February 17, 2011
It is 85 in my room and it feels so cool. I took my outdoor thermometer outside. In the direct sun it said 118. In the shade 105. And hot season hasn’t started yet.
I woke up a little teary eyed this morning. Language is going well. I feel OK…considering. I had a good couple of nights with my family. I miss my boys. I miss my brother…my sisters. I miss my mom and dad. Interesting that missing my mom and dad seems worse here since they’ve both been gone more than 20 years. Distance is a weird state of mind.
Sunday we got back to Tubaniso (the training center). I am very excited. Right now it is the only thing keeping me going. I can finally call the boys and skype with everyone and see familiar faces. I will hang in there and press on until then.
*I have to shave my legs…bad. I don’t usually shave at home, but I don’t wear skirts everyday either.
*A goat just took some cabbage out of the bowl with the food that will be our lunch in a little while. Apparently I’m the only one who saw…or who cares.
*I finished a book this week. That’s a big deal for me. I’m not a reader. I bought and brought a Kindle with 35 books downloaded on it. After we finish training I here there is a lot of down time. I guess there’s no time like the present to become a reader.
*My mood changes from hour to hour. Day to day. I’m hating it here right now. I asked my host mom if I could help her cook. She let me pour rice into the pot of boiling water. The neighbors watched and laughed and clapped like I was a moron. Now all they can say and they tell everyone that comes by that “Sitan is cooking”. Assholes… Half of the village is still talking about me having done my own laundry the other day by myself…2 days ago. How do they even know that??!! Surely they have something else to talk about then the stupid tubob (white person).
*My host sister just told me I was fat. Their politeness overwhelms.
February 20, 2011
This is what has been keeping me going this past week. We finally go back to the training center. Electricity, internet, a ceiling fan in my room.
I need to talk to the boys and my brother and sister…Loreen!! I have been really out of it. Weepy and lonely and of course it doesn’t help that my host family has been making me feel like an idiot because I can’t speak the language yet. I am setting small goals for myself right now. I can’t look at this as a 2 year stint. I will make myself crazy. My first goal was to get back to camp for this 3 days. My next goal will be to get through more homestay for 12 days. Then we will be going back to camp again. This time we will find out what our permanent site will be and we will be visiting it and staying a few days. I should be better able to communicate by then and hopefully start feeling better about this whole thing. Right now I’m hating life.
The 2 biggest things about our site visits will be 1) I will know now how I feel about where they are sending me and 2) how well I get along with my homologue. For every volunteer we have a Malian counterpart called a homologue. They will be our new BFF for the next 2 years. They will move to our village with us. They won’t live in the same compound but close. They may or may not speak English or French as well as bambara. Everything will kind of ride on how well we get along with or like this person. If I get someone like my host brother I’m going to have to have a big discussion with someone. I’m expecting homestay to be the worst part of my time with Peace Corps. After that, there will be some adjusting but I imagine it to be what I came here for.
February 22, 2011
I have been in Tubaniso for 2 days now. It was good to see everyone again. It’s weird how excited we were to see each other considering we really have known each other a few weeks. But we have been through so much. Of course it was hard to get internet connection on my computer because so many people were trying to get on at the same time. I stayed in the repertoire (dining room) until 3am. I Skyped my brother, my sister Gail, both the boys and Loreen. I was literally talking to one person or another for hours. It’s hard because the connections go in and out. So we’d have to keep calling back and reconnecting. But you gotta love modern technology. At our training in DC the head of Peace Corps was there. He was saying how much being a volunteer has changed since he was a volunteer 30 years ago. Back then you sent a letter to your friends and family. It took a month sometimes two to get there and then another month or more to get a letter back. In those letters they would try and set up a time to call with a date that could be as much as a month away. You couldn’t make it too soon. What if the letter didn’t get there in time. Crazy. I can’t even imagine doing this if I thought I couldn’t contact the boys and family and friends at least once every two weeks. I don’t just get to call. I saw my family yesterday!! I’m sitting in Africa they are sitting in the US and I got to see them and talk to them. It will be what gets me through these next two years.
I used my magicjack too. I called my sisters Karan and Lynn in New York. Again the connection is iffy, but I got to talk to them. And magicjack is only $20 a year. Not shabby. I’m feeling much better. It’s makes all the difference in the world to be able to stay in touch with your loved ones. The weirdest thing about how I’m feeling is I have been gone for only 3 weeks.
THREE WEEKS!!! It feels like so long. So much has happened. I’ve traveled for days. I’m living in Africa. I’ve been sick, I’ve been well, I’ve met hundreds of new people. I’ve learned a new language. I’ve eaten with chickens and goats and donkeys. Saw chickens and goats get slaughtered at the market. I almost got trampled by a herd of steer. I eat with my hands and take baths out of a bucket, by moonlight. Been touched, probed, propositioned. Gotten shots for everything from yellow fever to rabies. More has happened to me in these last 3 weeks than the last 3 years. If I left Africa today I would already not be the same person that left the states 3 weeks ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment