off of the one computer that has the software for the printer.

I returned to see my chair filled and my computer being used by my student. This makes I think five nights in a row that he has been over to practice. It’s a little annoying having kids come over after work, but you got to love the commitment. He typed up some sentences in English and we explored around the computer a bit. He is happy with the progress he is making and by the end of the year, he should have a skill set that could easily land him a job here. Once he left, we ate dinner and had enough time a couple episodes of “Arrested Development” before bed.

As scheduled (kind of), we had another English theatre meeting on Wednesday morning. Slated for 8:00, we didn’t start until close to 9. One of the groups came prepared with a decent translation of their scenes. They were very happy with their translation although, as expected, it needed a bit of tweaking and rewording. Some things just don’t translate well from Portuguese to English, but for the most part, it’s their work.

The meeting took up the whole meeting. Richie returned to the house a little early while I took some questions from the students. They ask me about little but important things and for some reason, these ten minutes lessons are the ones that stick with them. They are also pretty fun because they stretch my mind. I don’t know what questions they are going to fire at me, so I have to be on my game.

Classes went as they typically do on Wednesday – starting out well before becoming torturous. One class – the smarter of the two – finished three classes worth of material in two periods, early. The other class painstakingly stretched out the two slow-paced classes for almost the entire two hours. I will never understand how there could be such a large difference.

Either way, I was done early, and Richie, courtesy of being able to combine a couple classes, was also done early. We spent a good 90 minutes on our porch undisturbed. It was beautiful. My student came over once energy came on and continued typing up the play. It’s moving along, um, slowly. He stayed until 8:00, when we finally told him that we needed some “Arrested Development” time.

I spent way too much money at the market on Thursday morning. I jumped at the opportunity to buy delicious Mambone bread, as well as buying a couple of sodas. All in all, I spent about 500 Meticais, a little less than 10% of our monthly salary. I should have returned to a house empty, with Richie in class; instead, Richie was sitting on the porch. Only five of his students showed up to class. They gave up, so he gave up too. He claims to have tried.

I spent a bit of the morning planning out when my students would take their first round of midterms. The schedule is going to be all fucked up because I’ll be giving the exam to my crappy classes first. I know that they like to get answers from the other groups, so now the tables will be turned. It will be awfully tough for them to get answers from the other classes when the other classes haven’t seen the test yet.

Classes ended exceptionally early for a Thursday. The test schedule is messing up my teaching schedule, but for the better. I now have to stretch out my teaching schedule for the smarter classes, which isn’t a big problem. All it means is that I have to cancel teach one class instead of two today. Hmm, poor me. It just gave me a little unexpected extra time off to relax. The sunset was as crazy a sunset as we have ever seen. The sun once again turned red, but this time, the sky above it turned pink and below it turned grey. It was like watching some strange NASA production.

Once again, my student came over to continue typing up his English theatre bit. I tried to guide him through it, but when I was met with an “I know!” I let it go. He’s a pro now. He finished typing up his piece just as we were having dinner. We spent the rest of the night finishing up the season of “Arrested Development”.

Oh Friday, how sweet it was. No classes to plan, no market run to make. Just magazines to enjoy and vocabulary to study for the entire morning before an awkward afternoon of classes.

If I could change one thing about my schedule (besides eliminating some classes), I would move around my Friday schedule. As it stands now, I teach the first two periods in the afternoon, then have a two hour break, followed by another two classes. I would much rather do them all in a row, in whatever order, instead of having that break in the middle. And it’s especially true on days that I end early. If I only use half the time – as I did today – I have a four hour break in between classes, and that is just not right.

For dinner, we decided to go with something that would fortify our stomachs, a rare night that we actually wanted to eat pasta. We were in for a long night of drinking with a couple of colleagues. Richie, having nothing to do earlier in the day, bought a bottle of whisky that we hoped would be good. We were wrong. But that didn’t stop us from drinking it.

We were doing okay through the first bottle, but then our school director (who we did not expect to see and with whom we have never drank) purchased a second better bottle of whisky. At this point, I knew this night was going to end badly. Even after the second bottle, we weren’t doing terribly, although the fact that I got up to dance at one point is a pretty solid measurement of how drunk I actually was. With the second bottle gone, the director bought a third bottle of whisky, and this is where me – and my liver – gave up.

Richie and I both felt terrible by the time we got home. We knew that lying in our beds would result in a terrible case of the spins. So for some reason, we decided that sleeping on the patio would be a better option. I think each of us slept for a bit until my face started to freeze off, so we moved inside.


Awful does not begin to describe how hung over I was for my entire Saturday. I woke up feeling like I wanted to die. And to make it worse, Greg, our Peace Corps colleague came across the river with some of his students to do an Ultimate Frisbee demonstration. I was going to meet him in the vila, but my laziness paid off and he just came straight to the school.

For being hung over, I was both in shockingly good spirits and surprisingly active. Spending time in the sun was probably to stupidest thing I did the entire morning, and eventually I just gave up, sat and the patio, and tried to restore my fluids to a reasonable point.

I felt almost 100% by the end of the morning and thought a run to the market would be a good idea. Besides getting some regular items, I really wanted to buy a cold bottle of water. I had the good fortune of getting a ride in a truck to and from the market, sparing me some time in the sun. While in the market, though, I ran into the school director who – oh my god – was drinking. Of course, he didn’t drink as much as we did last night, but to be back on the horse by 11:30 was amazing. He asked me if I wanted a glass of beer, to which of course I said “no” and then “okay”. I don’t think it caused me too much additional pain.

The rest of the afternoon was spent between the house and the field. I probably should have spent more time in the house because the sun finally caught up to me. By the time everyone left, I started to feel sick. Not hung over – sick. As I started to prepare dinner, I started shaking, which was just freaky. I gave up on preparing dinner, and popped some re-hydration salts and aspirin.

Once dinner was on the table, I started to feel better. Maybe it was all of the oil in the delicious onions that did the trick, but the pills probably kicked in just in time. After dinner, we watched “Behind Enemy Lines”, the fourth of our five war movies. It was weird to see Owen Wilson in a dramatic role, but he acquitted himself well. Finally feeling like myself by the end of the night, I was ready to sleep.

Year 1 - Week 34: Oh Yea, That's What It's Like to Be a Volunteer

I didn´t want to spend my last day off traveling, but I didn´t have much of a choice. This travel day worried me more than usual. Normally, traveling is not a problem, but with four laptops, it´s a little daunting. Typically, I would leave my stuff on the chapa to reserve a spot, but carrying four computers will change that. Instead, I walked over with a sweatshirt and arrived at the chapa stop just as the chapa was pulling up. I told the driver that I needed a specific space for my bag - one where the computers would not be crushed - and he was more than accomodating.

With a couple hours to kill before leaving, I went back to the Volunteers´ house to hang out for a little bit. I hadn´t seen one of them for a month, so it was good to catch up with her. I headed out around 9:30 to go to the bank, pick up a newspaper, and buy some vegetables before the chapa left.

Getting the computers on to the chapa was concerning enough. Watching them bounce around during the ride raised my blood pressure just a little bit. With every pothole that we hit, my heart jumped up to my throat and down to my stomach. For those computers to travel thousands of miles without problem, only to be ruined on the last, shortest leg of the trip, would kill me.

And the chapa ride wasn´t even the most dangerous part of the journey; I still had to cross the river with these things. Of course, on this day, we came the closest to tipping over. The paddler decided that it would be a good idea to pull up the anchor before he had everything he needed and we almosted drifted away.

Across safely, Richie came down to the river and spared me the pain of having to carry all four computers back to the school. Once we were in the school, I opened up my backpack to see if the computers survived. No cracks, no damage, just a problem with one of the chargers. The stress flew off my shoulders.

I was back in Machanga with a little time to relax. I sat on the patio and read a little bit before prepping for dinner. One of my students came over and, after reading a national exam from last year, thanked me for the format of last trimester's final. "It was good practice", he said. I certainly didn't see that coming but I appreciate the compliment.

Machanga received a very unique sunset tonight. With growning season mostly over, people are starting to burn their fields. All of the smoke turned the sun blood red. It was cool. I don't think I've ever seen the sun turn completely red before.

We cracked open a can of turkey and threw it in a delicious stir fry. As we watched Arrested Development, I loaded XP and Office on to my computer, and just like that, I had a fully functioning computer again! My night ended with phone call from my parents before the energy went out.

For the first time in a long time, I had a case of the Mondays. It´s been four weeks since I´ve had to work, so I really don´t have a lot of room to complain. In a lot of ways, I´m ready to get back into the classroom. I know that I can sit still doing nothing for only so long. Teaching will certainly help quell the boredom that I´ve experienced for the last few weeks. There´s nothing else to do in Machanga, so I might as well teach.

I spent a bit of the morning lesson planning. This trimester is going to spent almost exclusively on the past tense. We have already covered present and future, along with some other tenses like conditional; now it´s time to look backward. It´s going to be slow and go. This first week, we will only be using four verbs in past tense - to go, to be, to do, and to have. Once they have these down, it´s all just memorization.

Hearing that bell ring at 12:15 made me cringe. Work? Work?! I don't wanna do this. Once I was in the classroom, though, everything was good. The students were happy to see me, I think. Well, as happy as a student can be after four weeks of vacation. Everybody seemed to do pretty well with this first lesson on past tense. Of course, this is all stuff that we did in the first week of school, so they should get it quickly.

All that work -- 5 hours of teaching in all -- made me exhausted. But my work wasn't even done yet. I continued working with the laptops, installing XP in Portuguese on all of the laptops. It's difficult enough to learn how to use a computer. The least I can do is alleviate some of the pain by installing programs in their language. The burden will fall on me to learn the vocabulary. In the end, everyone wins in this situation: they learn more quickly, and a augment my vocabulary.

Just as it was starting to get cold, the weather has turned up again. It's not blazing hot like it was in February, but still warm enough to necessitate a fan. Without the fan, I would not have been able to sleep through the night as I did.

Richie made a run to the market Tuesday morning while I washed the dishes and swept up the house. I didn't have to do much lesson planning -- maybe ten minutes -- before I knew what I was doing for class.

Day Two of past tense was pretty simple. With the verb "to be" nailed down pretty decently, I moved to "be", "go", and "do". This should be pretty straight forward, and for the majority of the kids, it was. But there's always one or two who, even after showing how the Portuguese is exactly the same, still don't get it. I don't want to say that they are lost causes, but if they haven't figured it out this far down the line, they probably never will.

Once again, I was exhausted after work. Richie, however, was not. He wanted to work out before we ate dinner, so I obliged. It is pitiful seeing how out of shape I am. I shouldn't be exhausted after 15 minutes. I have never been so happy, though, to take a cold bucket bath. In five minutes, I went from sweating to shivering.

We were particularly lazy tonight when it came to dinner. We used one of the sauce packets that my mom sent me. Richie did the cooking while I helped out a teacher in the computer lab. He needed a lesson-planning form made, and I busted it out in about 10 minutes. I came back just as dinner was ready. After eating, we watched "Dan in Real Life", which was pretty funny, and did some reading before bed.

Wednesdays have always been good days here in Machanga. I never have to lesson plan and I almost always finish classes early, courtesy of one class that is very quick to learn and one class that refuses to ask questions. And on this Wednesday, I was particularly productive. I washed my sheets, which were in dire need of cleaning. It's one of those things that I could have easily passed off to our regular clothes-washer, but I just didn't have anything else to do in the morning.

The afternoon went as expected. My smart class picked up the material very quickly. I was able to get three lessons worth of material into two teaching periods. My other not so smart class was slow to pick up the material, but claimed it to be easy after struggling through it. I try to poke and prod them into asking questions, but whatever I do, it doesn't work. In the end, it's their grade, not mine, so if they don't want to ask questions, I can't force them.

I spent the rest of my afternoon reorganizing a bit. My sheets dried, I made my bed and cleaned up my room a bit. I tried to start the non-functioning computer, but failed. And late in the afternoon, one of my students came by just to practice English. After dinner, Richie and I finished off the first season of "Arrested Development", which definitely improved over the course of the season.

I had to get back to lesson planning on Thursday, but before I could do that, I had to make my usual Thursday morning run to the market. We were fresh out of everything in the house and I was in dire need of buying phone credit as it was.

My first round of students had seen all the material and the second round of students are just beggining to get the second round of lessons. The kids from earlier in the week had a big lesson in front of them: 20 irregular verbs and learning how to do questions and answers in the past tense. It would also be difficult for me because I had to figure out a good list of irregular verbs. For this, I turned to my ever reliable iPod to give me some good ideas. By the end of the morning, I had come across some 38 verbs that could be of immediate use for my students.

The afternoon classes went as well I could have asked. A lot of the students started to make the connection between present tense and past tense and how easy it easy to change a sentence from present tense to past tense. It's one of those things where I could hear the lightbulbs over their heads go on, like "Oh, it's exactly like Portuguese" -- which it is, structurally -- "but just using different words". It's those moments when this job is most rewarding.

Richie and I made dinner ridiculously early. We left ourselves with way too much time to watch TV. If we decided to watch TV, we would have time for something like eight episodes of a show, and it's just not worth it to knock out a third of a season of a show in one night. Instead, we turned to a movie, "Run, Fat Boy, Run", which had it's funny moments. I'd recommend it if you have a couple hours to kill and want a good laugh.

For the last week, I have slept awesomely, and last night was no exception. I woke up feeling great, especially since I had no work to do Friday morning. My Friday students get the same lessons as my kids on Thursday, so I was off the hook for the morning. Most of the morning was spent trying toget online to activate Microsoft Office on the teachers' laptops. And for the first time in almost ten days, I was successful in getting online. Having activated Office in all the computers, all I have to do now is get all the Windows updates from a students, and the computers will be ready for distribution.

Classes went alright today. I'm glad to have my slower group first because it means I can power through with the second group. Nobody wants to stay until the last period on Friday, and it's especially true these days because by the end of the day, it is impossible to see. There are few classrooms with functioning lights, and with the sun still going down early, there is little natural light at 4:30 to help. My second groupl, of course, picked up the lesson quickly, and I was done with plenty of time to enjoy the sunset.

We broke out a new meal -- an especially Mozambican meal -- for the first time tonight. Along with a little tomato sauce and rice, we cooked couve (koh-vee), a leafy green. We had hoped that it would fill us up, but once we were finished, we were both itching to eat something more. We split our last loaf of bread and that seemed to do the trick. Once again, with plenty of time, we turned to a movie. This time, we went back to my five-in-one war movie DVD. Going in chronological order, it was time for "Black Hawk Down" -- an awesome film about the tragedy (both for the sodiers and the people) in Somalia.

I slept so well into Saturday that I almost overslept a 7:00 meeting that we were supposed to go to. When I say that, I mean that I woke up at 7:40 and the meeting didn't start until 8:00, so it was actually quite perfect. The meeting was quite useless -- just a bunch of stuff for teachers that didn't at all apply to us. We bailed out of it early to meet with our English Theater kids. We have a new secondary project going. This is one of the projects that is well established amongst Peace Corps Volunteers here. The Volunteers who were in Machanga last year helped the students with the same project, so we will continue the tradition. Richie stuck around for a while, then headed to the market while I finished up with the students.

The meeting bled into our regular prep time, which was probably for the better. We ate lunch later than usual and then each of us spent some time napping in the afternoon. Late in the afternoon, we went over to the main soccer field to watch a game. We decided that at half time or at the first goal, whichever happened first, we would go grab a beer in the market. Halftime arrived at 0-0 and we were off to enjoy a cold one.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty calm. As the energy came on, one of my best students came over to practice typing. He came over yesterday to begin lessons and I continued with him today. The learning curve for this is quick because he is literally starting at nothing. He is a fast learning and anxious to learn quickly, but sometimes it doesn't help his cause. He tried to rush through the typing exercise, but ended up doing poorly.

While I helped my students, Richie took care of cooking dinner. For the first time in a while, we had spaghetti and tomato sauce. It took me longer than it took Richie, but I think I finally burnt out on spaghetti. Thankfully, we are down to about once a week. Our week -- one that moved very quickly due to our return to school -- ended with a few episodes of "Arrested Development" and a failed phone attempt by my aunt. Thanks mCel.

In spite of the actual having to work thing, it's not so bad to be bad to work. If the rest of this trimester moves as quickly as this past week did, the school year will be over before I know what happened.

Year 1 - Week 33: Executive Delay

I’ll be honest: I’m ready to get back to work. It’s been a three week layoff and goddamnit I am bored out of my mind. As this school is a boarding school, when school is out of session, most everyone -- even the teachers -- leave. Spending a little time in Beira and Vilanculos certainly helps, but being here when no one else is here is somewhat depressing. More than anything though, I feel thoroughly unproductive, or non-productive. I can’t say that I have done much of anything of significance over the past three weeks and it kind of sucks. I can’t even imagine what it will be like once school is out and everyone is gone for good.

Most of Sunday was spent sitting on the porch, staring into space or reading magazines. I am incredibly grateful for all of the magazines that came in my packages. Seems like a lot is going on in the “outside world” -- or I guess, has already happened, seeing as some of the magazines were from February or March. The whole experience of reading three-month old news is kind of like trying to tape a sports game in an effort to watch it later: inevitably, someone will say the score or send a text message and ruin the fun of watching (Kal Penn died in “House”??? What the fuck?!). I already knew most of the headlines -- the final score, per say -- but it’s nice to get the details.

It’s nice to have someone here who is equally bored and unproductive. Having Richie back in Machanga means a lot of things: there is someone else to cook, someone with whom to speak English, and someone who makes a good partner for Frisbee.

What I did after lunch looked a lot like what I did before: reading, with the occasional Kakuro and some GRE studying. My vocabulary continues to grow: I’m at about 200 new words over the course of the last four weeks. I’m hoping to nail down a couple hundred more by the end of August, then focus on the writing section in September. At least that will keep me busy in the morning when school finally does start.

We broke up the monotony of our afternoon with a solid frisbee workout. Spread about 20 yards apart, we ran up and down a soccer field while throwing and catching. It is a tragedy how out of shape I am. But now that I have dropped just about every ounce of fat off my body -- thank you, Machanga -- I am prepared to be lean and mean. Exhausted, we went with a pasta dinner with a simple sauce mix -- always nice to get away from tomato sauce. We finished the night watching “Arrested Development”, which Richie managed to get his hands on in Beira.

I woke up early, which sucks. Nothing like a six-hour long morning to kill when there is nothing to do. Monday looked a lot like Sunday -- reading, Kakuro, studying GRE vocab, napping. Nothing eventful happened, so I’m not going to waste my time (or yours) writing about it. See above. The only difference between Monday and Sunday is that I’m a lot more sore than I was on Sunday, we had pancakes for dinner instead of pasta, and instead of watching “Arrested Development”, we watched “Wind Talkers”, a terribly acted World War II movie.

I think we reached the peak of boredom on Tuesday. You know it’s bad if Richie and I decide to make a joint market run. We didn’t even need that much stuff -- it definitely could have waited until tomorrow -- but we were just in dire need of killing an hour. We ended up buying a lot more than we expected: someone started carrying Pepsi, which is nothing short of miraculous. But it was the walk that was worthwhile. Change is still a-coming to Machanga. An entire field has been cleared out, and I’m not talking about a soccer field. I’m talking about airport-sized field. The president will be arriving tomorrow and they are actually going to land a plane here. Should be awesome to see.

Our walk got us to 10:00. Ugh. Richie and I played frisbee no less than three times in the time between 10:00 and lunch time. When we weren’t playing, Richie was laid out on his bed and I could be found on the patio, of course, magazine in hand. Lunch was a good break, but by 12:30, we were back into our routine: read/rest, frisbee, rinse and repeat.

Late in the afternoon, my parents called. I had a productive talk with my dad about grad schools and got all the news from my mom’s (50th!) birthday party. And it killed a half our of my afternoon. Just before the energy came on, we played frisbee with a bunch of kids, as we had promised them yesterday.

Richie wanted to try something new for dinner tonight, although there was nothing really new about it. In Chimoio, while with some other Volunteers, he ate tomato sauce over rice. He claims it is a different tomato sauce, but really, how different could it be. Either way, it was pretty good. You can never go wrong with tomato sauce, no matter what it is on.

Excitement arrived on six helicopters on Wednesday. Finally, the president of Mozambique made his way into Machanga. Richie and I woke up early enough to watch the six helicopters and one airplane touch down on a field about half a mile from our house. I never thought I would see the day that an aircraft would land in Machanga. Six was just excessive.

After all the hoopla at the landing site -- just about everyone in the entire village showed up for his arrival -- everybody made their way over to the location of his speech, which was a couple miles away. A lot of people walked over. Hah! We got ourselves a ride with one of the shop owner’s friends. It’s nice to know people in high places.

The speech was both interesting and boring at the same time: interesting in that he went off of no notes, which was impressive; boring in that it was just a bunch of populist rhetoric which anybody could have probably done without notes. There were no shortage of chants -- Machanga! Hoyea! -- especially when he started losing the crowd. The most fascinating part of the whole thing for me was that there was a translator for the speech. Not a translator from Portuguese to English -- that would be ridiculous -- but from Portuguese to Ndau, the local dialect. Even though Portuguese is the official language, it goes to show you how sparsely spoken it is, especially here in the bush.

We ended up walking out on the speech. We finally had enough when he invited people to come up to discuss the problems they saw in Machanga. It kind of reminded me of the “Festivus” episode of Seinfeld, when the characters take part in the “Airing of Grievances”. The list could have gone on forever -- the rampant poverty, illiteracy, lack of electricity, lack of a paved road -- and we said “chega” after the first person. We wound up at the shop of the person who arranged the ride for us. We drank beers with them and our South African friend, Greg. Most importantly, I managed to get myself a ride down to Vilanculos with Greg, sparing me a chapa ride.

The rest of the afternoon was as calm as it has been. There was nobody at the school -- most people decided to stick around for the rest of the speech. We reverted back into our books and magazines before dinner. We enjoyed a bit more of “Arrested Development” before going out for a night on the town.

The hoopla that arrived on six helicopters left early Thursday morning, and just like that, everything was back to normal in Machanga. The only difference was that people would randomly say “Guebuza!” (the name of the president), which drove me only a little insane. The hoopla officially ended when the plane took off.

Richie and I, having nothing to do, made a joint market run, even though we didn’t need much of anything. I wouldn’t be around for the weekend, and knowing Richie, he wouldn’t be cooking for himself -- that’s what our neighbors are for. Either way, our market trip took out an hour before we had to prepare for lunch.

The afternoon was a carbon copy of yesterday, save for the drinking with the shop owner and friends -- a bit of reading, a bit of Kakuro and a bit of studying. We cooked up a delicious stir fry and watched a bit of “Arrested Development” before going to sleep.

After sleeping a glorious sleep, I received two unexpected phone calls. The first was from Greg, telling me that we would not be leaving today, but instead going tomorrow. It was actually a blessing: it saved me probably 500 Meticais in food and lodging for Friday. The more unexpected call came from my brother, not just because we hadn’t talked for a while, but because it was insanely late in San Francisco when he called. We talked for almost two hours, which was great.

Other than the early action in the morning, the rest of Friday was quiet. It was -- finally -- my last day off, official or not. Tomorrow and Sunday are going to be long days: on the road for a quick run to Vilanculos, then right back the next day. It’s only appropriate that I spent my last day off the way I spent my other days off: between reading magazines and doing Kakuro. I learned the most ridiculous word in one of the “Economists” I read: verisimilitude. I’m guessing that a very slim percentage of English-speakers know this word, and of course, because it is completely unnecessary for me to know, I’m stuck knowing the definition -- appearance of being real -- forever.

My afternoon was marked by an out-cold nap. It felt like a full night’s sleep, even though it was no more than 50 minutes. Of course, it will come back to bite me when I can’t sleep later.

I didn’t even bother to pack a bag for this trip. I would be gone for a total of 36 hours, and I would be coming back with a lot more than I left with. Besides my full month’s salary, I’m bringing back four laptops for teachers here. It’s exciting to see that this project -- which started just a few months ago -- is already turning into a reality.

Greg told me that I should be in Mambone by 8 AM, which was no problem for me. I beat my alarm by five minutes, brushed my teeth, and made my way across the river. I was in Mambone at 7:50, perfect timing…if this were America. My 8 AM departure time turned into 1 PM. It’s not like I could do anything about it, so I did what we do in Africa: sat and waited. It proved to be a nice opportunity to study some GRE vocab and catch up with some students who live on the Mambone side of the river. At one point, I ended up drawing a diagram in the sand, trying to explain why it’s summer in America now. It was a hell of a Portuguese challenge, but I think I held my own.

Once we got on the road, we made good time. Even with the five hour wait, I would much rather be in a private car than a chapa. It’s much easier on both my wallet and my knees. I arrived in Vilanculos around 3:00 -- not terrible -- and made my way to the house that had my four laptops. After a little reorganizing, I managed to get them into my one monster backpack. Successful -- and fuckin hungry -- I went straight to New York Pizza to indulge in a delicious pie.

For all the calories I put on in consuming the entire large pizza, I took them right off almost immediately. With 25 pounds of computer on my back, I walked the two miles from the pizza place to the volunteers’ house where I would be staying tonight. Usually I can get a ride down, but there was no luck tonight. Exhausted, I pretty much gave up as soon as I arrived at the house. But I can’t be angry -- I got my computers and I got my pizza. I can’t ask for much more than that.

Year 1 - Week 32: The Price of Modernity

Giving myself two days to recover, I was back on the road on Sunday, this time to Vilanculos. I woke up refreshed at 6:30, cleaned up and closed up the house, and was on the road by 7:00. And then the waiting began. I sat at the river, along with six other people for thirty minutes, before the canoe guy decided that he was ready. Then once I got into the villa, I sat in the chapa for 90 minutes before it filled out. At this rate, I would never get to Vilanculos.

But once I got to Maluvane – the crossroads between the EN1 and Mambone – my luck changed. A few cars passed me, but the ride I got was sweet: front seat of private car. On a freshly repaved road, we bombed it down to Inhassoro. And I didn’t pay a metical for the ride. Sweet. Within minutes of getting out of the first car, a second car flew around the corner and I snagged it. Two Italians took me in the rest of the way to Vilanculos. In all, the first 50 kilometers of the trip took four and a half hours. The last 100 kilometers took 90 minutes. And cost me nothing!

I made my way over to one of the Volunteer’s houses in Vilanculos where I was greeted by a bunch of Volunteers, but not the one I expected. She had left for a conference in Maputo, but was gracious enough to open her house up to other Volunteers. Some long-lost souls from the northern part of the country had made their way down. Of the three that came down, two of them I hadn’t seen since December, so it was really nice to see some old faces.

I had one reason and only one reason to come to Vilanculos so soon after being away, and it was to pick up the four laptops that had found their way into the country. The last of the four arrived on Sunday, so the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, but some bad luck got in the way. I couldn’t get in touch with the Volunteer who had all of the computers. She had dropped her phone into a swimming pool, making reaching her impossible. It’s okay. I had nothing but time. I could pick them up tomorrow. I repeated to myself what has become my life motto – “We’ll make it work” – and put it on the shelf for the day.

The afternoon with a bunch of Volunteers was pleasant. We mostly just watched movies and talked about work. I was especially interested in talking to a Volunteer who was teaching computer classes, as that will be my task once I do get my hands on those computers. Over the course of the afternoon, I was happily interrupted by phone calls, one from my parents and one from one of my best friends at home.

The afternoon bled into the evening, when one of the Volunteers made some delicious eggplant and rice. I’ve never been one to eat eggplant – the look of it just weirds me out – but I figure if I can eat pig brain, I can eat eggplant. The night ended with a group viewing of a hilarious pirate porno, which was not only the worst porn I’ve ever seen, but the worst pirate movie I’ve ever seen.

I slept comfortably through the night in spite of an uncomfortable bed. It’s only a little frustrating that I can sleep well everywhere but Machanga. A couple of the Volunteers headed out early in the morning, and I left with them. I had one mission for Monday: get my hands on those computers. Without being able to reach the Volunteer by phone, I had to go old-school. I went over to the hotel where she was staying with her family, but they had just left for town. I left a message for her at the front desk, hoping that she would get it.

In the meantime, I stuck around near the hotel. I did some shopping for household essentials then headed down to the beach to study some GRE vocab. After finishing off two lists of words, it was nearly lunch time, and how convienent was it that the pizza place was just 100 yards away. I enjoyed what was, by far, the best pizza I’ve had there. Just as I finished eating, I got a call from the Volunteer with my computers. They were walking out the door, heading out of town at that moment. Sigh. Tis life in Mozambique: never quite going to plan. It’s not all bad – I got my pizza and I was pretty happy. The computers will have to wait until another time.

As soon as I returned back to the house, the rest of the Volunteers made their way out. I was in for a lonely afternoon. I finished another list of GRE vocab, making this the most productive learning day I’ve had in a while. And as a reward, I played a bit of solitaire (some reward, huh). I finished off the rice from last night, checked email, and went to bed, once again ready to get back to Machanga.

I didn’t sleep nearly as well as I did last night. I was up at 3:30, feeling pretty good. Waking up that early did, however, give me the opportunity to be the first person to wish my mom a happy birthday. So what if it was still July 20 in America – it was the 21st in Mozambique, and that was good enough for me. Right after receiving a text back from my mom, I went back to bed for a bit. By 7:30, I was up for good. I cleaned up the house, fed the animals, and made my way into the villa.

I hit a prime seat in the chapa for Mambone: first row on the far window. I wouldn’t have to get up for anyone as people piled in and out of the car. My seat claimed, I headed into town to buy an eclectic collection of items – vegetables, a newspaper, and a five-in-one war movie DVD. The ride in was no problem, with very few stops until the very end. Once in Mambone, I did some last minute shopping for bread and vegetables.

When I arrived at the river, there was only one, soft-spoken old man, with hands that had history written in the wrinkles. On the river, two boats sat about 10 yards out. The man yelled something in Ndau to one of the people in the boats, and then did something that has never happened to me before: he translated what he said from Ndau to Portuguese. Even though I generally knew what he was saying – “Come on, buddy, we’re waiting to go across” – it was still extraordinarily kind for him to explain what he was saying.

Once we arrived at the Machanga side of the river, I expected to part ways. I tried to get my bag from him, but he wouldn’t let it go. I figured that I was going to walk like an American – quickly, with purpose – and he, with his walking stick, was going to putt along at Mozambican pace. He put me in my place in one fell swoop: “I may be old,” he said, “but I can still walk fast. Nobody should have to walk alone.” And we did. I tried again to pry my bag from his hands, but he wouldn’t have any of it. He, unnecessarily, walked me to within 100 yards of my house, something I certainly didn’t expect.

Even an easy travel day takes its toll. I arrived home tired and hungry, but I had something to look forward to: a real salad. It’s been a long time since I had a salad with more than two vegetables in it, but with the bounty of veggies being sold in Vilanculos, I was able to make something almost appropriate for a restaurant. It was a good preface to the rest of my dining experience, which was a stir fry that, like my salad, had more vegetables than usual with the addition of bell pepper, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and carrots. And oh yes, for the first time in a while, that stir fry had chicken in it!

The rest of the evening, I was shockingly occupied. Most of my night was spent in the computer lab trying to repair a computer. A virus haunted one computer – the one with the printer attached – but unlike my computer, I was able to repair this one. I cleaned the hard drive and it was good to go. The Brazilians who are bringing me the materials to repair my own computer will also provide materials for this one also. Satisfied with my work, I relaxed with a magazine – and after the power went out, a couple of candles – before going to sleep.

I woke up on Wednesday relieved to not have to travel. I have logged way too many miles over the last ten days and I am looking forward to not doing much traveling in the foreseeable future. Even the short trips from Vilanculos take it out of me.

Most of my day was spent sitting on the patio, which I was happy to do. I continued to catch up on reading, shifting my focus to a more vocabulary-intensive “Economist”. With every GRE vocab list that I finish, these magazines are easier to read. By the time I am ready for the exam, I should be flying through them.

After lunch – a failed attempt at an omelet which turned into scrambled eggs – I switched between Kakuro and reading, switching every time I messed up a Kakuro. All in all, it was a thoroughly unproductive afternoon until I hit the sack for a nap.

I was back on computer duty tonight, although I managed to eat a delicious chicken sandwich before heading over to the computer lab. The task was much easier tonight, to the point that I didn’t have to do anything because, well, I couldn’t. One of the teachers wanted to open Microsoft Word on his computer. He didn’t have Office. I can’t do anything about that, but I did show him how to open WordPad, which is essentially the same thing.

As I walked back from the computer lab, I noticed something new: the usual darkness of Machanga was broken by a string of now-functioning streetlights. They haven’t quite reached the school yet, but they are inching their way closer. As one of the teachers noted, it will be beautiful once they get here.

During the day, though, those light posts are pretty ugly. The wide openness of Machanga is no longer so wide open. There’s a beauty that is certainly lost by having this convenience, a convenience that a majority of people here probably won’t use (or afford for that matter). And now that they have wrapped around the school behind my house, my gorgeous sunset view now has a wire running right across the middle. I guess that’s the price of modernity. With that said, I’m sure I won’t be as sentimental when I can flip on a light at 9:30 in the morning.

I actually had something to do Thursday morning, which made me exceedingly happy. Low on food, I made a late morning run to the market. Hopefully, this is the last time I’ll have to shop for one. With any luck, we should be paid tomorrow, which means Richie will make his way back to town over the weekend. Returning from the market around 11, I had little time to sit around before prepping for lunch. For the first time in I can’t remember how long, I didn’t have eggs and potatoes. I just couldn’t do it. So having not eaten spaghetti for a couple of nights, I made that my lunch.

Once again, the afternoon was rather quiet, spent mostly with an “Economist”. Every once in a while, a teacher would come around and state the obvious “fica sozinho” – you stay alone. Yea, I don’t have much choice in this one. Later in the afternoon, I hit the GRE vocab book. I nailed down another list of words. I will be ready for this exam vocab-wise well ahead of the test.

I had no major plans for the night, but I promised a teacher that I would help him with some computer stuff. What I didn’t bank on was typing up all of the revisions for a 40-page school paper. Whatever. I can’t really complain about having to work a whole two hours. It gave me something to do for most of the night and it gave me reason to make quick and easy mac and cheese. After eating, I settled in bed with a magazine and slept shortly after the energy went out.

Another Friday, another tough work week over. Ha. In theory, we should be starting work again next week, but with an anticipated presidential visit – for real – next week, no one is expecting work to really begin until the first week of August. Most of the teachers will be busy preparing for the executive visit. All that really means for me is I’ll have another week to sit around, read magazines, and study.

Friday was nothing special. The only big difference between Friday and the rest of the week was that a little rain came along with the strong winds we’ve had all week. It’s a little strange to have rain in this time of year – dead in the middle of the dry season – but I guess it’s a welcome change.

I returned to eggs and potatoes for lunch today. Spaghetti’s one day reign came to an end quickly. After eating, the rest of the afternoon was pretty regular: more reading, a little vocab review and a bit of necessary cleaning. The rain, in the sense, helped me since it gave the patio a good rinsing.

I put off eating dinner for a bit in order to help another teacher with some computer stuff. This was a lot less work than I had last night. All I had to do was load a printer driver onto his laptop. As I walked out, I came across two unexpected surprises. The first was an Austrian volunteer working in the ESMABAMA office. We met while I was in Beira and she was as happy to see me as I was to see her for the same reason: we just really wanted to speak English. Since Richie has been gone, it’s been all Portuguese all the time. It’s been really good for me, as these past few weeks were some of the best weeks I’ve had with this language, but every once in a while, a break is necessary.

With her presence, I had high hopes. If a car came from Beira, that means I should have packages. She said she didn’t see any boxes, but as we talked, the school manager came over and said “I have something for you”. Not just something: five somethings! ESMABAMA came through on their promise and delivered the rest of my packages with the first car. I spent the rest of the night opening up packages and organizing the bounty of goodies that arrived. With their arrival, an ordinary Friday became extraordinary.

My run of loneliness finally came to an end on Saturday. Richie texted me in the morning, told me that we got paid, and that he was coming home. He just needed to get lucky to catch the chapa either in Inchope in Muxungue. While he was on the road, I spent the morning cleaning up the house. No one should have to arrive to a dirty house. Sweeping, washing dishes, and mopping took up the better part of my morning.

Having finished all my cleaning duties around 11, I was feeling ambitious. I didn’t really want to eat eggs and spaghetti was not going to happen. So I turned to a meal I haven’t tried in about seven months: gnocchi. The last time we tried to make gnocchi was sometime in January, I think, and it was an utter disaster. Note: using corn flour for gnocchi does not work. Armed with good old wheat flour this time, I gave it a run. Making gnocchi is a labor-intensive process with a delicious end result. The truth is, though, for all the time and effort it takes to make, it’s not just worth it. It’s a good rainy day activity. And it’s nice to know that I can turn to that when I really have nothing to do. Right after eating, I was right back to cooking, this time beans for chili tonight.

Satisfied with my meal, I sat on the patio anxiously awaiting Richie’s arrival. Even though I’ve been alone, I haven’t been lonely, which is a good sign. But having someone else here is always better than the alternative. Finally, around 4:00 he arrived. He looked exhausted, but as I have felt the last few times, he was happy to back in Machanga and stunned by how different it looked.

The night was pretty regular for us. We cooked up a delicious turkey chili, by far the best chili we’ve made so far. And now that we have a functioning computer again, we were able to once again be entertained, this time by the new “Batman” movie. Modernity, once again, is back on our side.

Year 1 - Week 31: Bad News Beira

Sundays were always the worst days in training, mostly because I had nothing to occupy my mind. Even at site, Sundays are usually pretty lame. It’s not like we can go bowling in Machanga, so most of our weekends are just sitting around being lazy. But this Sunday was one that I actually looked forward to because it represented the end five days of loneliness. It’s funny how things have changed in just a few months. A couple of months ago, staying just one night alone was torturous. But these five days, although boring as all hell, were tolerable.

This was also by far the most productive day I’ve had alone. In anticipation of my trip to Beira on Monday, and with Simbanhe (our new clothes-washer) out of town, I was left to do laundry by myself for the first time since, umm, training. It turned out to be not so bad. The weather was perfect for sitting outside and it ate up a good chunk of my morning, leaving me just a little time to mess up a whole bunch of Kakuros.

After lunch, one of my colleagues – the person who ran science fair with Richie – asked me to “passear” with him. I hate passear-ing (one thing that we really enjoy is taking Portuguese verbs and adding gerunds to them or making them past tense). Usually, it just means walking around for absolutely no purpose but to kill time. For a change, though, this had a purpose: we had to talk to the chapa driver to arrange seats for tomorrow. We left at 3:00 in the afternoon, but I figured the chapa would get in later than that, so I grabbed my GRE vocab book just in case. Of course, the chapa didn’t arrive until 4:15. It proved to be a productive hour or so of studying.

The chapa driver had no problem saving the six seats for us. What he didn’t know was when he would leave: “any time between an hour from now and 6 AM”. Thanks. We returned home and I packed immediately, although I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be turning the chapa around that quickly. Once the energy flipped on, I cooked and ate quickly, thinking a departure would be more likely. Just as I finished eating, we were given a departure time: 8:30 PM. Ugh.

8:30, of course, turned into 9:30. While we waited, I showed the science fair kids the magic tricks that I had showed other kids earlier in the week. They ate it up with a spoon. We loaded into the chapa at 9:30 and I knew from the onset that I wouldn’t be sleeping. The driver, needing to stay awake after driving down from Beira earlier in the day, blasted Eminem, 50 Cent, Nas, and any other rap he could get his hands on. By the time we reached Inchope (the crossroads for Beira), the driver switched out rap for a three dedication to Michael Jackson.

We arrived in Beira, weary and filth-covered, at 6:15. A chapa picked us up and took us in the general direction of our hotel, although we had to cover the last half-kilometer or so by foot. As we got close, we ran into Richie, who took us in the rest of the way. While the students slept in the hotel, I mostly hung around being lazy, too tired to sleep. After eating, I was a little more alive and actually productive. Along with a couple other Volunteers, I put together some prize packets to be distributed to the science fair participants.

Late in the afternoon, I made my way over the school’s office, on the other side of Beira. I situated myself on a couch, broadband internet connection in hand, and enjoyed the internet for hours on end. I didn’t even bring myself to eat: I was too enamored with talking to family, downloading grad school information, doing all the things I can’t do on my crappy internet connection in Machanga. Around midnight, I was finally spent. I left myself with two jobs for Tuesday: update anti-virus and go to the post office.

Neither of them, agonizingly, would be done. I woke up to a computer that would not stay on for more than two minutes. Just as with humans, viruses spread rampantly in computers here, and a bad one got to mine. I spent the entire day (save for twenty minutes for lunch) trying to figure out how to eliminate this beast of a virus, but it wasn’t meant to be. Adding insult to injury, no one in the ESMABAMA office could take me, as promised, to the post office. From a peak of elation last night, I dropped into an abyss of frustration; it was the kind of day that should be forgotten, although it won’t be forgotten easily. I went to bed, again without dinner, but this time out of frustration and not of business.

I arose early Wednesday morning with hopes of resolving my computer issues again. Virus-scan ran successfully although it failed to eliminate the virus haunting my computer. Out of my control, I tried to let it go. I melted off some of the stress with a hot shower, but the true stress relief didn’t come until I arrived at the post office. Seven packages, from April to June, sat at the post office waiting for me. It took three attempts – papers needing to be stamp, bureaucracy taking up time – but I finally got my hands on my packages, as well as three for Richie. After a day at the top and a day at the bottom, I felt like I was on top again. Even with my computer mostly shot, I was still overjoyed.

The successes continued throughout the day. I managed my documents and pictures to a flash drive, so all was not totally lost. My music still resides on my iPod so I don’t need to worry about that. And following a delicious Italian-made dinner – pasta with real Italian sauce and monster prawns – I returned to my computer, giving it one more shot at salvation. It was not meant to be. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t be knocked off this hill, and crystal-clear phone calls from my brother and dad kept me soaring. All said, I went to bed around 12:30…

Which probably wasn’t the best idea, considering I had to be up at 3:30 to catch the chapa from Beira back to Machanga. One of the people working in the office gave me a ride to the chapa stop, where I was the first one to arrive. I killed some time finishing off the intro to “Rhetoric”. In the process, I was humored by the presence of the word “jejunity,” a word I learned just a few weeks ago. It was a word I had never seen until I started studying for GREs, and by strange coincidence, it appeared in the first book I’ve read since studying.

Typically the chapa would arrive between 4:30 and 5:00, but on this day, it didn’t arrive until 6:00. By that time, nearly 60 people had showed up looking to get back to Machanga. With a maximum capacity of maybe 20 or 25, there were going to be a lot of unhappy people.

Conincidence struck again on a travel day. Around 5:15, Sozinho, our old clothes-washer/best friend showed up at the chapa stop. He greeted me with a traditional handshake, followed by an untraditional hug. And even in my exhausted state, I managed to understand him.

Considering that I was the first one there, one would think that I would have a spot. Ha! People rushed the doors, and I was given little chance. But that little chance was a huge help: the school director was already on the chapa. He grabbed one of my backs, threw it on the seat, and it was “ocupado”. Sweet. My eyes were closed most of the way, but a little girl with a penchant for stepping on my feet kept me awake for the entirety of the trip.


With a box in one hand, a bag in the other, and a backpack over my shoulders, I labored back to school from the villa. I was happy to be back in Machanga, with no obligations, far, far away from Beira. I settled in on the porch, opened up my packages and organized all of the goodies my family sent me. Having nothing to do, I sat down and started catching up on “Newsweek” magazines from March. Old news is good news when it’s in English. Once the energy came on, I cooked up one of the boxes of macaroni and cheese my mom sent me. I’d be damned if I had to eat tomato sauce tonight.

After eating, I headed over to the computer lab to help out a teacher with computer stuff – basic stuff like copying, cutting, and pasting. I told him that he should be included on the tech lessons. What got me, though, was the ease with which I was able to have a reasonable conversation about computers in Portuguese, especially since I could barely string a sentence together earlier in the afternoon. The variability of competence with Portuguese, 10 months into this job, remains the single most frustrating part of life here.

By 8:30, I crawled into bed, saddled up with “Newsweek” and fell asleep within minutes of the energy going off.

I slept through a night in Machanga – with no wake-ups – for the first time in months. And when I mean slept through, I mean it: I woke up at almost 9:00. I guess physical and mental exhaustion will do that to a person. And the best part of waking up at 9:00 is that half the morning is gone. I remember when I was younger that my brother, an early riser, would mock me for sleeping until 9 or 10 or 11 o’clock (“Half of your day is already gone!”), but here, I will be overjoyed if I can make it to those hours.

Also, for the first time in a long time, I failed to clean the house in the morning. I treaded lightly last night, so there was little to be done in the morning. I ran to the market and picked up items that would last me through the weekend. After all, I would be on the road again on Sunday, this time to Vilanculos to pick up computers for some teachers. I returned around 11:15, and by then, it’s time to start thinking about lunch.

After eating, I had little to do in the afternoon, yet it still passed quickly. I knocked off a couple of magazines, running to a shop to by bread in between a “Time” and a “Newsweek”. And the house, once again occupied, earned a good cleaning. Soon enough, 5:30 arrived, and the cooking began. The night was committed to more reading. It’s hard to catch up on news, especially when it’s three months old (and especially when so much of the news is about an economy from which I am so far removed). With some time to spare in the evening, I made myself some cookies, which always go a long way.

My streak of sleeping through the night ended at one. I woke up at 3:30, refreshed and dry-mouthed. Options at 3:30 are limited. I peaked outside to see a crescent moon rising over the trees, but quickly turned back to the sanctuary of my bed. I rolled around for maybe an hour or two before sleeping again until 8:30.

More reading – in fact, only reading – was on the agenda for Saturday. No market run was to be made: just as quickly as I returned to Machanga, I will be heading out again on Sunday. Few dishes were to be washed, a task a took care of early, just to get it out of the way. The rest of my time, before preparing and cooking lunch, was dedicated to “Newsweek”.

What followed after lunch was much more of the same: a couple more magazines knocked out, interspersed with a bit of Kakuro. By the end of the afternoon, my head was pounding – although the number of chocolate chip cookies I ate my account for some of that. I gave my head a chance to relax by cleaning up the house, a job always done before heading out of town. When the pain was gone, I was right back into the magazines.

I cooked another dinner for just me, a task that I hate yet one that I have become accustomed to. There are two nice parts about cooking for one. Firstly, no plate is required. Most of what I cook is spaghetti or rice, and I am just fine eating it right out of the pot. Sounds like college, right? The other nice thing is that I pretty much can do what I want while I eat. The truth is, most nights, Richie and I eat in silence, enjoying – or at least, trying to enjoy – the food that sits in front of us. Being along, I have the ability to read, play music. Or as comedian Jim Gaffigan would probably note, I don’t even have to put on pants.

The week of ups and downs ended on an up-note, I am happy to say. Three of the four computers coming out here with friends and family of Volunteers have arrived in country. The last will arrive on Sunday. I am thrilled at the prospect of teaching teachers how to use these computers. Hopefully, they will learn from my mistakes and update anti-virus in a timely manner.