In Which Kids Fight Inanimate Objects

The second had-to-be-there story this weeks comes from just a few days ago. But first, it involves knowing two of my favorite kids here: Jose (whom you've all met before In Which TJ discusses behavior) and his brother Jordao (The one about what Jordao wants to be when he grows up).

For those of you that forgot, Jose is mentally handicapped and we think physically too. We only think physically because legally he's 13 and currently the size of a 7 year old. He lost a tooth last week. A baby tooth. That he still had. He has problems talking due to his gigantic tongue and will probably remain in second grade the rest of his life (which if he remains the same size nobody will notice).

Jordao is in second grade with Jose, except he is a normal size, for a 14 year-old. (Jordao entered school last year for the first time as a 12 year-old in first grade and has a long way to go as far as catching up is concerned.) We last heard from him when he said when he grows up he want to be a pilot. Jordao has the problem of not being able to perceive communication. We're not sure if his difficulty is in the hearing or the thinking (thus wanting to be an airplane when he grows up).

In Which We Practice Preparedness

Every so often I worry about writing a story that is just too much of a “had to be there” kind of tale. The fear is mainly because I've been told I'm the king of had-to-be-there stories. However since this website is 95%* me telling you things because you can't be here I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't trying**. So since we're at it we might as well swing for the fences and go for broke. This week you're not going to get just one story, you're going to get two. Tune in tomorrow for the second one.

*The rest is 4% random pop-culture references and 1% passionate pleas for donations. Oh, who am I kidding. Its like 45% pop-culture references, 38% ramblings, and 17% head-scratching nonsense.

**Writing here is not my “job”, if I had a “job”, or if I considered it “writing”, or “trying”, hypothetically.

The first story I've been kicking around for a month or two waiting find some way to pair it as I don't feel its strong enough as a stand-alone story. By itself it's OK, but it really needs to be surrounded by other things or it has no real importance. Like an actor in an ensemble piece. Or salad.

This particular story takes place the night before we hosted a wedding reception at the orphanage. Victor had called all the kids into a meeting so we could talk about being on good behavior and dole out some jobs that would need to be taken care of the next day.

In Which TJ has blue eyes

As I'm getting the papers together to renew my residency here in Mozambique, I was remembering back to a conversation last year with the case worker (if that's what you call them) that was processing my paperwork. It was a long process of me filling out forms and him reading back all my answers asking if they were correct or not. We did a few other trivial things like get pictures taken and do fingerprints, but mostly it was making sure that I knew how to write and he knew how to read, as most of the time was spent with him reading what I wrote.

We got through all the normal questions like where you home country is, where you residence is in Mozambique, what you do. Then this little conversation took place. My thoughts are presented in italics.

Case Worker: And your height is 190cm.
TJ: Yes, 190cm.
CW: Wow, that's very tall. And your hair is indeed brown?
TJ: You're looking right at me, how hard can this be.
TJ: Yes, my hair is brown.
CW: And your eyes are blue?
TJ: Yes, my eyes are blue.
CW: And your weight is--- wait. Your eyes are really blue?
TJ: Yes they are.
CW: That can't be right. Eyes aren't blue. Let me see.
TJ: He really wants to see my eyes I suppose---WOW that is some uncomfortable eye contact right there.
CW: No, your eyes are white, not blue.
TJ: What? Everyone's eyes are white. Look again.
TJ: And...there we go with super uncomfortable eye contact.
CW: You're right. They aren't white. They're black.
TJ: You're really gonna make this into a thing, aren't you?
TJ: Everone's eye's are black in the middle, they're blue outside of that.
CW: But I can't put blue, that's not an eye color. Choose white or black.
TJ:
CW:
TJ: Really? You can't put blue?
CW: Blue is not an eye color.
TJ: I pick blue.
CW:
TJ:
CW:
TJ: Stop staring into my eyes.
CW: Fine. Blue eyes.

In Which We Accidentally the Truck

We accidentally what? The truck.

[Warning: rather long post.] Its been a flurry of activity the last two weeks here. Last week, as I mentioned, I was manning the fort as everyone else was at week-long seminars put on by various NGO's. That week went just fine. Then we pulled into a three-day weekend for Armed Forces day or something. That meant a little bit of housekeeping. I spent the whole day Saturday with the boys in the dorm as we pulled out everything for some good ol' fashioned cleaning. And when I say everything I mean everything. The girls were all watching and making fun of all the odds and ends that the boys were hoarding in there. Water bottles, toys, trinkets, bottle caps of all sorts (which are kind of used like currency around here) were found in their bunks as we cleaned out all the junk.

But the girls got their turn on the Monday holiday when Victor went through their house with them. They got the same treatment in their house while I got to do some much needed yardwork with the boys. I wanted to be there cleaning out the girls house with them, but lets face it, girls can be a little, ummm, touchy when it comes to going through their stuff. And I don't mean stuff in like all their clothes and things. I mean weird stuff. One girl was storing dozens and dozens of old toilet paper rolls. One girl had at least over a hundred pen caps that she had collected. Another yet had a backpack full of not books but pencil shavings. And those were just the girls over age 16 (seriously). The girls did not take to well to the non-stop shame and laughter that resulted from all the boys seeing tons of junk in their trunk because, well, girls.

After that, I spent about two days washing and sorting the old clothes and packaging them up do donate somewhere else (hundreds of kids just down the hill in the jungle would kill to wear good condition 3rd hand clothes). Because of those two days my house still smells “mountain fresh”, or however detergent is supposed to smell. I'm just glad that the detergent didn't smell like cake or cheeseburgers because boy would that make me hungry.

But today's post isn't about what I've been up to. Today's post is for the edification of all you out there. As one of the things I do a lot here at the orphanage is teach and give school lessons, I thought it about time a prepare a lesson for all of you faithful readers out there. This lesson addresses one of my grammatical / literary pet peeves. And I don't even like grammar, but this is still an annoyance of mine. Today, you are all going to learn about irony.

In Which Everybody Knows TJ

It turns out that not everybody is famous in a small town. I, however,am probably the exception. It is sometimes scary how popular I am. I mean, no complaints, but everybody here knows me. And when I say everybody I mean EVERYBODY. I made a list of all the some reasons why and examples of how I'm so well known.

• I'm white. Lets just face it, I'm not hard to miss in a sea of black people. And albinos. They're not hard to miss either.

• I'm tall. Even by U.S. standards I'm tall. And everybody here is much, much shorter on account of just being that way and receiving much, much worse nutrition during those first, oh, 18 years or so when nutrition is important to growing. I'm at least a head taller than everyone in our neighborhood. Combine that with the whole being white thing and it's pretty hard to miss me.

• I take the bus. Seems innocuous enough, but the only other missionaries I bump into on the bus are nuns. The others all have cars. There's about 6 termini (end-of-lines) on the loosely organized bus routs here in Nampula, and I'm about a ten minute walk away from the end of one of those lines. And often, the buses won't go all the way to the end, they'll stop short and turn around depending on how well comported the driver is. It has gotten so that---I stopped wondering a long time ago---that all the bus drivers know where I live and won't slow down to pick me up. They'll just yell out the window and shout, “We don't stop [in my neighborhood].” It's not like I live in Compton or Detroit or Mexico, some place that everybody is afraid to go. They're just being courteous of telling me to wait for a bus that will take me all the way to where I want to go.

• I'm fairly routine. I'm not nerdy or OCD, I just get habits that work. I do my grocery shopping on Fridays and stock up for the week. How consistent am I? So consistent that one week when I didn't go somebody from the small street market about a 5 minute walk from the orphanage sent somebody to see if I was alright!

• Everybody in our neighborhood knows my name. Again, I'm not sure how and I stopped wondering a long time ago. But they also think I'm Christina's brother, so they're not all-knowing or anything. I try not to say much other than greeting and niceties to most the vendors because they all want to know way too much personal information. I noticed someone building a new market stand last week and so I stopped by. It turns out it is “owned” by somebody from my church. I stopped by and started talking to him and then all the other vendors looked at us rather shocked until someone finally blurted out, “We didn't actually think you spoke anything other than English.” Now everybody want to bend my ear about everything when I pass by the market, which is every time I need to catch the bus. (The guy from our church is too much of a goof to accurately describe with a few short words. The easiest think I can say is he doesn't know that he's a goof. We was super proud to show me his fruit stand and what it's going to look like when he finishes. When I asked him what he plans on selling he responded, completely serious, “I don't know yet. I want to finish this first then I'll start planting fruit.”)

• I'll often walk the kids to school. Mainly its just fun for them to get dropped off for second grade and then wave bye to me in front of all their friends. Some of their friends will say thinks like, “Neato, isn't it just something that you've got a white guy walking you to school?!” I've been temped to respond with something like, “Golly, isn't it swell how you have parents?!” buts there's no way of doing that which doesn't make me sound like the biggest jerk this side I've the equator. Plus, it doesn't translate that well.

• Somewhat startling, and this one puzzles me more than the others, is that their teachers know me too. I went to the primary school last month to do parent-teacher conferences from the second trimester. We have 20 kids that study at the primary school, where they are with the same teacher through the whole day. Half of their teachers didn't show up for the conferences, one of them showed up drunk (at 9am) and doesn't count, but the rest of their teachers that were there that morning (and not inebriated) greeted me with, “Hi, you must be TJ.”

And thankfully none of these peoples have Facebook and want to be my friend. If they did, I'd be getting tons of updates reading, “Alguem vi o meu cabrito? Ele ja me fugio pela quinta vez este semana.” and be taggig in photo albums titled, “Aniversario de Marere – Festa no cajuelo 2011” and having five-hundred people recommend that I “like” kabanga.