When I arrived at my house last week I was welcome by a pleasant surprise- electricity! If you’ll remember when I was here for site visit I reported my house was wired for it but not yet hooked up. I realized during that week that I could indeed live without electricity but now that I have it I am very thankful! On the way to our sites from Bolga, Alex and I made a friend Adam because he recognized me from my tele interview. He’s a nurse at the hospital in our district capital Sandema. I’ve had a number of people recognize and it’s been pretty funny. I’m soaking up being a celebrity while it lasts though of course just being a white lady here makes me somewhat of a star all the time.
My last week or so has consisted of many trips to different markets and towns for shopping to settle in at my house. I don’t love shopping and it can definitely be overwhelming at times here. O how I miss Target! And transportation is usually difficult and is good at making me weary. I would definitely characterize the last week or so as being on a roller coaster of ups and downs. It’s a whole different phase of adjusting and much more trying than the first I fear. I still have more shopping to do but it will be a process. One of my next purchases will be a stand fan because sleeping in heat of high 80s is a bit uncomfortable. But part of me wants to wait until it’s actually hot season to start using the fan because otherwise I’m afraid it won’t do much good at that time. Thankfully it’s been raining a lot recently which cools it down significantly. But the water also attracts mosquitoes thus malaria season has arrived.
My initial focus for my house has been setting up my kitchen so I could cook for myself I now have a stove, propane tank, and other supplies with which I have been experimenting in making American dishes including spaghetti, tomato soup (unfortunately a dismal failure), grilled cheese (made with Laughing Cow- other cheese is a rarity), stuffed bell peppers, boiled groundnut, alfredo pasta, and egg sandwiches. As most of you know, I’m more of a baker and not much of a cook in the States. Needless to say it’s even harder here! It’s been quite an adventure so far including pasteurizing milk, reheating leftovers every 12 hours or so to kill bacteria since I don’t have a fridge, and riding a bicycle over an hour round trip on the hunt for eggs. Getting accustomed to the seasonality of foods will definitely be different than shopping in grocery stores back home where anything you want is almost always available. There’s a shortage of eggs right now because disease has killed many of the guinea fowl which is more common than poultry where I’m living in the area where I’m living.
Getting into an exercise routine has been really nice and I hope to maintain in once teaching starts. Besides bike riding yesterday, I’ve been trying to walk or run to the nearby dam every morning or evening with my fellow math teacher Christopher. I’ve found that the dusk light, sunsets and full moon rises this week in the rural surroundings definitely has its charms. Weight gain for female Volunteers is a concern here because of the carb heavy diet so I feel like I need to start being more active as a preventative measure. I weighed myself yesterday at the clinic during baby weighing and I’ve only put on a few pounds as of yet so that’s good. Though I could probably stand to gain a little more for parasite-proofing…
Another thing that’s given me joy is playing with the kids who come around my house. I’m slowly learning their names and brought out the bubbles this past week much to their delight. One of the neighbor kids brought 3 newborn baby birds to my house the other day which I held and ooo and ahh over. Of course the kids laughed at me since it’s not as novel to them. Then I was told that these cute little birdies would be put in a soup- I was horrified and on the verge of tears but held it together. Talk about my emotions going from high to low! I have much to learn about life here….I’ve also been playing cards (or spa as it’s called here) with some of my students. I taught a few girls how to play Crazy 8s even though I’m still mastering it myself.
School started today but the first week is really just for students to clean, sweep and weed. I helped clean out the dirty office and organize some of the books today. I was also looking for the ICT syllabus which has gone missing so I feel rather lost in lesson planning. I’ve mostly been working on classroom management plan and reading about different ideas to employ in the classroom. O in other news I now have the internet (though it's slow) working at my home so I should be able to respond to emails regularly and update my blog at least on a weekly basis. Maybe once I get more settled in I’ll have the time to update it with greater frequency. Also note the change of address in the side bar to send me mail that comes closer to my site.
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