Winter in the Tropics

June 13^th, 2012

Since last writing (on my computer in Word) I still have not had a chance to get online. Plan is to go to Pemba this weekend and sit around all day using internet at a friend’s house. The birthday party went off well. A lot of chicken. A lot of cassava beer. And a lot of people. Can’t lose, really. Except an iPod.

A couple weeks ago we traveled up north to Macomia for an International Child Day Party at a Peace Corps friend’s house. Goat slaughter and wild dancing with Mozambican women. Mozambican women are good at dancing. From there we packed into an openback (overflowing with people, sacks of beans, live goats, and god knows what else) for the dusty three-hour ride down a sandy road to the fishing town of Pangane. Situated on a spit of sand sticking out into the Indian Ocean, Pangane is the kind of place you maybe thought didn’t exist anymore; travel-magazine beaches in a completely undeveloped setting. People live in thatch huts on the sand and pretty much subsist on fish and coconuts. The beaches are spectacular; turquoise water, white sand, calm seas, all under the shade of coconut palms. Most of the town’s men work on a dinky little hand-built wood boats catching fish, squid, and octopus. Most of the fish gets dried out and traded for the beans and other goods that we rode in sitting on top of. The good news: awesome fresh seafood for cheap (about $1.75 for a kilo of fresh squid!). The bad news: the bean sacks we used as seats on the ride in became sacks of aromatic dried fish for the ride out. We showed up in Pangane on a Saturday morning (after spending Friday in Macomia) and decided leaving Sunday wouldn’t do. We stuck around eating squid, lazing in the sand, and camping in a palm grove under a full moon. The truck rolled out before sunrise Monday morning and after two three-hour open back rides we were back in Chiúre in time to teach our afternoon classes. Paradise was a much needed decompression from Chiúre life.

Last week we visited our friend in nearby Ocua. Her town “market” basically sells oil and dried fish. She lives in the middle of nowhere. We sat. We read. We cooked brownies over charcoal. Restful.

Eric leaves this Friday to go to France. He is planning to bring cheese back. All the Peace Corps people in Cabo are very excited about this. In the meantime, he’ll be gone for ten days. I get to hold down the fort here in Chiúre.  Me, Cow, and the neighbors.

Remarkable things that have become unremarkable:

-We and fellow Mozambican teachers don’t show up to any of our classes because we are called to a meeting with provincial education ministry officials to be castigated for not showing up to any of our classes (a good attendance record for our fellow teachers is about 60%).

-We eat grilled rat on a stick (our neighbors put out traps in their peanut fields during the harvest).

-We wake up at night to chase down a rat injured but not trapped by one of our traps to beat it to death with a stick and throw it down the latrine hole (this happens regularly…)

-We can’t make our students put their notebooks away to take tests because they have no desks, sit on the floor, and therefore lack a writing surface.

-I carry a handful of chalk nubs to teach class because the school runs out of chalk.

-Anytime anyone feels a little under the weather, they will tell you that they have malaria.

-A student came by to ask if we can offer him medicine for his “impotence.”

-We came home to find our banana tree bent over because someone reached over the fence, pulled the tree over, and chopped are just-rippened bananas out.

-Our latrine hole is occasionally guarded by spiders the size of an outstretched hand (not venomous) that wait patiently to ambush the roaches that venture out of the hole.

-Neighborhood kids stand at our bamboo fence begging for us to pull old cans out of our trash pit for them to play with.

-In bed before 8 pm and up before 5 am is the norm.

-12^th grade physics students are unaware that -1+1=0.

-Sixth period of the school day is essentially non-existent in the winter months because the sun sets and the school has no electricity to light up the rooms.

-Students are regularly mandated to come to school (a 1.5 hour walk for most) on Saturdays for “limpeza.” Limpeza = digging up weeds in the school yard.

-Teachers charge students money for them to take a test/quiz (this money is supposed to go toward the teacher photocopying the test in town; the money requested is usually more than the cost of photocopies).

-Weird subservient undertones everywhere.

-When we try to teach through sixth period, the head secretary comes and finds us to collect the “turma” book so he can lock up the office; the other teachers, students, directors, and secretaries have already left.

-10/20 is a good grade on a test.

-The national highway is a crumbling road that barely allows cars to pass in opposite directions. It turns to dirt regularly. None of this stops people from cruising through our town at 100+ km/h. 

-Neighbors request that we buy one of their chickens so they can buy soap to clean their clothes.
-I am regularly asked by women if we can make children together.

Grilled bushrat on a stick; in front of our house:

Paradise. Pangane, Cabo Delgado: