Once, in Mozambique, I cracked up.
It was a genuine, stomach-clenched-so-hard-I-couldn’t-inhale, gasping
for air, full-on crack attack.
I didn’t laugh as much as I would have liked in Mozambique. Sure, there
was the occasional silliness with my students; there were good days with
delightful conversation speckled with chuckles. But I didn’t reach my Real
Laughter Quota because in Mozambique, I lost track of myself. The malaria
prophylaxis messed with my head, I took myself too seriously, I got upset
easily, I wasn’t eating right, I was burned out from teaching, I wasn’t used to
not being able to not blend in, and damnit, I hated washing clothes by hand.
But there was that one crack attack.
9:00 p.m. was an hour past the town’s bedtime, but there we were,
digesting after dinner, lying on a straw mat on the red ground, full stomachs
towards the sky, relaxing on the 10 feet of dirt that separated Sisinia’s house
and mine.
Sisinia was a savior without even knowing it. An unusual woman for
Mozambican standards, she just does things her own way. At 28, she was in the
process of getting divorced, had no kids, and worked as a schoolteacher, one of
only 3 female teachers in the school. Teaching is just a job for her – she
would do the minimum number of hours necessary, not obsessed with getting extra
hours for overtime pay like many of our colleagues. She has a huge laugh that
would make me laugh, and a way of throwing her head back and swiping at you
with her hand as she laughed. She bluntly speaks her mind and doesn’t care who
hears it. She loudly protests if she doesn’t like something. She brought me
many a meal when she saw me having trouble cooking. Once I got a text from her
in capital letters: COME STRAIGHT HOME FROM WORK. On my porch waiting for me
was a bowl of homemade guacamole.
That particular evening, Sisinia and I lay on the straw mat, chatting
about nothing.
Chatting about nothing: deeper than small talk but lighter than
philosophizing. Conversing about silly, trivial things; a signal that we had
moved beyond acquaintanceship. I was no longer a stranger to marvel over, but a
person with whom to share an absurd thought. Most of my Mozambique
conversations were about the weather, or discussing our differences – in
America, do you buy your chickens live? In America, do you unplug your fridge
in the winter? Have you met Justin Beiber? It was a relief to strengthen a
friendship not by learning something new about someone, but by creating a
ridiculous thought together, for no reason other than that it simply occurred
to us.
I don’t remember most of our conversation that night, but I do remember
gasping for air, between guffaws.
We were imagining what it would be like if the world was supposed to
end tomorrow, so everyone went crazy, but to everyone’s surprise, tomorrow
arrived and the world just kept going.
“You’ve already destroyed your house, so you go to sleep in a tree, but
you’ve also chopped down the tree!”
We screamed with laughter.
My stomach hurt.
It was the most wonderful pain I have ever felt.
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| Sisinia, getting her hair braided |