language lessons

"I don't know how you say this in English," the doctor says. "But you must say it in Portuguese: trinta e três. And again. And again."

I have a degree in French and Italian. I did a short Spanish course during my lower-sixth year. I joined a Russian evening class for a few ambitious weeks in Boulogne-Billancourt, during a dreary winter teaching businessmen English. During my seven years in Zimbabwe, I've picked up some Shona (not nearly as much as I'd like). I know a few words of Ndebele. But Portuguese? This is my first lesson.

I'm sitting behind a screen on a doctor's couch in Beira on the Mozambican coast, stripped to my waist. The doctor is impossibly young. It strikes me that I have reached an age (mid-30s, mind you, no older) when a doctor can look impossibly young. He's from upcoast, the city of Nampula, he tells us proudly.

"You should go there, for your next holiday," he says as he taps my chest. "Maputo is the biggest city, then Beira, then Nampula."

"Trinta e três, trinta e três, trinta e três," I answer, feeling slightly ridiculous.

Apparently tickbite fever needs no translation.