How I came to be the proud owner of a new fan

Two days after Christmas the Worst Thing Ever happened to me.  My fan died.  In the middle of the night it gave a few horrible squeals and then fell silent.  I began to sweat; the mosquitoes swarmed and without the gale of the fan blowing them away, they began to bite me.  I started hearing lots of night-noises that my fan would usually drown-out.  Thus began the first of two sleepless nights.

On the first morning after my fan died, I spent all morning trying to fix it.  I don’t know much (or, anything) about fixing motors, but I do know how to take things apart.  And I know that you can’t fix anything without first taking it apart completely.  I was very careful.  I took out all the screws and I put them into a pile so that I wouldn't lose them.  I took the case off the motor.  I separated the parts of the motor—this is the copper coil thingie, this is the pole thingie that turns the fan part, this is the electrical thingie—and then I made a pile of the parts and gave up.  It wasn't a very good fan anyway, sometimes it would take over 5 minutes to chug to life.  Sometimes I would pretend that it was one of those old airplanes that you need to spin the propeller just fast enough before it catches and begins spinning.  I re-purposed the bladeless, case-less, parts-dangling shell of a motor on a stalk as a towel rack.  It’s more useful as a place to hang my towel than it ever was as a fan.

On the second morning after my fan died Kim and I went to the Big City.  We OWN that place now.  We caught all the chapas, we went to the main office (no mail, sadly), we went to a book store (I found a copy of Adrian Mole in Portuguese!  I’m going to have to go back and get that.  Books are STUPID expensive in this country), we ate some pizza (It had mayonnaise on it!  Mozambiquans LOOOVE mayonnaise.  And so do I), we went to a SPAR and I bought some cereal and ramen noodles, and then we walked back to Baixa (where we catch chapas back to Mboa-city) and we went home.  Oh yeah, and I bought a new fan!  It’s 620 mets worth of glorious cool breezes.  It spins when I turn it on.  It blows air where I point it, and best of all, I’m able to sleep again.

My new fan.