In the Chamanculo neighborhood, when you turn one of the corners of Diamantino Street, you can see a funeral home that works there: Araújo Funeral Home. A guy named Arcanjo used to work there. He worked in that funeral home for years and years and had a deviated eye that he used to take the measurements of the corpses in the hospital morgues.

On Sundays, the ladies of the neighborhood would crowd into the funeral home to carry sawdust and wood scraps in bags. They lined up and one by one, at a time, disappeared with the Archangel to the back of the funeral home. After a few minutes, they would come back to life, putting on their capulanas and Archangel raising his pants; they would leave happy and loaded with sawdust and wood scraps.

When the Archangel disappeared with the ladies, you could hear, seconds later, coffin lids popping and golden coffin handles banging on coffins non-stop. And underneath it all you could hear the Archangel's voice very serene "two more bags full, ma'am".

And after the bran drinks, Archangel would teach the neighborhood about his engineering "when you make a coffin you have to add a few centimeters in width, because people get fat when they die and need room to rot without tightness. And we would laugh and he would cut us off by saying "and you have to make a pillow out of sawdust, not cotton, because the dead sleep heavy."

There is talk in Mozambique of the TSU, the Single Wage Table. It was approved and today its application was partially suspended. And the cry of joy of the public employees turned into a huge thorn that choked their throat. If the Archangel were here he would surely say that they should always add a few centimeters in width to the coffin of their patience, because they get fat when they hear the government's promises and at the end of the day they run out of room to rot from impatience without squeezing.

Of course, if Archangel were around, he would leave the ladies' row, pull up his pants, adjust his belt, and under his bran breath go gather up some syllables and tell the public employees "use sawdust pillows, because it is heavy to sleep with your head full of promises, charts, and raises.

It is always good to add a few centimeters of width, gentlemen. I think Archangel was right, because even the chemistry teacher, who was also betrayed by TSU, after teaching us to read the Periodic Table said: "weight and measure govern life".

If only the Single Wage Table were a Periodic Table, I would put my finger in the air and shout to the civil servants, "here we have only metals and non-metals." But the elements of the Single Wage Table are not up to me, not up to my chemistry teacher, and not up to Archangel; they are up to the sawdust-filled policies of the government that are hard to read and understand.