The Colors of Darkness

(to the tune of Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkle)

Goodbye, silence, my old friend

Been interrupted once again
Because the sound of a drum beating*
Entered my window while I was sleeping
And the echo that was forced into my ear
Sounds so near
Woke to the colors of darkness

Find my phone and press a key

4am, it’s so early
‘Neath the weak glow of my solar light
(it’s dying after being used last night)
Now my eyes are strained trying to read some trash fiction
The light’s too dim
Back to the colors of darkness
 
And in the lack of light I see
A camel spider on my knee
Bugs invading my mosquito net
Bugs on my pillow and in my blanket
Oh wait, no, they’re just hallucinations from
The Mefliam**
I curse the colors of darkness

"Fool," said I, "now you’ve gone mad"
But being crazy’s not so bad
Writing words that don’t have sense or aim
Thinking thoughts I don’t know how they came
To my brain, confused and upside-down,
Swirling
In the colors of darkness

So I get up out of bed
Need to escape from my own head
Locate a candle, try to light the wick
The match is crap, it fizzes out so quick***
Throw the box across the room, giving up, go and sit on my porch outside
Wait for sunrise
To witness the colors of darkness…
 
*initiation rites—the Mozambican equivalent of a bar mitzvah—consist of a lot of beating on plastic buckets, at all hours of the night

**the anti-malaria medication I take sometimes gives me hallucinations

 
***poorly made matches: the flame goes out in the time it takes to travel the distance between the box and the candle, ie about 5 inches
 
Dedicated to the Liebendorfers, who lent me a solar lantern that I use every single day -- and which I have to replace when I get back, because it most likely will not survive 2 years being knocked off the table and accidentally dropped into my bucket bath

If Cockroaches had wings...

Now that I've been in Mozambique for a full 4% of my life, I like to think I have a certain level of expertise on living here. That level is described in the following analogy:

Steph is to life in Mozambique as a 4th grader is to her first concert when she was so proud to be dressed up in black and white like a real performer, but then she watched the video 10 years later and realized she forgot to play the b flats and auditorily resembled a flock of arguing ducks.

So in case you ever find yourself in the same situation, I'm including a list of things I've already figured out for you.

• 6 o’clock means 6am. 18 o’clock means 6pm.
• Do not shake hands or serve food with left hand.
• If you plant something out of season, it won’t grow.
• If you’re cooking something you’ve never seen before, leave plenty of time for preparation, ask for help, and have a back-up plan.
• It is possible to work hard and still get 8 hours of sleep a night.
• Some things get bigger when you prepare them for consumption, like rice, beans, and oatmeal.
• Some things shrink down to nothing, like tomatoes and leafy vegetables, and water if you forget about it.
• If you do something silly, you feel sillier.
• Friendship requires effort, but can’t be forced.
• Bugs can eat holes through a pile of students’ notebooks left on the floor.
• When you are hungry, there are few foods that you don’t like.
• If you trip in front of all your students, just laugh to yourself and keep walking.
• When pouring water any higher than waist level from a full 20-liter bucket, move non-waterproof things in the surrounding area out of the way.
• Cockroaches can fly.

Chicken Soup for the Protein-Deprived Soul: Write-downable quotes that I've come across

“So many things I’ve never done, but oh, how I’ve been loved. And, if such things were to be, I’d live a thousand lives as me, to be loved so exponentially.” The Girls

“It was Aunt Lovey’s belief that all people led extraordinary lives, but just didn’t notice.”

“Today, like every day, roughly five thousand people on the face of the planet will experience one-chance-in-a-million things.” –Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman

“Your laughter and tears make my life richer.” –Erik

“Keep putting on foot in front of the other, and voila! Mathematically, you must get there eventually.” –Dad

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” –Marcel Proust

“To be is to do” –Aristotles

“To do is to be” –Socrates

“Do be do be do” –Frank Sinatra (The Art of Teaching Adults, Peter Renner)

“Come, give us a taste of your quality.” –Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Who did you eat for lunch?” –my students, trying to learn interrogative words. I actually had to bite my tongue keep from cracking up.

“Can we come back tomorrow?” –a student who had come sit on my porch to learn some English outside of class