24/02/10

The morning schedule is three classes with five minute break in between, then a 25 minute break, and then three more classes. Today my school brought in a man to speak about drugs and alcohol during the 25 minute break. I have been giving my midterms this week and each class took their midterm during their one double-block they have per week so I can split the class into two smaller groups to take the test. It just so happened that today one of my class’s double-block fell on either side of the 25 minute break, so during the break only half of the class had taken the test. Naturally, this being Mozambique, it took forever to round up the 1000 students into the courtyard for the speech. The bell rang for classes to recommence, but he kept talking. About five minutes into my class period I was mildly annoyed but knew that I should have known better than to expect anything here to start on time or to expect him to keep to his 25 minute limit. Ten minutes into my class period I was getting worried and trying to figure out what options I had if half the class wasn’t able to take the test today. 15 minutes into my class period I was furious and 20 minutes into my class period I just stormed off to the classroom to get set up, muttering profanities to myself. When I got to the classroom the wind had blown the door shut, so I had to storm over to the secretary’s office to ask for the keys. We got started on the test with about 15 minutes left in the class period, but luckily the test was very short and none of the kids in other classes had taken more than 30 minutes to finish it. The bells rang to end my class and to start the next one, but luckily this is Mozambique so the teacher teaching after me hadn’t arrived yet when the last girl finished up.
Today an 18-wheeler flat-bed truck sped by me down the EN-1 with logs piled up in the bed. On top of the logs were about 8 pitiful goats, tethered so tightly they could barely move, but only try to brace themselves against the 80 mph wind.