Wednesday, March 23, 2011
"Tall man" and hot "winter" nights
My school has serious electricity problems. Its not such a big deal during the day because its light out, but when the lights go out during night classes it is a real issue. I find myself in the middle of a lesson and everything just goes completely black. The students yell and squeal with surprise (and delight because it means that they will probably get to go home early). The glow of my students cellphones slowly illuminates the room and at least one or two students push over to my desk to make sure that i can see okay. Sometimes the power switches back on after a few minutes and sometimes its out for days and i lose yet another hour of teaching to my night students. Anyway, i was not pleased when i arrived at school last night to discover that the electricity was out in 5 of the classrooms, including the one that i was supposed to teach in. I asked another teacher if there was anything we could do about it and he said that the same thing had happened the night before, but one of the students known as "tall man" fixed it. Yes, he goes by "tall man" although with the mozambican accent it sounds more like "toll mahn". Anyway, this particularly tall student emerged from his classroom, got a "ladder", which was basically a few sticks nailed together, fiddled around with the electrical wires for about 3O seconds and, magic! All of the lights came back on. Thanks tall man for making it possible for me to teach my classes! In Mozambique they say that they only have two seasons, summer and winter. The other day, on march 21st someone asked me, do you know what today is? The first day of winter! I have realized that my idea of winter is very different from their idea of winter. Its been 1OO degrees every day this week and its pretty much impossible to stop sweating between the hours of 6am and 6pm. Winter? I think not. To make things worse, water has not been flowing from the taps this week so i have had to really ration my water and only use it for drinking and bathing. That means that i have a big pile of clothes and dishes that need washing, but no water to wash them with! Im praying that the water comes back today or ill be in trouble. Water is one of those things i never worried about in the US, but here it can be a big issue!
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