Meu Aluno Está Morto

Today was my first day back at school since the break, the start of a new trimester.  I woke up early, and felt pretty good; no back pain, no anxiety, no stress.  After spending all Sunday writing stupid lesson plans for physics topics that 11th and 12th grader have no business learning about until they are in college, I felt prepared, wasn’t feeling nervous, and I was actually pretty excited to get back to work and start speaking Portuguese again.  I was completely oblivious to the fact that I was about to be blindsided by news that one of my students had died while I was on vacation.

His name was Virgilío Luis Malandela, and I knew him.  Not well, but in a sea of 250-300 faces that I teach during the week, I knew him.  He was a smart kid who had just passed his first trimester of 11th grade physics.  I met him three months ago, when school started.  He was one of the only kids to actually come to school during the first week of classes.  That’s unheard of here, no one comes during the first week.  But he did.

For the first few months of school, he held the class title of “Chefe de Lingua,” (Boss of Language) a role I assigned to one person in each of my Turmas (classes).  Their responsibility was simple:  if and when (emphasis on the when, because I suck at this language) I make a mistake, they were to write it down in a special notebook I would give them at the beginning of each class, and then show me the errors and correct me after class was over.  Before I started to forget the notebook (probably ten or so weeks into the trimester), it was actually a pretty good system.  And Virgilío did a pretty good job at it.

I found out about his death when I tried to return his trimester exam.  I called his name, and no one responded.  So I called it again.  I didn’t notice that the entire class was looking at me funny until one of his friends responded.  “Pode me dar,” he said, “You can give it to me.”  I walked across the room to hand him the test, and he then explained the situation to me.  I still don’t know how he died, but I don’t think it really matters.  What matters is that death is very much a part of life here.  I think I’ve even said that before, but it stands true.  I had heard from other volunteers’ stories about students dying from Malaria or snake bites, but for some reason I always shook it off and said, “Oh, that’ll never happen to me.”  But it does happen to you, because that’s what happens here.  Life happens.  And then death happens too.  And unfortunately, in Mozambique, apparently death tends to happen a lot sooner than it should.