1) work- interesting concept I must admit. Going into peace corp I thought that it was going to be cut and dry, here's your village, here's your project, you will work from 8-5 everyday. Yeah- that's not even close to reality. Peace corps has a great philosophy on projects and as much as I hate it, it makes total sense: you will move in to the community, research for 3 months, find out what the community is doing to improve their lives (health, sanitation, education, ect) what projects they want to start and how they want you to help. As much as I feel completely lost I understand that if I just jump into a project the community isn't going to be interested or involved unless it's something they too think is important. This motto is really testing my patience, but I'm following the 'rules' and not starting projects until I completely know my community. Sidenote: in order to fully integrate into my community I am living in the community, making the same amount of money as people here, living the same lifestyle in the same housing and I'm not 'allowed' to leave for the three month research period. Which brings me to my next point...
2)housing. My house is actually really nice, since I'm working for the health center I am living in health center housing. In order to attract doctors and nurses to live in the village the houses are nice. My house also got electricity about two months before I moved in, which you might say 'oh awesome, life is good and easy then' well in theory this would make sense except electricity here is NOT reliable. I have a blackout about every other day and it's always during dinner time- which means I either wait for the power to come back on or skip dinner- cooking over a fire seems like a lot of work and I lived like that for 5 weeks already. Also in order to buy units for electricity (its prepaid) you have to be super flexible and patient, not my strong suits. So when I went to the city to the electricity provider, they were conveniently having a blackout and apparently you can't even buy units there you have to go to every gas station in town and see if there are any left. Needless to say I havnt been buying them because it's too frustrating of a process. I'll have to beg my neighbor to buy me more. I also don't have running water, it comes from a borehole about 30m from my house and I pay my neighbor children to get it for me. (refer further back in my blog to find out why) I bucket bath, and my bathroom is a pit latreen or in basic terms- a hole in the ground. Yup- this is Africa.
3) food- yum. Well everyday my market has tomatoes, onions, and cabbage. People eat nsima everyday (carb patty made of corn flour) with these vegetable as side dishes. I however didn't grow corn so have no corn flour so I eat rice or potatoes as my carb patty replacement. I also have been buying pasta in the city which is nice but expensive. I eat tomatoes and onions and on Thursdays when it's market day there is a wide variety of veggies: tomatoes, onions, cabbage, beans, and sometimes a choice of one of the following: eggplant, peas, pumpkins. I'm always hungry, eggs are like 50 cents and when you're making 4 dollars a day that's a pretty big part of your budget. So it's usually an egg for breakfast, veg and carb for lunch, leftovers for dinner. My protein consumption is dwindling, I find myself craving meat hard core- which if you know me is very strange. I dream about beef and eating every animal I see, I even contemplate killing wild goats, it's that bad.
On a lighter note- I don't think I've bet been so healthy. Also here are some more unrelated pictures
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