After One Week

After my first week at site, I feel like I have become even more flexible with my living style and habits. It has taken me a while to get some things down, like the language, but today I was complemented on my ability to speak Pulaar. This is very rare because it is typical for them to insult me on my ability in order to encourage me. Seems counter intuitive. Oh well.

I sleep outdoors on a stick bed with my mosquito net, every night. One night, unfortunately, a beetle was under my net and scared the ever-living crap out of me. I thought it might be a scorpion. Thankfully, I didn’t scream.

I eat dinner most nights around 10. Something I will soon, hopefully, remedy. I am all for assimilation, but not if it means compromising my sleep time.

I began painting my room. It’s much harder when you don’t have a ladder, a palate, or a smooth surface. But, it looks good. I will take pictures.

A few quick notes about what I have observed about public health: NOONE covers their mouth when they cough. Meaning that they cough into the communal food bowl. At which point, I politely say I’m full. I eat a lot of rice, children here suffer from dry nutrition. They have big empty bellies and tiny appendages. Skin rashes often go untreated, at least in my village. Even though I tell them they should go to the disposaire, or pharmacy.

Women in my village are by far the hardest workers. They get water all morning then cook lunch, immediately start cooking dinner, in addition to doing laundry, and because I’m new, entertaining me! I’m learning a lot about living on my own and I think I have become better at being creative. For instance, I had no ladder to paint my room, so I used a barrel to stand on.

Sorry this is a disorganized blog entry, but then again, I’m adapting all over again to a completely new lifestyle. Not to mention a hot lifestyle. I’m in the Sahel desert, so it’s about 115 degrees on average. Yesterday, it only got to 106 and it was bearable!