20 something year old

On Thursday, Celso the art teacher and I were arguing about the size of bears.
Celso: “Are bears as big as cows?”
Anna : “Yes, sometimes bigger.”
“They are not. They don’t reach it.”
“They do.”
“don’t”
“do.”
“don’t”
Anna: “How do you know?! You’ve never seen a bear! Bears are on the flags of my state, California! In California, we have bears.”
I had made a true point, except for the more relevant information was that I also had never seen a bear. Not a real one, not close enough to judge its size. So really we were arguing about something that was not applicable nor within the domain of knowledge of either of us, which meant it was just arguing for the sake of…entertainment.

Arguably, there are differences between Americans and Mozambicans. My experiences with cuisine include more than fourteen dishes (counting bread as a dish), my battles against disease include nothing more serious than the common cold, and the number of books I have read before I was twenty years old exceeds what the vast majority of (educated) people here ever read in their lives. And while I, the American, am contemplating the possible careers available to me beyond teaching, any Mozambican teacher knows that they have likely reached the pinnacle of status and pay of anyone in their community.

Even more so, however, there exists differences between people in their 20’s and people in their 40’s. Men in their 40’s begin to notice how their once svelte wives have acquired a certain weight in their thighs and stomachs and women in their 40’s wonder how they can skip breakfast and still have weight in their thighs and stomachs. In Mozambique, the once-African ideal of well-fed and curvy is being challenged by life-size posters of Janet Jackson and Brazilian soap opera stars and these past-their-prime women attempt to make themselves feel better by taking jabs at me.

“Anita!” They’ll say. “You’re getting fat!”
“I’m not,” I’ll respond placidly, because it’s the truth.
A bulge below my hip will be pointed out and I’ll lift up the hem of my shirt to reveal it’s only a pants pocket that has come untucked.
I don’t fret over my body or my fading looks or to what extent my children have failed my hopes of beauty and intelligence, nor how many younger women my husband may be sleeping with. I don’t criticize myself for opportunities past, since few have, and I don’t wish I had married a different man, for whatever man I could dream of may still be out there. I cook for myself and I clean up after myself, which is hardly any cleaning at all, and I am never woken up in the night by children crying.

In the peaceful little sphere of my house and in all the undecided things of my future, I often have little to identify with my Mozambican neighbors over, as I am the youngest teacher in the school, the most single, and absolutely childless.

After more than a year of being all sorts of an anomaly, it makes sense then, that I should like Celso so quickly. I don’t know why he came, exactly, to be a third art teacher in a school that had previously done fine with two, but there he was, all of 23 years old, and saddled with the title “Senhor Professor.” He had grown up without parents but had still managed to precociously finish an art certificate program that qualified him to instruct adults his own age, as all of our students are. The girls, who weren’t really girls but 23-year olds themselves, asked him very interested giggly questions about his girlfriend after classes, but he didn’t play that game. He stood out from the male students in the way that he can wear a pink button-down shirt to school instead of the white button-down uniform shirt, but if you are not paying close attention to color, he could easily pass as a student himself. There was my experience of the past year exactly summarized in another person: refusing to date students, being mistaken as a student, having almost no experience and being thrown in deep, and being oddly younger than all of our colleagues.

Celso became a frequent dinner guest. In fact, any time I cooked at all, Celso was invited. The use of a chopping board and frying pan was almost always, now, associated with his presence.

My adoption of Celso was quickly followed by my adoption of another kindred spirit.

Maria Luisa, the new African Languages teacher is quite and a little fierce looking, always in glasses, a suit jacket and tailored trousers. But I greeted her at the break time one day and discovered that all she was is a 25 year old brand new teacher, missing her family several hundred miles away in Quilimane. She likes to make sound effects when she talks like “che, che, che” which serves to describe almost any type of movement. When she is relaxed, she laughs a lot, and will be on my side when Im arguing with Celso.

The topic was whether pregnancy affects women mentally and if the mentality of pregnancy affects women physically.
I say that pregnant women have the same mental capacities of non pregnant women. Celso says no.
“There are so many things that the mind can affect about the body,” goes on Celso. “Like if you say youre sick when youre not really sick, then soon you will start feeling sick. I don’t think women who are pregnant can study because their mind is elsewhere”
“That can apply for many things, except not pregnancy,” concluded Maria Luisa. “ Pregnant women can still study.”
“You cant say, you’ve never had children,” argued Celso.
“Well, neither have you,” I came in laughing. “You can argue with us about pregnancy once you’ve tried it!”

And then we all laugh, like a bunch of young twenty something olds who are having a good time being our age and who have the liberty to talk about things that don’t really matter to us at all.