Happy V-Day

            Happy Valentine’s Day!  Don’t you just love (LOVE!!!) this time of year?  The cold melts a little by the heat of love birds chirping along at the park, at the beach, at the movies, or, if you happen to find yourself in rural Mozambique, at the machamba (a small plot of farm land).  Heralds of spring, these love birds seem, until one is left disappointed, alone, heartbroken.  Then they transform themselves into vultures of vile, harbingers of hate. . . Happy V-day.  That sounds better.  Makes one think of D-day.  Also, it abbreviates quite neatly as V.D. 

As promised, this blog will not reek of sickly sentiment (it won’t go beyond sodade, I promise), though a bit of bitterness doesn’t seem so bad as long as there’s a little humor in it, and that humor is delivered at the expense of no one.  Of course, when one’s alone on V-day, that’s exactly what one often feels:  like no one.  Lest we lose ourselves in memories of past relationships, let’s re-direct this blog.  Let’s move into fiction. Short, short fiction, that is.  Or at least the sketch of a short story.

So, let’s re-start.  Let’s leave Mozambique for a moment, and the whole African continent, if you like.  Imagine . . . a writer.  She is a college student, let´s say, majoring in botany, but is taking a creative writing course to fulfill some liberal/fine arts requirement.  It is late afternoon and she sits in front of her desk in her dorm room, typing away at her laptop, letting her mind fly where it may.  The class is only an elective, so she might as well have fun with it.  It won’t affect her G.P.A. any; she registered the class as pass/no-pass credit. 

But she’s starting off a little flustered.  She spent the greater part of the morning and lunch time in front of her computer, but not on writing.  She was on facebook, stalking “friends,” seeing their jubilant pictures, indulgent comments, and asinine updates.  She had been stalking one guy in particular, an ex-boyfriend, and she realizes only now that she has been writing up a portrait of this ex:  of his insecurities, his issues with his mother, his teeny, weeny penis.  It was a useful exercise in descriptive writing, in showing not telling, but it isn’t something she would ever turn in to be workshopped in her class.  No.  He may have been one misogynistic little prick, but she herself was not brought up to be so mean-spirited.  She knows she’s expected to be nice and to play fair.

She saves her reactionary piece then and opens another document.  She rolls up her sleeves, takes a deep breath, plays Feist on her itunes.  She wants to write for real now.  But what does she want to write?  Even though it’s Valentine’s day, or because of it—hence, the aimless facebook stalking—she’s been meaning to write a romantic comedy for a while now, and today is just the impetus for it.  She knows it’s not great literature; she doesn’t intend it to be.  The male students in her class, let alone the declared creative writing majors, will surely look upon her with disdain.  The story will be cliché, but that’s the piece that she wants to write right now.  Something with a happy ending.  A romantic comedy.   

She knows the possible story lines.  Boy meets girl.  Or vice versa.  Or boy meets boy.  Or girl, girl.  She wants something she can relate to, nothing titillating, so, boy meets girl it is.  Just a simple story of how two people meet, undergo hurdles and hitches along their journey together, only to realize that they are their own barriers in the face of their love for each other.  There’s really no mystery.  The problem is she wants this story to be genuinely heartwarming, and, though she’s only a first-year college student, our writer knows well enough that genuine and cliché don’t mix. . .

What else would she know?  Does she know her psychology?  That her desire for this story is a sign of her wishful thinking?  Does she know how complicated desire is?  Has she experienced, for instance, actually getting what or who she wants, only to realize later that he is not the one she really wanted in the first place?  That he is not the one for her?  Or even that he is very bad for or to her?  Has she experienced wanting more, and more, and more from someone, yet never getting enough?  Or wanting someone who doesn’t want her back enough, or doesn’t want her at all?

 

Our budding botanist of a writer is only eighteen years old, but she is a young woman, and women, in general, seem to mature much faster than men, so let’s say that, though she hasn’t yet personally experienced the vagaries of romantic relationships, she has an intuitive sense about her.  But only an intuitive, sort of cultural sense, not the practical experience.  Otherwise, she would find it desirable to be alone, if she knows she can discover bliss in it.

 

But for now she’s caught up with the idea that bliss is embodied in the other, which isn’t such a bad idea.  The tension, it seems to her, is between the old-fashioned notion of one’s other half, the counterpart of one’s soul, and the more common or currently accepted idea that intimate relationships begin with physical attraction, with “chemistry,” before it can transform into love.  A part of her believes, or wants to believe, in the troubadour songs of love at first sight, in the meeting of the eyes, and recognition of identity in the other, that instant flash and seizure of the soul being swept away by divine destiny.  But another part of her really believes in the lust that sparks a relationship, in sexiness (or sex) first, and then development of the deeper, spiritual connection later.  She would like to believe that there is that one person for her, the man with whom she is meant to be.  But she thinks this is silly and naïve. 

Our writer is cool and hip, and so she decides to do away with the “boy meets girl” scheme, and starts in medias res, in the middle of things, or in this case, in the middle of a relationship.  She decides to begin her story with two college students, a girl and a boy already together as a couple.  The two characters are walking together to their next class through the quad.  No, the lawn is damp, and she’s wearing heels.  So they walk around the quad.  They are heading to Hart Hall, which literally exists on campus, but she chooses it for its homonym.  Get it?  “Heart” Hall?  The two characters are having a discussion that’s verging on an argument: on the topic of non-native eucalyptus trees in the Bay Area, how invasive they are, how they are fire hazards, and what should be done about them.  They are also botany majors, but the boy represents logic, the girl feeling and intuition.  Our writer-wanna-be is working out the dialogue that would demonstrate the tension between the two, when she hears loud knocking on the door.

 “Who is it?”  She turns down the music—Feist’s “Now at Last” is playing. 

“It’s Sal. . . from downstairs?”  He knows where he lives, but the doubt, the inflection in his words asks if she remembers him.

She opens the door.  “Oh hey.  What’s up, Sal?”  She’s met him before, but only now remembers his name.

“I heard music playing from your room, figured you’re staying in.  Not gonna go see The Notebook playing at the campus cinema?”

“Ha! Hell no!  Are you kidding me?  My roommate went, though.  I was just typing a paper for class.” 

“Oh.”  He looked disappointed. 

“Yeah.  Leila left with Dave, or Dan, or some dude or another.”  Guys are wont to look for Leila.  Sal’s probably doing the same.

“Why are you doing work?  Your paper’s not due tomorrow, is it?” Sal asks.

“No, no it’s not. . .” 

An awkward silence.  She doesn’t know what else to say; she already told him Leila has left the building.  The guy would usually be gone by now.

“I know it’s only Thursday, but a few of us are doing movie nite at the lounge downstairs.  My roommate Jack’s got a projector.  There’s popcorn, too.  Thought you might like to join us.”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles.  Another awkward pause.  She wants to ask what movies they’re watching, and who “a few of us” are.

“You ever seen Happy Accidents?  It’s a great film.  We’re about to watch that and then later Shakespeare in Love.  I haven’t seen it, but it was Sandra’s recommendation.” 

Our writer/botanist has, in fact, seen both movies.  But she hasn’t seen them in a while.  She wants to see them again—for research, she thinks, as they are two excellent films—but this guy Sal seems too interested in her going.  She is reluctant.

“Maybe you’ve got a movie you’d like to bring and watch?”

“Okay,” she finally says.  “I’ll go.  Let me just grab my keys.”  Anyway, it would be good to talk to Sandra, who is taking the same creative writing class.  .  .

Maybe Sal will ask our writer-character out on a date at the end of their movie nite.  He doesn’t seem very shy.  And maybe she’ll be open enough to him, and say yes, if she’s not too hung up on her ex.  But this little fantasy is getting too long, as I’m sure you would agree. 

I need to get back to reality.  I heard somewhere out there, waiting for me, there’s a hot cup of chá de calcinhas—Portuguese for “tea of panties.”  I’ll spare you the details.  Suffice it to say that this chá is an aphrodisiac here in Mozambique.  

Oh Mozambiki!  Here’s a toast, to some of your quirky realities!  Bottoms up.

novidades

Not much has been going on here in Cuamba.  The small bridge linking our school to the town proper is flooded, so we are a bit stranded at the IFP. . . I'm exaggerating--there's another, bigger bridge, but it is much farther from where we live.

About three weeks ago, prospective students at the IFP took their entrance exams, the results for which arrived late.  Last week we finished interviewing the students that passed the English exams.  I witnessed a director changing the score of one applicant, from a failing score of 8, to a passing 10.  I reason with myself, thinking that 10 out of 20, 50% as passing for Mozambique, is not really passing in the outside world.  Or, at least the applicant is only trying to be an English teacher, not a physician.  Can you imagine your doctor only barely passing his/her exams?  Sheesh.  

Still, I couldn't help but wonder what the point was of us teachers averaging and deliberating on scores only to be changed by someone who was never even at the interview.  And what the hell is up with these teachers laughing at the applicants?  Ok, so some of students probably should not have even applied in the first place, but there's no need to humiliate them.  Give them a non-passing score and send them on their way.  Teachers would laugh and look at me, expecting me to participate.  Ugh!  As one of the interviewers, I felt like it was as if they were beating a dead horse.  No, worse.  As if they were rejoicing around a drowning horse.  

Anyway, so now we are waiting for the results of those (dubious) past assessments.  I know secondary schools have already started, but we haven't yet, and so I've just been reading and writing, though there were a few days last week when I was just binging on chocolates and True Blood.  

I've almost finished Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth.  I've also just re-discovered my love for olive oil.  I guess I've been trying to escape, a little, from the everyday work of integrating in my community.  I need to get back into the swing of things. 

At the risk of seeming like a total bum, let me admit I was excited to hear about "Beer Olympics."  But the more I think of it, the less sure I am of going.  I want/need to see fellow PCVs, but Vil is so, so far!  But then if I don't go, I may never see some PCVs from Cape Verde, or from PST 2.0. . . depending on whether I COS (Close of Service) this year or not.

So.  I don't know.  I don't really care about the drinking, nor the activities associated with it.  I just want to see y'all again.