So...life

Ok well life.   My daily life feels very similar to American daily life.  I start the day with an alarm on my cell phone, granted I have a brick cell that has snake on it, yeah to all of you who know what that means.  I get up and make coffee before anything else.  For me this means going outside, greeting my neighbors, starting a fire, boiling water and then mixing it with Nescafe instant coffee.  After making coffee I take a shower.  This means getting a bucket or 2 of water from the well and carrying it to my house then bucket bathing by lathering up and pouring cold water on myself to rise scoop by scoop.  I finish my laundry.  I put whatever clothes that are still wet from the day before out on the clothes line.  I go to work.  I walk to my school down a red dirt road with jungle on one side and houses on the other.  I’m at school from before 8 until about 2:30.  I walk home.  After getting home I drop on my stuff and go to buy things for dinner.  This means I walk almost a mile to the market to buy things to cook.   I buy the same things almost every day since they sell what they grow, not much variety.  I need to go every day or 2 because without a refrigerator things get nasty quickly.  I go home.  Again I walk….Get home and do anything from read to grade papers to go get a drink or bite to eat with my site-mate.  I make dinner if I didn’t go get food.  This means I go outside greet my neighbors and chat with them while starting a fire and cooking whatever I can create, favorites recently have been lentil chili, curried lentils, and some quinoa thanks to an awesome care package from my parents.  The sun sets around 6:30 or 7 so unless I’m doing something with site-mates I’m in bed around 8-9…  Basically the same right?  Oh wait no, no not quite.

I have been unbelievably fortunate when it comes to making friends here.  We all spend a lot of time trying to “integrate”, I think that’s just a nice way of saying we all spend a LOT of time trying to get people to like us and, if we’re really lucky, see us as more than just white people.  ANYWAY I’ve been really lucky, I have 4 whole people who I really count as friends here and, believe it or not, that’s impressive.   One is a teacher at my school, two are nuns from my school and one is a bartender in town.  Outside of these women, who I feel are friends of mine, I also have so many people all over town who not only know me, they lookout for me.  I can’t go anywhere without people greeting me by name.  One thing I hope I take home after this is the obvious care people have for each other here.  I think it’s because people here really depend on community in a way we don’t in America, but it’s awesome.  I travel every couple weekends to other volunteers’ sites.  I was in Kono a month ago, the crazy diamond/super war torn area of the country.  Tomorrow I am going to ride my bike 40 miles to my friend’s village for her birthday.  Last weekend my site-mates and I hosted our entire group here for Thanksgiving, 40 white people, small town in Africa, yeah.  My mom would have been proud or shocked if she’d seen me hosting ha ha.   Let me just say hosting people here, whole different story, well water, sleeping space yadda yadda…  It was great I loved having everyone here.  Which reminds me we have lost another volunteer from our group, we are down to 39 now from the 43 that we started with. So, yeah…

I am riding my bike a lot for an escape and for exercise.  I’ve ridden almost 300 miles in the last couple months, honestly don’t know if that’s good or pathetic, but I’m riding more and more so I’m happy about it.  It’s hard to exercise here, it’s insanely hot.  I don’t actually know how hot, I don’t have an outside thermometer, and there’s no weather channel and the idea of people here caring what the temperature is here is kinda hilarious.  When I comment to people here that it’s hot, they tell me (with a straight face) that it’s because of the sun.  Good thing they tell me, I’d be really confused otherwise.  I’m am in a constant state of too hot and sweatier than I have ever been in America, don’t worry though, the hottest part of dry season isn’t here yet, this is nothing.  Oh yeah and the well near my house is going to dry up soon, so the long walk to get water will be very, fun very soon.  Bright side to this is I am becoming much better at toting, carrying things on my head, the other day I toted a mattress almost a mile to my friend’s house.  People here tote everything, water, books, motorcycles, dressers, really anything and everything.  It really is so much easier to carry things on your head than it is to carry them in your arms, just one more reason people will think I’m crazy when I get home.  But, buckets of water over a long distance will be manageable soon.  The storms we were use too would cause emergency flooding in almost all American cities a couple times every week.  We went from ridiculous rain storms every day to nothing, it’s been weeks since the last rainfall.  It’s a different world here.  So I guess that’s some life for you.