In and Out

Hey everyone, it’s good to be back online. After a 3 month episode at post, I am back down south for a 2 week formation with the health and environmental volunteers. Unfortunately, I will not be returning to my post afterwards, but instead heading to a new village. After countless attempts, months of searching, and many fights with my work partner, my village was unable to find me a house suitable to peace corps standards. Which is not a difficult task. But, in the village, there seems to be a latrine problem (less than 20 for the 4,000 pop.). Needless to say, they couldn’t find me a house with a latrine- kind of a big deal. For the time being I was sharing an already full latrine with 3 other families totaling 12 people. Not exactly what the PC doctors like to see a volunteer getting into. So unfortunately, I recently packed all my stuff, found a station wagon to move me out, and I am in limbo with all my stuff at the workstation until the formation is over. Then I will be heading back up north to move into my new post, only 30km south of my old village.

It was really difficult to leave after putting in so much time and making so many friends, and really starting to feel comfortable in the village. I was working way more than I expected, usually from 8-6 mon-fri, sometimes working on the weekend also. There was vaccinations, pre-natal consultations, Plumpy Nut sensibilizations, baby weighing, child births, and my favorite, the bandaging room, where people are coming in with moto accidents, machete fights, and bull horn wounds. It’s a messy, loud place inside that room. There were many times I had to take a step outside when the cutting or stitching was getting deep. Pretty amazing to see this stuff that would cost thousands of dollars in the states being performed by untrained people in a village without electricity or running water. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

So aside from all the health work I have been doing, I have been staying busy with some other activities as well. A team of masons showed up in November and started working on a new water system with 5 new pumps. After a few days watching, I got to become one of the guys building CMU’s out of wood blocks and cement, laying out the pumps and finishing them off with the last few coats of cement. It was similar to plaster work, but rougher. I still think that stuff is an art though, incredible how easy they make it look and how well the masons can shape the cement. I’m still in the training phase for sure. But we finished the pumps a few weeks back, so now we are waiting on the plumbers to show up and finish the faucets, and then we should be able to open up the pipes! Pretty exciting to be able to see the whole thing happen from beginning to end.

I have also been doing a little English teaching at the local high school. I met the head English teacher a month back when he came to the hospital to have some words translated. Now I have been correcting papers, doing some recordings to give proper pronunciations, and there is a radio show in the works, where we would get to go to the nearest big city and be on the air every couple weeks. In addition to that, I am learning 2 other languages, Bariba and Peulh, being tutored in both 8 hours a week. The Bariba is more prevalent, but I prefer the Peulh since it sounds much better, and the Peulh people are the nomadic tribes that mostly do cattle herding. They wear bright colors with lots of jewelry and are taller, thinner, and lighter skinned than the other cultures, due to a northern African influence. They are a very beautiful people.

I found a soccer field back in September and started playing with the team several times a week, and started running every morning to get ready for marathon training when ela gets here. I have also been reading a lot, since after 7pm its dark and people usually stay close to home. Just finished War and Peace, and it wasn’t like I thought it would be. Pretty good story, though could have been half as long. I must admit though that it is a challenge to stay up past 9:30. when there is no stimulation your body just shuts down. And similarly, it is just as difficult to sleep past 6:00. Between the Muslim calls to prayer, the roosters, goats, pigs, and corn pounding in hollowed out tree stumps, sleeping in isn’t an option.

So it has been a busy past 3 months, and now I am getting ready to start my adventure again somewhere else. And even more excited to have my lady come visit in 3 weeks! We’re going to have to learn the village together. So that’s the quick and dirty of my life here thus far, it’s a different world not having any amenities, being unable to email or post photos, etc.. for long periods of time. I of course will be looking hard for more construction work at the new post. Right now I am looking at some potential well/latrine projects that wouldn’t be too difficult to get rolling. Can’t say the next time I will be posting, but it could be in a week, or 3 months, but I’ll try to get something up. And any one reading, be sure to send me an email/update of whats going on in your life. I’m interested to know!

Lastly, I finally got some pics up! Not many yet, but they’ll be coming little by little. Check them out at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=elliotgrochal&target=ALBUM&id=5215902358532593793&authkey=Q5sb_AZmJmM&feat=email