02 July 2008

En Brousse...w/goats and monkeys

I'm going to try to make this coherent, but so many things have happened that I'm not sure I can...sorry.

We've been at our homestay for about 5 days and now we've come back to Rosso for two days of Technical training. Rosso seems like the lap of luxury after these last 5 days.

I literally live in a grass hut and us a hole in the ground for a latrine and a shower. I wake up to the sounds of goats eating my house and the boys herding the cows out of the village for the morning. The experience right now is basically what you would expect from the Peace Corps. A village of about 200 or fewer people, grass huts, goats, cows, chickens and sheep, and only about 7 total people, including the three of us, who speak any French. My host brother speaks some French, but we have a lot of trouble understanding each other.

We have class under a tree sprawled out on mats with our teacher in front of us at a chalk board. I saw PC promotional pictures like this before I left. I can say that it's all true. At least en Brousse (we had to off road to get to our site), it's true.

Before I say the next part...I want you all to understand that things are going really well now.

However, my first few days I was absolutely miserable. I semi-seriously thought about going home. I was too hot, I got a terrible sunburn on my back, I felt isolated and lonely, sand got into everything, I felt lousy (kind of sick to my stomach). I just didn't understand why I was there. I wondered what the point was if I was going to be miserable for 2 years. I was seeing all these amazing things and experiencing things that were so far removed from what other Americans see and do, but it just wasn't registering.

I was laying in my hut at lunch time feeling sorry for myself and thinking about going home two days ago and I made a pact with myself that I would stay for at least three weeks. We've been told that the first two weeks of homestay are the hardest so I wanted to make sure that I got through that before I made a final decision.

That decision to stay just made something click for me. I guess I just realized that I'm here and this is where I'm going to stay. Now everything is amazing. It's hard and it's going to be hard and I'll probably be posted to a rural site and that'll be hard, but it's also so amazing. The next morning, my host mother was upset because there was standing water in the shower area and it was kind of gross and I'm the only one who uses it so she was basically upset with me, but not even that phased me.

HOST FAMILY
My host family is amazing. They are truly happy to have me here and do everything they can to help me learn Pulaar. The kids love to greet me, which in Pulaar culture is very important, so they're really helping me learn the greetings. I don't know how to express my gratitude yet and I feel bad because they've been so nice and I've kind of just been there.

My host sister Isa takes really good care of me. I eat with her for every meal and she taught me my first phrase in Pulaar..."Rugí (that's my name in Tekess) ñaam!" Rugí eat!! She's also been trying to get me to carry a bucket on my head, but that's just not happening. Isa is shorter then Claire, but can carry a bucket, no problem, that makes her as tall as me.

This is getting kind of long, so I'll say mballen e jam (peace for the morning...Pulaar parting for the night) and hopefully I'll be able to write more tomorrow before we head back to Tekess.

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