Making it Through Another Trimester!

All teachers probably fantasize at times about arriving to school only to find it devoid of students and enjoying a surprise day off. Of course it's wrong to imagine our already educationally handicapped kids losing more school time, but sometimes we are just dreaming of a little respite from the demanding workweek. We definitely don't have snow days here, but Mozambique has other little ways for miracles to work their magic for teachers limping to the end of a trimester. This Thursday our site happened to host Tuberculosis Day. Coincidentally Thursdays happen to be Luc's craziest day of the week; so after four hours of teaching and a rushed lunch, he was heading back to school for six more periods of repeating, "I AM, YOU ARE, HE IS..." The vice-principal had already assured us that classes would continue as scheduled despite the festivities, but sure enough, Luc showed up to an empty classroom. The electric drumming at the soccer field had drawn
everyone to the Nyau's magnetic dancing and the conclusion of the TB program. Even though the event only burned the first two periods of the afternoon, only about half the students drifted back to campus making a joke of the rest of the school day. The next day it's Friday afternoon and Luc is typing this blog while Janet finnishes student ID cards for the entire 8th grade and we realize not a single one of our colleagues is to be found on campus. Kids are slowly wandering away so its unlikely any classes will take place. A lady selling beans nextdoor tells us a rural chief had died so teachers are attending the funeral; someone else theorizes the district must have deposited teacher salaries that week so everyone has rushed off to the city to visit our nearest ATM. We never got an authoritative answer, but as the last teaching day of the trimester it's an anticlimactic end to ten weeks of hard work. Considering our current state of exhaustion, we're
not complaining.