Slowly Slowly

We missed our school's ceremonious opening of the academic year. We were still racing back from our distant Peace Corps meeting on various modes of Mozambican transport, so instead we witnessed the national event unfolding in every community we traversed. We caught glimpses of populations large and small congregating on school grounds, sometimes inside crowding windows and spilling out doors, sometimes outside under the shade of large trees that often substitute for classrooms. We arrived at our little schoolhouse, after some bad luck at the always problematic bridge over the Zambezi that cost us about an hour, just as everyone began spilling out of the jammed classroom venue. We had been officially excused on account of our meeting so our colleagues were impressed to see us and correctly surmised that we must have began at 3am that morning. Our vice-principal was still posting the master schedule we had used the computer to hurriedly design before our
departure amidst intermittant power outages. The teachers playfully jostled for views so they could copy down their assignments and teased each other about who had the best/worst shifts. The actual first day of classes is anticlimatic and unemotional. In Mozambique the entire first week of school is mellow, if school happens at all. Since most kids don't have calenders, they just wait until they see or hear about teaching taking place again before getting school bound. Since many are in the city visiting family or outlying villages working the fields it takes a couple weeks to start getting full attendance. We don't particularly mind since we're also readjusting our time intensive lifestyle to the demands of our teaching loads and Janet is still coming to terms with 7am classes.