In an attempt to be able to blog again I made a new blog. Blogger hasn't been working for me in Moz.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
A New Web-Log
Web-log 03/25/2009
Well since I last updated I have
1) Moved out of my old site and am currently sleeping on pullout bed at my supervisor’s house
2) Started work!
1) I moved out of my old house February 20th when I was picked up with all my possessions I have in Mozambique. Most of my things were then moved to our office with the exception of my guitar and two suitcases (one full of my clothing the other of my various electronic items), which are with me at my supervisor’s apartment. I was surprised how quickly I was adapted to life without electricity and running water so that it was kind of a major change to live in a place where I can shower everyday (instead of bucket bath) and also watch television (mostly Portugues or English with Portguese subtitles). For the first week I went with my supervisor each day to the office and then out into the field where I met all of our Women First groups and the various women in those groups (still trying to remember all the names, its going to take a while since for just my groups that’s about 50 women). I didn’t really do anything this first week besides observe and introduce myself to the different groups, but it was a good experience I think as it would have been kind of nerve racking for me to just be transported to some small group in the bush and then be told to start giving a talk about health.
After this first week I then went to Nampula for In-Service Training (IST) which was kind of a “how are you doing at site” get together the first day for us Moz 13ers and the following days after that were some group training sessions in Portuguese for us (Moz. 13 PCV’s) and our work counterparts. The trip to and from Nampula was… ‘interesting’. But I’ll get to that later. The weekend then was Regional’s for the North, so I finally got to meet all of the Moz 12 volunteers and all the people for Peace Corp “North” Mozambique (even though in terms of Mozambique its actually more central but for PC, its considered north!). I had a really good time seeing other volunteers who some I had not seen since the end of training in December and others never in my life before. Also there was tons of good food so I tried to eat as much as I could since certain people demanded that I eat more, as my weight I guess was shock. Though when I first arrived in Nampula I was a bit shocked to see…. Streetlights!! I couldn’t believe Nampula has streetlights, I guess I’m not used to the “big city life” they have there. I did feel a little bad that I didn’t have a lot to say or show for my first three months at site since I hadn’t yet started work but was excited that I would be starting soon.
As for the trip to Nampula, from Quelimane it was about a 10-hour bus trip. But the bus trip I took was a little bit different from the bus trip’s I’ve taken in the United States. First off the bus was very full. When I mean very full that means every seat was filled up as well as people standing in the aisle, filling it from the front to the back and also people sitting on the floor between the drivers seat (think a coach bus) and the first passenger seats. Full. So I’m sitting on the bus at 5am waiting for it leave when as soon as the lights come on the lady next to starts ruffling through her bag. I bored so I watch was she’s doing and see that she is taking out some sort of pamphlets, then I see they are some sort of religious pamphlets, Christian as I see some bread and wine on the back of one. The lady then says to me that she is a Jehovah’s Witness and that she has some literature for me to have and read. I smile and thank her for the pamphlets (while quietly thinking to myself greaaaat, 10 hour bus ride next to a Jehovah’s Witness…nothing against Jehovah’s Witness’s I just prefer that people keep their religious beliefs to themselves ☺). She then asks if I can read Chiawabu also (the pamphlets I had were Portuguese) I laughed and said I was still working on Portuguese but was glad she didn’t assume that I couldn’t (though I guess she had reason too lol). She starts explaining to me that our lives need purpose and asks me if I know Jesus Christ. I say that I may have heard of this person before in the past. Then she explained to me that the back of the pamphlet, which featured bread and wine, signified Christ’s body and his blood. I smiled and thanked her again and told her I would read it later perhaps. So I read the first story in one and then as soon as the bus left turned my iPod on and went to sleep. I woke a few times to the guy next to me leaning over looking at the pamphlets so I asked if he wanted to read them and he said yes so I told him to go right head. He took one to read and a few hours later when I woke up he had all my pamphlets. Out of my hands now! It turned out though I didn’t have much to worry about as the lady did not bother me as other people have in the past and didn’t mention JC or the pamphlets for the rest of the trip.
On the trip back a baby peed on my leg.
Remember how I said the buses get full? Well on the trip back I had an aisle seat and the person standing in the aisle right next to me was a women with a small human wrapped up in a capulana on her back. At one point when I noticed the baby was about at my eye level I hoped that it wouldn’t need to crap during the trip as my god that would stink. But a few hours in I was listening to my iPod as I suddenly felt my upper thigh getting wet and saw the baby was peeing on my leg and all down the woman’s back. Instinctively I jumped out of my seat into the one next to me (sorry Denys) and looked about in shock. The women quickly shifted the baby out around to the front of her took it out of the capulana held it in front of her at arms length while it finished peeing out in the aisle of the bus. I seemed to be the only who noticed this. After resolving not to put my backpack on the floor anymore and wondering how I managed to get peed on twice (the other time was a goat strapped to the chapa roof) while traveling, I got back in my seat and went to sleep.
2) Shortly after I returned from Regional’s I had a meeting with the other Health monitors and we made a schedule for the next few months of what we were going to do. We decided what topic we would discuss with the groups each week and also planned which monitor would be going to each group. Then the week following the meeting I started work!.
a. So each day I go out in a car with other monitors of business and monitors of health and we are dropped off with different groups. The women then buy more products and get business advice and then afterwards I basically give a little health talk. Also lately while the women are buying products I also have been trying to get them to teach me Chiawabu (the local dialect). So for example last week our health topic was HIV and the Immunes System and this week is Transmission through Sexual Relations. So then my challenge is then to basically be able to break the topic down into terms and stories that are easy to understand (and also the challenge of doing all this Portuguese). One example I used was a house. Houses have windows doors and they keep many things out of the house like snakes, mosquitoes and thieves. But if we were to take out the windows and doors and just leave holes in the house any of those things could easily enter the house and cause harm. The analogy being a healthy person has an immune system that can protect the body and keep most infections at bay or recuperate from them. But HIV will slowly remove these defenses of the body and over time leave your body open and vulnerable to many times of sicknesses.
Otherwise I’m doing fine and now keeping busy. I have Internet access a lot more these days also!
Take care,
Luke
Well since I last updated I have
1) Moved out of my old site and am currently sleeping on pullout bed at my supervisor’s house
2) Started work!
1) I moved out of my old house February 20th when I was picked up with all my possessions I have in Mozambique. Most of my things were then moved to our office with the exception of my guitar and two suitcases (one full of my clothing the other of my various electronic items), which are with me at my supervisor’s apartment. I was surprised how quickly I was adapted to life without electricity and running water so that it was kind of a major change to live in a place where I can shower everyday (instead of bucket bath) and also watch television (mostly Portugues or English with Portguese subtitles). For the first week I went with my supervisor each day to the office and then out into the field where I met all of our Women First groups and the various women in those groups (still trying to remember all the names, its going to take a while since for just my groups that’s about 50 women). I didn’t really do anything this first week besides observe and introduce myself to the different groups, but it was a good experience I think as it would have been kind of nerve racking for me to just be transported to some small group in the bush and then be told to start giving a talk about health.
After this first week I then went to Nampula for In-Service Training (IST) which was kind of a “how are you doing at site” get together the first day for us Moz 13ers and the following days after that were some group training sessions in Portuguese for us (Moz. 13 PCV’s) and our work counterparts. The trip to and from Nampula was… ‘interesting’. But I’ll get to that later. The weekend then was Regional’s for the North, so I finally got to meet all of the Moz 12 volunteers and all the people for Peace Corp “North” Mozambique (even though in terms of Mozambique its actually more central but for PC, its considered north!). I had a really good time seeing other volunteers who some I had not seen since the end of training in December and others never in my life before. Also there was tons of good food so I tried to eat as much as I could since certain people demanded that I eat more, as my weight I guess was shock. Though when I first arrived in Nampula I was a bit shocked to see…. Streetlights!! I couldn’t believe Nampula has streetlights, I guess I’m not used to the “big city life” they have there. I did feel a little bad that I didn’t have a lot to say or show for my first three months at site since I hadn’t yet started work but was excited that I would be starting soon.
As for the trip to Nampula, from Quelimane it was about a 10-hour bus trip. But the bus trip I took was a little bit different from the bus trip’s I’ve taken in the United States. First off the bus was very full. When I mean very full that means every seat was filled up as well as people standing in the aisle, filling it from the front to the back and also people sitting on the floor between the drivers seat (think a coach bus) and the first passenger seats. Full. So I’m sitting on the bus at 5am waiting for it leave when as soon as the lights come on the lady next to starts ruffling through her bag. I bored so I watch was she’s doing and see that she is taking out some sort of pamphlets, then I see they are some sort of religious pamphlets, Christian as I see some bread and wine on the back of one. The lady then says to me that she is a Jehovah’s Witness and that she has some literature for me to have and read. I smile and thank her for the pamphlets (while quietly thinking to myself greaaaat, 10 hour bus ride next to a Jehovah’s Witness…nothing against Jehovah’s Witness’s I just prefer that people keep their religious beliefs to themselves ☺). She then asks if I can read Chiawabu also (the pamphlets I had were Portuguese) I laughed and said I was still working on Portuguese but was glad she didn’t assume that I couldn’t (though I guess she had reason too lol). She starts explaining to me that our lives need purpose and asks me if I know Jesus Christ. I say that I may have heard of this person before in the past. Then she explained to me that the back of the pamphlet, which featured bread and wine, signified Christ’s body and his blood. I smiled and thanked her again and told her I would read it later perhaps. So I read the first story in one and then as soon as the bus left turned my iPod on and went to sleep. I woke a few times to the guy next to me leaning over looking at the pamphlets so I asked if he wanted to read them and he said yes so I told him to go right head. He took one to read and a few hours later when I woke up he had all my pamphlets. Out of my hands now! It turned out though I didn’t have much to worry about as the lady did not bother me as other people have in the past and didn’t mention JC or the pamphlets for the rest of the trip.
On the trip back a baby peed on my leg.
Remember how I said the buses get full? Well on the trip back I had an aisle seat and the person standing in the aisle right next to me was a women with a small human wrapped up in a capulana on her back. At one point when I noticed the baby was about at my eye level I hoped that it wouldn’t need to crap during the trip as my god that would stink. But a few hours in I was listening to my iPod as I suddenly felt my upper thigh getting wet and saw the baby was peeing on my leg and all down the woman’s back. Instinctively I jumped out of my seat into the one next to me (sorry Denys) and looked about in shock. The women quickly shifted the baby out around to the front of her took it out of the capulana held it in front of her at arms length while it finished peeing out in the aisle of the bus. I seemed to be the only who noticed this. After resolving not to put my backpack on the floor anymore and wondering how I managed to get peed on twice (the other time was a goat strapped to the chapa roof) while traveling, I got back in my seat and went to sleep.
2) Shortly after I returned from Regional’s I had a meeting with the other Health monitors and we made a schedule for the next few months of what we were going to do. We decided what topic we would discuss with the groups each week and also planned which monitor would be going to each group. Then the week following the meeting I started work!.
a. So each day I go out in a car with other monitors of business and monitors of health and we are dropped off with different groups. The women then buy more products and get business advice and then afterwards I basically give a little health talk. Also lately while the women are buying products I also have been trying to get them to teach me Chiawabu (the local dialect). So for example last week our health topic was HIV and the Immunes System and this week is Transmission through Sexual Relations. So then my challenge is then to basically be able to break the topic down into terms and stories that are easy to understand (and also the challenge of doing all this Portuguese). One example I used was a house. Houses have windows doors and they keep many things out of the house like snakes, mosquitoes and thieves. But if we were to take out the windows and doors and just leave holes in the house any of those things could easily enter the house and cause harm. The analogy being a healthy person has an immune system that can protect the body and keep most infections at bay or recuperate from them. But HIV will slowly remove these defenses of the body and over time leave your body open and vulnerable to many times of sicknesses.
Otherwise I’m doing fine and now keeping busy. I have Internet access a lot more these days also!
Take care,
Luke
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Weight Loss
Well, I went to a pharmacy today and weighed myself for the first time since I've been in Mozambique. I weighed 63.3 kilos (139.55 lbs) so I've lost somewhere around 20-25 lbs since I've been in Mozambique (I can't remember my exact leaving weight and I don't know where my medical form for that is). This explains why all my shorts fall off with a belt or drawstring tied super tight.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Long Awaited (and I suppose needed) Update
Well it’s been about two months since I updated my blog and in that time I’ve been living the dream. Getting up at 5:30am, eating beans and rice everyday, bucket bathing, shitting in a hole in the ground, talking about condoms and or the United States, and doing all that in before my bedtime @ 8:oop.
I was living in a small village about 30 km outside of the district capital near a major fishing river (but the river has been the cause lately of more than a few accidents with crocodiles). The village I lived in did not have energy and had a very fickle cell phone network, for example I have two cell phones one for each of the two major cell phone networks in Mozambique, Mcel and Vodacom. Mcel would only function if I stood still on sat on the ledge of my front porch, whereas I got Vodacom in most places in or around my house but if I decided to go for a walk chances are I would have quickly strayed into a area without network coverage. The cellphones are pay as you go, you buy a certain amount of credit and when it runs out you need to find somebody to sell you more credit.
So this past week when I really needed to talk to my supervisors with Peace Corp and with IRD about the logistics of moving to a different area I couldn’t because I used up all of my credit on Valentine’s Day calling Kate (I had to talk to her so I wasn’t just sitting there looking at pictures of us and reading old letters) and my Dad (his birthday is February 14th) and only had 1 or 2 Metacais left on each phone after those calls. I had never bought credit before in the past at site, I had always bought credit when I was in the Provincial Capital Quelimane before I left for site, assuming that if needed I could buy credit at site easily (I’d seen the overly abundant Mcel signs in different shops around my site). I guess I shouldn’t have assumed just because shops had signs for Vodacom or Mcel credit that they would actually sell it. Because that morning when I needed to make a call, I set out to buy some credit. The market close to my house had none; all the shop owners said they were out credit at the moment. So I asked my empregado if he knew of other shops I could go to, to buy some credit, he said that he did so we left to go buy some credit. Not so easy. The first shop we went to had some children sitting on the front stoop, I asked if they had credit and they said yes, then when I asked if I could buy some they said no. They couldn’t sell me credit because their parents where in their fields, but if I came back later I could buy some when the parents were around. But since I needed to talk as soon as possible I walked the few kilometers back to my house and got my bike to ride to the next bairro over to see if those shops had credit. Nope. Apparently the one time I needed credit was the time my area was out, or maybe it was out for a while and it was not a big deal to everyone because most of the bairros are not in network coverage and also do not have electricity to charge phones (thank god for my Solio! Solar phone/iPod charger, I highly recommend, for future PCV’s to buy this wonderful item, because it’s absolutely necessary if you live in a area without energy and you still want to keep in touch with people in ways other than letter writing.) Anyway after a few hours I gave up and just sent my supervisor’s mBeep’s (you can type in a code and somebodies number with Mcel and it will send somebody a free text message that basically says “call me!”) so they called me back later.
I guess I better backtrack a bit after that sidetrack story about searching for cell phone credit.
I am in the process of moving sites, or moving from the community I was in to a different one. I’m not moving because I had any problems with the community or anything like that, in fact mostly all of the people I met were extremely generous and friendly people willing to help out as I spoke terrible, terrible Sena (local language, but that probably can apply to my Portugues at times as well). But my program I was going to work on in this community was going to be new in this community. So I waited until about February (I wasn’t kept in the dark at all I knew that I might be waiting until February to start work) until I was told by supervisors that the program might not be starting in this community until later because of money issues stemming from global food prices.
Anyway long story short my supervisors asked if I would be okay moving to a different community where our program is already up and running so I’m not waiting around doing nothing at all. I said that whatever they thought was best I was okay with, if they think I should wait- that maybe the issues might clear up and I can start work, that’s fine. But if they would rather have me moved to another community to work there that’s fine too. As I am a “volunteer” for this organization and here to work where they need me most. After this the ball started rolling and my org started looking for a new house for me in a town not to far at all from other volunteers which I was excited about and also with a market with a choice of food! (The village I was in had a market that was mainly-FISH (dried), and depending on the season one of these fruits (mangos, then pineapples, then oranges).
So although I left the choice up to my supervisors and would have stayed in the village I was in before, I am also happy the way things turned out i.e. being close to other PCV’s, bigger market (other PCV’s keep teasing me that they’re worried by how skinny I’ve gotten, but I suppose that’s what walking everywhere, not drinking at site, and no fast food will do to you), and being closer to my organizations office with free wireless internet. So I hope to be able to discover what is happening the outside world now more often than every couple of months. (Barrack Obama’s president now? Cool) *I hope sarcasm was detected there, I don’t believe there’s anyplace on earth now you can go and find somebody who doesn’t know or have heard of Barrack.*
For the two months I was at site I’ve played a lot of guitar (would love any new music tab books for my “concerts” I give to the neighborhood children who already think everything I do is amazing and new), read 9 books (Neuromancer, Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, The Count of Monte Cristo, Otherland (books 1-4), and studied a lot of Portugues. All the studying must have worked a little bit too as I can understand people I formerly couldn’t before because they talk to fast and also my supervisors have said my Portgues is vastly improved. Therefore if you really want to learn a language just go somewhere that you can only speak the language you want to learn and not your native language so you’ll end up so starved for human interaction you will enjoy speaking that language (though I feel sometimes it’s taken a toll on my mastery of English).
I’ve also developed a different kind of relationship with creatures that enter my house than the one I had in the United States, in the USA I was very live and let live, I’d let spiders be (unless Kate was around because then I’d have to be on spider alert and murder any that were spotted in the same room as her) and just try to stun bats that enter the house so I could throw them outside. Not in Mozambique. I’ve killed many massive spiders in my house. The spiders are huge, with fangs that just freak me out because of the thought of one of them biting me. I think one actually did bite me as I had big bug bite on my left but cheek, and pics to prove it, that was so painful I couldn’t sit down for a few days (don’t anybody worry or give any concerned calls it cleared up just fine). But also my house had an infestation of bats. Each night I would be kept up to high pitched shrieking up bats in the cracks where the wall meets the zinc roof. So sometimes during the day when the roof would get hot the bats would crawl down the wall a little bit to get away from it, and then my empregado would use a fishing spear to kill these bats. He ended up killing 8 bats I think in the time I lived there. I killed just one bat. Because one time when my empregado was killing some of the bats one flew straight at me hit the wall next to me, so I immediately grabbed the closet thing to me, which happened to be a big saw and dispatched (of course before this I shouted “it’s coming straight for us!” if you don’t get this don’t worry, South Park joke).
Also one time there was a snake in my bed. True story. One morning I was sweeping around my bed when I saw something curled up around the bedpost by my pillow (my windows were being replaced the day before so rain didn’t get in and so for the better part of the day I had huge holes in my walls during which time the snake could have entered). I looked a little closer and saw it was a snake and so I shouted cobra and my empregado and the pedrero came running into the house and killed the snake. I was a little unsettled that it was right next to my pillow and had probably been in my room all night with my while I was sleeping, I think I would have been more freaked out if it was inside my mosquito net, but since it was not it couldn’t have crawled on me or bit me or anything (one of the reasons I love my mosquito net, it keeps other things out of my bed, things like snakes!).
Well I think that’s most of the major news as to what I ‘m up to and have been up too and the most interesting stories I can think of right now. I will start working (with groups of women teaching health) as soon as my new house is ready, until then I will stay with other volunteers and do some work around my organizations provincial office. Things like English lessons. Oh wait I forgot, I tried this type of termite (I think that’s what it is) that people eat in the area I was in. Tchau!
I was living in a small village about 30 km outside of the district capital near a major fishing river (but the river has been the cause lately of more than a few accidents with crocodiles). The village I lived in did not have energy and had a very fickle cell phone network, for example I have two cell phones one for each of the two major cell phone networks in Mozambique, Mcel and Vodacom. Mcel would only function if I stood still on sat on the ledge of my front porch, whereas I got Vodacom in most places in or around my house but if I decided to go for a walk chances are I would have quickly strayed into a area without network coverage. The cellphones are pay as you go, you buy a certain amount of credit and when it runs out you need to find somebody to sell you more credit.
So this past week when I really needed to talk to my supervisors with Peace Corp and with IRD about the logistics of moving to a different area I couldn’t because I used up all of my credit on Valentine’s Day calling Kate (I had to talk to her so I wasn’t just sitting there looking at pictures of us and reading old letters) and my Dad (his birthday is February 14th) and only had 1 or 2 Metacais left on each phone after those calls. I had never bought credit before in the past at site, I had always bought credit when I was in the Provincial Capital Quelimane before I left for site, assuming that if needed I could buy credit at site easily (I’d seen the overly abundant Mcel signs in different shops around my site). I guess I shouldn’t have assumed just because shops had signs for Vodacom or Mcel credit that they would actually sell it. Because that morning when I needed to make a call, I set out to buy some credit. The market close to my house had none; all the shop owners said they were out credit at the moment. So I asked my empregado if he knew of other shops I could go to, to buy some credit, he said that he did so we left to go buy some credit. Not so easy. The first shop we went to had some children sitting on the front stoop, I asked if they had credit and they said yes, then when I asked if I could buy some they said no. They couldn’t sell me credit because their parents where in their fields, but if I came back later I could buy some when the parents were around. But since I needed to talk as soon as possible I walked the few kilometers back to my house and got my bike to ride to the next bairro over to see if those shops had credit. Nope. Apparently the one time I needed credit was the time my area was out, or maybe it was out for a while and it was not a big deal to everyone because most of the bairros are not in network coverage and also do not have electricity to charge phones (thank god for my Solio! Solar phone/iPod charger, I highly recommend, for future PCV’s to buy this wonderful item, because it’s absolutely necessary if you live in a area without energy and you still want to keep in touch with people in ways other than letter writing.) Anyway after a few hours I gave up and just sent my supervisor’s mBeep’s (you can type in a code and somebodies number with Mcel and it will send somebody a free text message that basically says “call me!”) so they called me back later.
I guess I better backtrack a bit after that sidetrack story about searching for cell phone credit.
I am in the process of moving sites, or moving from the community I was in to a different one. I’m not moving because I had any problems with the community or anything like that, in fact mostly all of the people I met were extremely generous and friendly people willing to help out as I spoke terrible, terrible Sena (local language, but that probably can apply to my Portugues at times as well). But my program I was going to work on in this community was going to be new in this community. So I waited until about February (I wasn’t kept in the dark at all I knew that I might be waiting until February to start work) until I was told by supervisors that the program might not be starting in this community until later because of money issues stemming from global food prices.
Anyway long story short my supervisors asked if I would be okay moving to a different community where our program is already up and running so I’m not waiting around doing nothing at all. I said that whatever they thought was best I was okay with, if they think I should wait- that maybe the issues might clear up and I can start work, that’s fine. But if they would rather have me moved to another community to work there that’s fine too. As I am a “volunteer” for this organization and here to work where they need me most. After this the ball started rolling and my org started looking for a new house for me in a town not to far at all from other volunteers which I was excited about and also with a market with a choice of food! (The village I was in had a market that was mainly-FISH (dried), and depending on the season one of these fruits (mangos, then pineapples, then oranges).
So although I left the choice up to my supervisors and would have stayed in the village I was in before, I am also happy the way things turned out i.e. being close to other PCV’s, bigger market (other PCV’s keep teasing me that they’re worried by how skinny I’ve gotten, but I suppose that’s what walking everywhere, not drinking at site, and no fast food will do to you), and being closer to my organizations office with free wireless internet. So I hope to be able to discover what is happening the outside world now more often than every couple of months. (Barrack Obama’s president now? Cool) *I hope sarcasm was detected there, I don’t believe there’s anyplace on earth now you can go and find somebody who doesn’t know or have heard of Barrack.*
For the two months I was at site I’ve played a lot of guitar (would love any new music tab books for my “concerts” I give to the neighborhood children who already think everything I do is amazing and new), read 9 books (Neuromancer, Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, The Count of Monte Cristo, Otherland (books 1-4), and studied a lot of Portugues. All the studying must have worked a little bit too as I can understand people I formerly couldn’t before because they talk to fast and also my supervisors have said my Portgues is vastly improved. Therefore if you really want to learn a language just go somewhere that you can only speak the language you want to learn and not your native language so you’ll end up so starved for human interaction you will enjoy speaking that language (though I feel sometimes it’s taken a toll on my mastery of English).
I’ve also developed a different kind of relationship with creatures that enter my house than the one I had in the United States, in the USA I was very live and let live, I’d let spiders be (unless Kate was around because then I’d have to be on spider alert and murder any that were spotted in the same room as her) and just try to stun bats that enter the house so I could throw them outside. Not in Mozambique. I’ve killed many massive spiders in my house. The spiders are huge, with fangs that just freak me out because of the thought of one of them biting me. I think one actually did bite me as I had big bug bite on my left but cheek, and pics to prove it, that was so painful I couldn’t sit down for a few days (don’t anybody worry or give any concerned calls it cleared up just fine). But also my house had an infestation of bats. Each night I would be kept up to high pitched shrieking up bats in the cracks where the wall meets the zinc roof. So sometimes during the day when the roof would get hot the bats would crawl down the wall a little bit to get away from it, and then my empregado would use a fishing spear to kill these bats. He ended up killing 8 bats I think in the time I lived there. I killed just one bat. Because one time when my empregado was killing some of the bats one flew straight at me hit the wall next to me, so I immediately grabbed the closet thing to me, which happened to be a big saw and dispatched (of course before this I shouted “it’s coming straight for us!” if you don’t get this don’t worry, South Park joke).
Also one time there was a snake in my bed. True story. One morning I was sweeping around my bed when I saw something curled up around the bedpost by my pillow (my windows were being replaced the day before so rain didn’t get in and so for the better part of the day I had huge holes in my walls during which time the snake could have entered). I looked a little closer and saw it was a snake and so I shouted cobra and my empregado and the pedrero came running into the house and killed the snake. I was a little unsettled that it was right next to my pillow and had probably been in my room all night with my while I was sleeping, I think I would have been more freaked out if it was inside my mosquito net, but since it was not it couldn’t have crawled on me or bit me or anything (one of the reasons I love my mosquito net, it keeps other things out of my bed, things like snakes!).
Well I think that’s most of the major news as to what I ‘m up to and have been up too and the most interesting stories I can think of right now. I will start working (with groups of women teaching health) as soon as my new house is ready, until then I will stay with other volunteers and do some work around my organizations provincial office. Things like English lessons. Oh wait I forgot, I tried this type of termite (I think that’s what it is) that people eat in the area I was in. Tchau!
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Pictures
Me and my mae are cleaning a chicken I killed.
The second picture is of me with my Mae and Pai and one of my brothers with a chicken I just killed. My brother took this photo with my cell phone so the quality is not so great.
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