Everybody should come visit me.

well, we've been at site a little while with lots of time For learning Mende and socializing and reading. I've taken a nap just about everyday and read 3 books in the past week. A good one I'm glad I got the time to read was given to me by my sister in law. It's called Half the Sky and it's about the empowerment of women world-wide. If you get a chance, read it. Also, it is packed full of organizations that help women with healthcare, education, or starting businesses so perhaps a donation to a good one where you know exactly where the money is going would make for a great Christmas or birthday gift for those of us overseas. Even if you don't have the time to read it, the appendix in the back lists the orgs, so run in the store, pick it up, and jot a few down. All the websites and purposes are listed. I was surprised at how much it taught me that I've never taken time to think about or consider.

Ok. so here are a few of the highlights from site so far.......

1. I am staying in the same room I was in for site visit and I have discovered that the creature, varmint, rather, that crawled across my head during that visit could have only been a giant rat. There is a hole in the ceiling above my bed and on night 2, after being awoken by the sound of their scurrying, I used my ninja skills to catch them in the spotlight of my headlamp. I saw 2, but I know there are more. I can hear them. The braver of the two, at the time, crawled out of the hole and scurried down the wall next to my bed, either to show off or prove to me that my light meant nothing to him. For those of you that can't picture this properly, here I am, under a mosquito net with huge rats crawling out of the ceiling and running down the wall about 3 ft from my head. At one point i guess a little rat paw got hung up in my mosquito net because I woke up again later (yes, somehow I fell back asleep) to something tugging on my net. None other than one of my furry little friends, I'm sure. So, what did I do? Well, I considered whining about it to the people whose house I'm in and getting someone to cover the hole, but then I wised up. I realized that I'm the one that waited through a year and a half application process for this and TIA. Thus, the war on the rats began. So, armed with my roll of duct tape and some mad, but somewhat rusty, gymnastics skills, I mounted my headboard like a balance beam and went to work covering this hole in the ceiling. At least this would slow them down a little. So, the first experiment went ok. I don't think they made it all the way through the duct tape, but they definitely put a hurtin on it. They chewed a small hole which I promptly patched up the next day. What I learned from the first night was that rats are very smart and it only took them the first night to understand their obstacle, hold a rat meeting, and discover a way around it. So, their plan, I'm guessing, was to send in the smaller of the rats through another smaller hole in the room while the stronger rats with more stamina chewed a rat-sized hole in the duct tape all night. They accomplished this about half way through the night and continued their nightly runs up and down the walls. So, on day three, I embraced it, decided that the rats were smarter than me, and admitted defeat. Although I don't really call it defeat because I hate to lose. It was more like a compromise, really, only the rats didn't have to meet me half way. Sounds a lot like defeat, huh? So, that night, I slept with my head at the foot of the bed so that at least they wouldn't be right next to my head. Turns out, my little rat guys aren't so bad. I've grown accustomed now and even as I sit typing this, there's a little guy running around my room somewhere darting behind my bags and mattresses and all I can do is look over occasionally with an affectionate gaze as I hear him trying to remain unseen. Turns out, we can coexist and it's not so bad. As long as i hide the food.

2. The other somewhat comical story I have occurred today (Thursday). We( my supervisor and I), left for the Junior Secondary School that I will be teaching at to conduct interviews this morning for the students who will be moving from primary to secondary school. After being stranded by the rain for a little while, neither of us having carried umbrellas, the rain let up and we were on our way. Not wanting to seem reclusive, I wallked with my fellow teachers to someone's house after we left where they were all going to drink palm wine. So, here I go, the only female in a group of males. Everything's cool and we sit in an outdoor kitchen hut and drink a little palm wine and I get the hint that I should head on back and let the men talk amongst themselves comfortably without feeling the need to entertain a stranger. So, I start back to the house when I see James, a guy that is often hanging around the chief's compound where I am staying and doing work and such. Mainly, shepherding goats. So, I ask him if he is heading back and he says yes, mind you, there is somewhat of a language barrier between us. Imagine that. So, off we go and I'm trying to gain my bearings in my new village and figure out where I am and how to find my way back when whoa! I slip on a rock. James instinctively reaches out and grabs my arm because all Africans are protective of us. So, i gain my footing and look over at James to report that I'm ok. Which was true until I took my next step. That's when I ate it. Since in Africa, I have been known to fall a few times, so I wasn't really even embarrassed about this and I rebounded quickly, but the more we walked, the more I became embarrassed because James was freaking out. He walked the rest of the way home with his hand on my arm and once home, even though he was supposed to head back to do something for one of the older men, he sat with me for about 10 minutes to make sure I was ok. Too bad I don't know enough of the language to explain that I'm not an avatar like his peeps and this happens frequently. At least it made for a good story, though, and only a few more places to pour peroxide on tonight.

3. The little kids decided in their own language the other night that they would have a dance competition to see who gets to marry me first. So I'm sitting on a bench with a nice view of town, watching the sunset with 3 little kids dancing as hard as they could while I clapped and the other people around sang popular African songs. Then, one little boy showed up and they explained to him what was going on and he stuck his chin up in the air and said, "I'm not dancing unless I can dance with Nepor." So, what choice did I have, I got up and danced. They thought this was funny but I'm not sure if they thought it was funnier to watch a white girl dance or watch him with all of his courage. Either way, these are my best memories thus far. Just hanging out in Africa without a care in the world and nowhere to be and nothing to be doing except learning the language by dance offs or playing volleyball or football in the rain.

Fast forward a few weeks. It is now Sep. 2. I've been at site about 3 weeks and these are the highlights. I still don't have a house. At the end of the first week of adjusting to the boredom, Dia and I decided to become accustomed to the surrounding villages and walk to meet each other in Njala. So, I set out on a 6 mile walk at the same time that she left Taiama to walk the same distance. I didn't make it a mile down the road before i recruited a couple of kids that walked with me the whole way. It was pretty cool. They were able to tell me the name of every village that we passed through and translate the language when people spoke Mende that I didn't understand. So, we get to Njala and walk a mile into town and go to the bank and sit and have a beer and catch up on the village life before setting out on our 7 mile walk back to Dia's house. So, this makes for a total of a 14 mile walk on one of the few days lately that the sun decided to shine in the rainy season. It was great exercise and overwhelming at times to remember that we were just walking down a dirt road in the middle of West Africa and not just everyone gets to do this. So, we made it, finally, and went to socialize around Dia's town. The next day, we went to the market to buy some things to test the PC cookbook and some other PCV's showed up. This was a Friday and we spent the day and a lot of the night sending children to buy things that we need, retrieve PCVs at the junction and show them the way to the house, and do any other chores we needed done. We even had to draw a picture of ketchup so they would know exactly what we needed when they ran to town for us. So, in the end, we ended up with 11 folks at Dia's with a spread of cucumbers w/lime and pepper, bean burgers, kassava hashbrowns, kassava fries, fried okra, and hummus. It was wonderful and we sat around telling stories and using lots and lots of sarcasm since we don't get to regularly exercise that in the village.

Also, in my village, I have inflated the volleyball and got some pretty wicked games going. I bought the ball so that it could double as a football since the kids spend hours a day playing this with any type of ball that they can find. So, I've made it clear that the ball belongs to me and must be brought back to me and that I make the rules when I play. This latter of this arrangement was strategic on my part and i first saw the benefits on the first day that there was actually an organized game at the local school field. We head out to the "field" which is just an open areas where we set up goals using giant rocks and there's an impressive following of kids following. When we got to the school, we found a class in session for summer school. The teacher promptly left to introduce himself to me. I explained that we did not want to disturb his class and he said that class was finished and the students, mostly girls, wanted to come play. So, i invited everyone. Well we get to the field and get ready to pick teams. I was immediately made a captain which was awkward because I still can't remember all the kids names to pick em. Then, the boys told the girls to go sit down. I was like, um, they can play and the boys just laughed and said, "they might get hurt." so i fired back with "I might get hurt" and they were like "Nah, you won't get hurt" and then they tried me from another angle saying," well, they don't know how to kick the ball." So I glanced over at the group of girls and said," any of you girls know how to kick the ball?" A couple of the girls hid behind others and shook their head, but there was one or two that smiled and said yep. So, the boys were absolutely disgruntled but understood that the ball was mine and if I was gonna play then they were gonna play. It was glorious. Of course, the girls that played never actually got the ball passed to them, but the point is that they made it into the game. That was a huge baby step. Oh, and let me not fail to mention that I was the goalie when one of my teammates was talking to me and I got scored on. I'm not so sure that was a great argument for my "Girls can play too campaign". whoopsie. However, we are all about some volleyball and I think that I have several people interested in it. A couple of the girls really enjoy playing and I decided to coach them a little so that when we all play, the boys can't possibly have anything to complain about if the girls are better than them. Not that I don't intend to coach the boys, too, it's just that girls are a little more chill and little boys just want to hit the ball as hard as they can. I'm hoping that if I teach the girls to control the ball then they boys will figure out from watching that you aren't supposed to hit it hard. A couple of the boys have already figured this out and are really good.


So, other than these few stories, here are a few observations....
- I love African food. I have become accustomed to rice and really enjoy the many different sauces there are to try and learn to cook. Native African rice is so much better than white rice and I don't mind the oil, pepper, or fish.
- Things here that are handmade are a lot cheaper than, say, plastic tubs and manufactured items whereas in America, items made by hand are far more expensive.I bought a handmade traditional hammock. It was 7,000 Le which is the equivalent of about $1.75. Just Sayin.
- Here, what are considered to be imperfections elsewhere are perfect. Nobody is self conscious of their body. Whether tall, fat, short, skinny, limping, deformed, blind, amputated, stuttering, speech impediment, etc. Nobody mentions it and hardly notices. It's a beautiful thing and really refreshing. People are just people and there is no stereotype or expectations.
- Nobody is embarrassed to sing, dance, or clap in any occasion. Whether alone, around tons of people, great voice, not so great voice. It just doesn't matter. This makes everything more fun.
-Everybody in this culture does everything together. If one person has a generator and plays a movie, the whole town crams in the room to watch. When you walk down the street, at least 5 people eating on the porch will say,"Come, let's eat." There's no are you hungry? or would you like some rice? just come over here and eat with me. Regardless of how much food there is for however many people. Everyone is always invited.
-Guests here are known as "strangers" so I always get a kick out of it when I hear people in the town say, "Don't worry about it" or "Of course kids will fetch water for you! You're our stranger!".

Fast forward yet again since I don't have access to the internet. It is now September 15. The best recent story I have is how I went for a walk yesterday to charge my phone. My first actual walk alone in the month since I've been here, and this man that I have never seen or talked to called me over. He was fixing a bicycle so I went over to talk and he said," When would you like to ride my bike?" I politely declined and said that the peace corp was giving me a bicycle and I would probably have it by december. He politely informed me then that I needed to exercise because I was putting on weight. sheesh. I thought that was a good thing here. So how can I be putting on weight when the scale says I'm down 17 lbs? Anyway, I laughed it off, but the next morning, I went to school and was helping my principal with the timetable. I sat down beside him and BAM, the chair broke. Seriously? Maybe this guy was foreal. Anyway, I felt like a big ole loser and evidently I need to lay off the rice.

Also, I must say the first month has been a rough one. With meeting a million new people and trying to figure out what to do in the community. I am one of the 2 out of 37 PCVs that still doesn't have a house so I am really disoriented, but the past couple of days I have been pretty encouraged that I actually know quite a bit of Mende and there is some sort of structure to this language. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Other than that, I read a book called A life inspired: Tales of a Peace Corp volunteer. It was a book they sent us in the mail and, I must admit, I only read it because it's the only book I had left, but, it did, in fact, inspire me. It's full of amazing stories of all the exact things that I'm experiencing here, but do not take the time to stop and appreciate. So now, I feel like I have a different outlook on things. I always enjoyed, but now I stop to appreciate picking the seeds out of rice, learning to weave a basket, the pure hospitality of the people, and the times when I sit and talk to 86 yr. old granny and listen while she tells the stories of the 40s and 50s and how the Leone used to be worth more than the dollar. America is very fast paced and while Africa is slower, it's so beautiful because people take the time to appreciate each other and tell stories about memories and generally just enjoy being around each other. The only thing on their agenda for the day may be going to visit a friend across town or to go buy a cup of rice at the market and sit and talk to everyone, but the point is, they take the time to talk. instead of running around worrying about making a meeting on time or whether they are late to get somewhere. It's very humbling.