2nd email home
Aug.11
Dear everyone,
Last weekend was our official Niamey tour and the first weekend we were allowed to go to Niamey on our own. On Sunday Tom and I went on our own to a French café for internet and a pain au chocolate- every bite like paris. The internet there wasn’t working, but I grabbed a tiny sliver of internet that was coming from far away and got 2 emails out and tried for a third (destined for Gen, sorry it didn’t work). Tom didn’t get any out, cuz his computer wasn’t as tenacious as mine.
Then we went to the american embassy’s rec center for the pool. It was just like an American suburb’s neighborhood pool (which, considering where I have been for a month and 2 days, that should be interpreted as gushing not sarcastic), only this place had a food bar and a giant turtle! I had a chicken caesar salad and a veggie fajita. The nigerien making everything wasn’t very good at organization, but he made good food. Maybe my standards have dropped tho. Next week I will have a milkshake. I also found an avocado in the market on Saturday which I shared with friends on Sunday tho I should have eaten it right away because part of it was just past prime by the day after.
Sept 1-5ish
Hello Folks,
The biggest headline for this letter is that I am no longer in the healthy pool. I’m pretty sure I am the first person in my stage to have the honor of taking the malaria meds, coartem. I almost definitely didn’t have Malaria, but they wanted to be sure so I had to take them. I got a fever the first night of live-ins, so the first night in my town, Bande, and the next day it wouldn’t go down. Once it hit 103 I got a hold of my regional rep and she came down with the Peace Corps driver. My highest that I measured was 104.4- might be a PR! To those of you at home who are more sensitive to my health issues, stop worrying. I’m just bragging, cuz that’s what you get to do when you have to take malaria meds.
We had site announcements a few weeks ago, so some of you know where I’ll be living after swear-in. I am in Bande, Zinder. Zinder is the region furthest east in Niger that Peace Corps currently serves in, although they are planning to open up Diffa, which boarders Chad, in a year or two. Due to my mystery illness, which may or may not have been officially “rainy season virus” (that has a ring --somebody should make up a song about that, kidos), I had only about 30 hours in my town, but I got to see a good part of it and I met the important people and several of my neighbors. The town is really pretty, which I had given up on hoping for in Niger. There is not a lot of trash in the streets and there are lots or huge trees and park-ish places. There is even a mango grove that, during mango season, everyone just gets free mangos from. The market is pretty okay and I’m only 20k away from Magaria, my “market town” where I can get more variety and possibly do eating out and/or internet, I’m not sure. There is another volunteer from my stage who got posted there, so I can stay over sometimes if I want to bike there and make a long day of it. Everybody I met in town seems really friendly, even for Ramadan --everyone is fasting now and no food or water makes people grumpy. My house is bigger than I’ll probly have in my future life for the next 30 years. It has a big front room and two pretty big back rooms and a small room or really large walk in closet. I don’t think I’ll be able to fill this place up. I have a big shade hanger, front porch, sadly the trees are shorter than me, I have a covered latrine, separate from my covered shower area, a pump in the yard, a drop ceiling in the house and there will eventually be electricity and ceiling fans.
The Zinder hostel is palatial compared to the Dosso one I saw over demyst. I feel really cheesy saying this but I walked in and I thought it felt like coming home. Maybe that was only because it was the closest thing to an American house I’ve seen in 2 months. The zinder hostel, evidently has the best library in country, it has couches and comfy chairs (maybe not quite the pinnacle of comfort that American comfy chair design has reached), a full kitchen minus a microwave, which I hate anyway, 2 full bathrooms and one half –and my friends, these bathrooms, all 3, have sit down toilettes, which is not the case at all the hostels. It has a large front porch and big yard with a grill, and a tv room with an awesome selection of dvds and videos. I really like team Zinder. They seem like a close team, and I hear the other teams don’t have quite as much of a tight team feeling. It is also full of really good cooks, so we are called team fat. I think there was a low voter turnout for my new name election, but I couldn’t get the total soon enough anyway so I just chose for myself. I went with Fatima, so now I am the Fati-est of all of Team Fat.
Coming back to Hamdy after that week was not horrible, but not much fun either. I really enjoyed a week with no “FoFo anasara” and “donne-moi un cadeau” and “comment tu t’appelles?”. We are all going a little insane from the incessant litany of the Hamdallai children’s chorus everywhere we walk. It was getting to us the first few weeks. One day during a break, some people were playing four-square and their phrases for the game were the above mentioned. They were shouting psychotically by the end and I was cracking up. I’m sure I’ll get that a little in bande and zinder, but it’s definitely different in Hamdy, because there are so many of us at once and they’ve had PCTs for so many years, that FoFo anasaraing has become the sport of choice for hamdy kids.
So there is a Brazilian soap opera here named Au Coeur du Peche, but everyone just calls it Barbara, one of the characters’ names. This is as much of what I can make out is going on so far, since I only see it some nights: There is Paco for whom I am sure I saw at least three of the female characters professing love. The nigeriens told me that Paco is the twin of a guy named Apollon who died but had been dating Barbara who, last night, was going a little crazy and insisting that he was Apollon. The poor guy had been gravely hurt in a car accident too --he seems to have a lot of problems. He has a new girlfriend who may be having health problems, but then again, maybe she just fainted into Paco’s arms because, why wouldn’t she? He also has a son whom people are trying to kidnap which was the cause of the car crash last night. The car crash really impressed the nigeriens, they really like bloody action scenes. As a cultural ambassador from western civ, Barbara seems like a strange representative but not the worst. I like to think about what the Nigeriens think of brazil or america or Europe when they see this show.
I still haven’t gotten used to basic sounds in Hausa. “No” is fairly easy; it’s “ah-ah” like “uh-uh” but with ah. What trips me up about that is that in america we say “uh-uh” only for certain informal situations, but you wouldn’t say that to say your governor if she asked you a question. Here, it’s “ah-ah” for chastising little kids or responding to your new boss. Also there is “awo” for “yes”. that is pronounced sometimes like “ooh!” like you just understood something in america. So conversations often sound like to me: one person rattling off a bunch of ordinary stuff and the other person having revelation after revelation, like it’s the most interesting day ever. In fact, last night I figured out a question they asked me and said “oh!” and then responded, “ah-ah”. To them, I said “yes! No” and they laughed. You can also say “eee” for yes. Less common is “eh” like the Canadian eh-bomb. I have been partial to the Canadian eh-bomb for a few years so I am kind of used to that sound and that is the one I use here for yes a lot. Every time I use it tho I wonder if the nigeriens think I’m weird for saying “eh” and not “ee”. I’m trying to break myself of my Canadian ways.
Skip this paragraph if you don’t care about insightful factoids on hausa grammar. Hausa is the first language I have studied that doesn’t have the subject verb structure. In hausa, usually the subject determines the tense and there are three sets of pronouns in present tense. Sometimes also, the negation is combined with the pronoun. Here are all the ‘I’s: ni, ina, kina, zani, bani, ban, na. But once you have the pronouns you can muddle thru all of the tenses without having to conjugate verbs in every wonky way. You have to do things to the “verbs” sometimes in the different tenses, but if you mess it up, people will still understand what you meant. There are verbs, but in some constructions you just use the pronoun and a noun and then some constructions you use the pronoun, the verb for “to do” and the noun. Also, you don’t speak hausa, you hear it.
One amusing and really random anecdote: there has been a series of a few wayward letters sent from america and intended for some place near DC on a street called “Niamey Place”. Somehow, they end up in Niamey at the Peace Corps mail box. We can’t figure out how that happens. Another weird quirk of Peace Corps Niger is that there is a Ricky Martin PCV and a Will Smith in our stage.
Today shuruq and I went via bicycle to bartchawal to visit the other PCTs again for the last time. They will be moving back to site with us in hamdy on Monday which will be tomorrow when I send this -in sha allah. We got in and ate rice with *spooons* in Chad’s hut and then we munched my trail mix all day (thanks mom and dad!). We went over to Bruce-katy’s hut and played pictionary in the sand and threw rocks across the concession into a tin can. I laughed at how entertained we were with rocks and a tin can. That sounds really lame but it was fun, just trust me.
Shuruq has a thermometer and the other day she asked a few of us who were over at her hut what we thought the temperature is. We all thought it was in the 80s and she said nope, somewhere in the upper 90s. I guess I have adjusted, -sannu da acclimation me!
Speaking of adjustment, there are not many opportunities to forget how poor this country is, but you spend enough time in a grass hut and wedged in among 10 people in a station wagon on a bumpy road and you start to think of a metal folding chair and a toilet that flushes as luxury. It happens. One day I had forgotten my american standards and I was watching my family do cooking-type chores. One of them, maybe hadiza I don’t remember, dropped 20 or 30 grains of rice on the ground. I thought to myself, “assha! Well, oh well, the chicken will come around and eat those so they wont be wasted.” But then I watched the girl who cooks my dinners and lunches pick them all up, throw them in the sifter, sift out the dirt and throw them back in the rice bowl. And then I remembered where I was in the context of where I came from. In the states, if I drop a carrot on the floor, I lament it and throw it in the garbage disposal, here if they drop a chunk of gourd in the dirt, they wash off the dirt and throw it in the sauce pot. I’m not throwing this in to harangue about poverty or to blather on about the conditions of living here, because I wasn’t really depressed about it and I don’t think I’ll wash off carrots when I get back to the US. It’s just an illustration that I thought was striking and a little jarring, but mostly just culturally interesting.
Several people have written me letters with questions in them and, while I plan to respond individually -eventually- to everyone who writes, I thought I would include some of these questions, if I haven’t already answered them, in my next mass email. In a month and half I’ll have access to internet again because I’ll be allowed to leave my town and travel to Zinder-city -unless there is internet in Magaria, then I can get online sooner. So anyone who would like to have a question appear in next month’s Ask Audrey, write to me at: Audrey Jacobs PCV /Corps de la Paix /BP 641 /Zinder, Niger. This is my new addy. Hopefully it wont end up someplace near DC.
PS, next time I write -In Sha Allah- I’ll be writing to you as an actual real-life PCV!
Yours truly, ~AJ
1st email home
I haven’t been able to get this email sent twice now, so hopefully I can get this to you today. It is aug 9th. The first order of business is a vote. I want to decide what nigerien name I should take when I go to post (I find out where I’ll be posted this Friday!
In hamdalley I am Sharifa, but I think there are other names I might like better. Here they are, vote for your fav. Ps most have meanings that I cant get rt now to you bc I did ask to see the translation page before I came to Niamey, but whatever, I don’t know what they mean so you don’t have to either.
Fati(ma) bc this is the only place I would ever like being called a fati.
Sharifa, cuz I am that now
Feiza
Aicha (Aysha, sp?)-eye-yee-sha
Also, I have a telephone now. If you do skype, its relatively cheap to call me. I am 6 hrs ahead of Midwest time. Get the number from my mom or dad, I don’t have it on me.
Okay really long email time:
Dear Everyone,
If I survive this and don’t come back early, all of you should know that I am indeed the baddest-ass person you know. This is Peace Corps hard core- that is what the people here said not us newly arrived. Really, it’s Mauritania, Mongolia, and here which vie for hardest PC countries. The first two days I had a fever without knowing it from the god-awful plane ride and everything seemed normal and exactly as it should be, aka I was numb. Everyday last week though after we moved from the sequestered peace corps site to our family’s complexes in Hamdalli I had the culture shock plus heat shock. From 11 am- 5pm everyday I hated this place and I was getting on a plane very soon. Every morning and evening I liked Niger and I could see myself living here for 2 years. But since the second weekend I’ve gotten through the days better so maybe I got over the first bit of culture shock- knock on grass thatch...
Speaking of grass thatch, that is what my hut is made out of. I am going to request concrete for my post. I sleep outside except when the midnight storms roll in, and then I tear down my mosquito net, roll up my sheet, throw my mattress and sheet and mosquito net and book and flashlight in the hut and reassemble inside. Last night I didn’t get any warning before the rain started so my mattress and sheet were kind of wet, which was slightly south of neat. The first night here, there was a huge storm which was prefaced by really fierce wind, which, here, is full of sand. I swear I thought it must have looked like that scene in the mummy where there’s a huge wall of sand flying at you, but it was midnight and I was right in it, scrambling to get inside so I can’t tell you if that’s really what the sand storm looked like.
My host family consists of an old grandma, and by old I mean she is 55 and looks like 83- Haoua-, a young granddaughter, Hadiza, about 18, and a girl who is another granddaughter by a different parent and is 10 named Sharifa. We all get nigerien names our first night here and I am named Sharifa, I assume after this girl. I try to talk to her cuz she hangs out w me the most, but she only speaks Zarma and I am learning Hausa. Her laugh is like the long awaited and needed rain bursts in this dessert, and will take her far in this life, but it’s really sad to see her and the other girls around here who, clearly, would have so much going for them if they could have just a few opportunities. All day long, from when they get up to when they fall asleep they listen to the radio, pretty loud. I thought it might get annoying the first day, but I’ve found that its not that much to get over when I consider that that is their only media unless a neighbor invites them over to watch the Brazilian soap opera on tv at night. Also sometimes the programs are in French and I can get snippets of news, tho the French is hard to understand thru the grass fence and heavy African accent. I eat rice almost every day, I might get pasta if I’m lucky or a corn-mealy thing -all with sauces. The closest I’ve had to veggies except for 2ice a week at the peace corps site was some gourd thing, which I totally copped myself with a machete and no chopping board. I hope I can include pics in this email, so refer to those for more description. I probably wont label them, maybe when I get more time.
Guys, I have toilet paper. It does exist, but right now the peace corps is supplying it to us. I hear it is expensive tho. I will do some pricing and depending on the econ of the situation, kat, mom and dad, I might actually request that, even tho I can’t believe it might be worthwhile.
The town, hamdalli -I am spelling that wrong- is our training town. I sent a letter to mom and dad that shows a map (my approximation of it) and also the size of the hole I pee and poop in. maybe mom will scan this letter and attach it to an email. The streets in hamdy are full of plastic and cloth trash and animal (and maybe kid) poop. It’s really gross. Visually, it was probably the hardest thing to adjust to. Some of the views around town or in the countryside tho are so quintessential Africa- old time traditional stereotyped Africa- grass thatched huts, some on stilts, and mud brick buildings in a southwest landscape. That part is pretty cool. The bajillion kids run around all day in these slummy streets. They play with trash and put anything in their mouths. I am continually telling sharifa not to put my flashlight or colored pencils in her mouth. They literally wear rags, or nothing if they’re really young. -It’s hot here, no kid would want to wear cloths no matter what their economic situation. One day last week, a kid came over with his mom and he was playing with an actual toy. And by actual toy I mean one that I totally remember me and my bro playing with when we were young. It was a little Tonka dump truck hot wheel and he was putting little red rocks in it and dumping them out. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, it was such a weird sight. Besides that toy, the 2 closest things I have seen to toys are a girl with a really dirty colorless bouncy ball and another girl with a really dirty car on a string that makes some sort of noise when it moves. Besides that, there are some boys who run around with sticks that have wheels that they attached to the end of them, kind of like those plastic vacuum toys kids at home sometimes have. My first night, there were some girls clustering around me and one was excitedly showing me a bone that had some hair tied to it. I guessed it was a toy, but I cant figure out how. Overall, the lifestyle here is completely medieval except with plastic and (a few) cars.
Every morning I get masa at the market for breakfast. Masa is a little pancake made of millet and is really good. It’s made in a large cast iron thing with dips -for those of you in the know, it’s like a shallower ableskeeber maker. Sometimes I get it with sugar and sometimes not. When it’s really hot and I’ve had a hard day, I get a refrigerated solani. This is a bag of liquid yogurt and it is delicious. Sometimes I get a cold sprite. This is the first time in my life that a bag of liquid yogurt or cold sprite has been something to dream about. They say veggie season is coming, so I’m holding out hope that there will be more variety soon. By variety I mean that I might get to eat vegetables on a daily basis. I had a conversation over lunch today with the Peace Corps director who was talking about tofu in this country. Evidently, it’s relatively prevalent in the large enough towns. I am hoping for a large community rather than a small town. I think I will hate it if I get a small town. Does anyone know if cactuses grow from seeds? Send me hardy plant seeds, those of you wanting to know what to send. And also maybe fertilizer pellets. So far, I have had maybe 4 oz of meat in this country, and it is really tasty, but I don’t think I need more than I get.
Training has been okay, but it falls within the time of the day that I hate niger and im coming home, so I can’t say many good things about it so far. You guys are lucky, it rained last night so it’s cooler today while im writing this, which means I am far less complainy than you might have gotten had this been yesterday. I tested out of French so im learning Hausa. Hausa is funny. You need to know sooo many greetings. I read a mock conversation script yesterday in a work book and there were maybe 7 lines of greetings and then “what is your name?”. all the villagers quiz me on the greetings, but that’s mostly because all the villagers greet everyone profusely anyway, so maybe I’m not special.
A few nights ago I got out the colored pencils for sharifa and some other girls. They love it and keep asking for them. I’ll get them out tonight again. I try to teach sharifa, whose 10 and doesn’t go to school, her abcs. She’s gotten to e without too much problem. We also play tic tac toe a lot at night. I always win cuz they don’t really get the strategy. I’ve taught them a little strategy mostly thru sign language.
I like cooking with hadiza. The other night we roasted peanuts for another family (the one with the tv). Hadiza put dirt in the big kettle and dumped batches of peanuts in. then we had to keep them moving with a metal ladle which they wrapped rags around because of course the metal got really hot. I did pretty well at it. The nigeriens don’t think americans can do any work, but compared to what they do, we really can’t.
There are some French nurses that come in for a few weeks in batches. We met and talked with the last batch last week and it was great -like taking a little 30 minute trip to paris. They had some mint syrup that you put in water and, even tho I don’t really like mint, I liked this- because it was not plain luke-warm water, which I drink practically intravenously all day long. I will meet the next batch of French nurses pretty soon, maybe tonight. Hope they’re as friendly and lovely as the last batch.
A fellow trainee, shuruq, and I walked 22 kilometers to and from the neighboring town where there are 5 trainees. Along the way we had tea with a road construction guy, which was a neat experience. It was after he mentioned that he sits around all day and dreams of romance that I decided I would be married whenever I travel from now on. Do I have any guy friends who will be married to me for the next 2 years while im in Africa? Can I have a pic? We decided we are among the hardest core of the hardest core of the peace corps for this trek. After that, solani was probably the closest thing to nirvana I will ever experience. We laughed really hard at ourselves because we say things here that we would never say state side. I said, for example, “when I get home, I’m going to do yoga in my shorts and I don’t care what the neighbors think!” (we are not supposed to show as much as our knees to the ppl in our compounds and in public our shoulders should not show and those who go to small conservative communities wont be able to show ankles or wear pants. -I don’t think I’ll be able to take the no pants thing, I hate the skirts here). They have since outlawed walking to that town.
Okay a ps now: mom please send a toothbrush case-full length and one that I can clean out preferably, and also the Japanese fan on my wall in my room by my window. Unless you’ve gutted my room already.
Also a package of cookie dough mix and orbitz wintermint gum.
Last weekend was demyst which was pretty fun. Demystification weekend is where we go stay with a volunteer to see what its like to be one in Niger. We rode in the Magic bus on the way there, it was a hilarious ride, just from conversations and some things that happened. The magic bus I think got its name because you can squeeze so many people in it. We had 22 people in it on our trip. No goats or children, just backpacks- re: the bush taxis paragraph below. We saw giraffes from afar, someone who stayed with a volunteer who works with a giraffe tour company got to see them up close. Lucky them.
On the way we were stopped for a while where the road turned one lane for road construction. There was a van in front of us that looked like it was some music band’s touring van. There was a guy chillin at the back of it with crazy bob marley dreds. He started making gestures to the 2 girls in front who were able to respond to him because we had had a seemingly useless training session on Nigerien non-verbal communication. They talked about how he wanted to marry them and they said that they were married to everyone in the van. It was very funny to watch, but I don’t think hand gestures translate well in verbal form. I thought it was crazy that that really useless session in fact came in handy.
We arrived at terri’s in fabriji. I stayed there with a fellow PCT named Shane and we had popcorn with honey and salt, popcorn has never tasted so good to me. She also made us a hot pocket tuna melt thing, and bush pizzas, dipping into her care package supplies even! Its good to know I can eat stuff other than spicy rice when I get to my post. We had some mms, evidently they travel well…
We met terri’s coworkers and friends. The little girl of terri’s best friend “in ville” was super cute and tiny for a year old. That family was kind of progressive and kind of not, in interesting ways. On the one hand the wife was taking birth control and they were planning on not having another kid till they can pay for her education. On the other hand, the husband had recently bought a goat and terri said the wife thinks he is angling to get a second wife.
Terri’s town has a middle school and an elementary. We saw the middle school and I almost cried. Its made out of material that my fence in Hamdy is made out of, several “buildings” were falling down, and girls from towns far away work hours and hours for room and board in that town just to go to school, if they’re lucky enough for that. I kept thinking about my middle school and this school and my middle school and this school and I had to stop thinking about it. It was shocking. Even Tondi, our training leader here, was interested to know we had seen that, I think because Tanja (Nigerian president) makes it seem like those kinds of schools don’t exist anymore. In the same town, there was a solar powered water pump. More towns need those, because if anywhere in the world should be powered by solar, it is niger. I just wish the middle school hadn’t been so sad.
The next day we went to the Peace Corps hostel in that region in Dosso city and the day after that we stopped by the Peace Corps bureau in Niamey before taking a bush taxi back to Hamdy. In Niamey we went to a restaurant for the first time in country. Lunch cost me more than a skirt that I had a tailor make cost me, but it was still just a few American bucks. We also had raw vegetables, which were delicious and worth anything but im sure will make me sick a day from now. I have not been sick yet, but several people have been. I am really luxuriating in my time as a non-sick person, it doesn’t look fun. We have a girl Early-Terminating tomorrow because she has had blood pressure problems since she got here among more normal problems. She is from New York state and trying to adjust to a place were some PCTs have made tea by leaving their nalgiene with a tea bag in the sun for a few minutes. I feel sad tho, cuz she was one of the cool people that I wish wouldn’t leave.
Bush taxis are the one thing in this country that I really shouldn’t tell any of you about, but I’m going to anyway. They are crazy. The drivers stuff like 20-30 people plus goats, chickens and children into a 12 person van. I’m not looking forward to being peed on but evidently its inevitable, like being sick. In the bush taxis that I took there were only like 15 anasaras and 2 or 3 Nigeriens. So it was pretty calm. Anasara is the commonly used word here for “white person” but it means “conqueror”. I have gotten used to it. The other week we yelled “Anasara!” to the French nurses one morning when they were walking down the street and the nigeriens looked around at us like “yeah, there you go”.
There was a VAT- a PCV who is helping out with our training- last week who is doing a photo project for the school textbooks and she talked about how she can’t do the drawings and they are having problems with the guy they hired for that in Niamey. So I might have parleyed my way into that project, doing the drawings, which would be exciting and fun for me, cuz I know I will need to be doing real work my first few months and not just “integrating” or I will have a harder time.
Aug4. This is turning into a diary entry letter because I have not been able to send emails when I meant to due to the Dark Ages. On Sunday Shuruq and I went to Bartchawal-the town 11k away with other PCTs- again, but this time we biked, because walking has been outlawed. Evidently, they feel bus taxies are safer than our own two legs. I am starting to understand how some people sometimes have problems with the being babied aspect of training. Lots of things will be better when I get to post. Bartchawal was fun. We played catchphrase and for lunch, chad’s host-mom made rice with onions and some sort of sundried tomato thing (that’s me ogling-sun dried tomatoes!). For dessert: Shuruq and Chad had procured the weekend before a jar of Nutella and Chad found some airplane cookies that he had forgotten about. We had chocolate glazed gingerbread cookies. It tasted like Christmas. Then we were invited over to the language trainer’s for shaiye (aka Chai, or Niger’s version of it). It is really fun to see made. I will get the teapots and basket necessary to make it when I get to post. Its very strong and very sugary and I couldn’t take more than one shot glass full on my empty stomach. They get and inch and a half of foam with no machine.
I was telling Shuruq on the way there, that when I was washing my unmentionables the day before I had been swirling them around in the bucket, wishing I had a washing machine, and I thought to myself “I am my own spin cycle”. Then I thought, “I am my own horse power.” Shuruq had been moaning about the bumpy road and I said, “we are our own shock absorbers”. And then later when we were sitting watching the chai making, I said to her, “when I make chai, I will be my own frappacino maker!”
When I got back to Hamdy, the kids were particularly interested in watching me and I had an audience for my tooth brushing routine. I had been spitting in an out of the way place in my concession, but I wasn’t sure if that would be culturally weird. The kids didn’t seem to care, they just thought my tooth brushing in general was entertaining (they chew on a certain kind of stick here for dental hygiene). I also figured out how to say “tomorrow morning Peace Corps is planting trees. Can (little) Sharifa come?” and said it to Haoua. I have said maybe 3 complete sentences to here so far.
On Saturday, some PCTs were sitting down by the “lake” and two of them started trying to get two bugs to fight. They drew a ring and pushed them toward each other with sticks. It was unappealing and I left soon after. When we were telling some other PCTs about the depths we had sunk to that day they said, “wait, the kids were playing with bugs?” and I said, “no, the anasaras were playing with bugs.” I am not a fan of the “lake”.
Some of my friends, Anna, Cindy and Shuruq, and I were hanging out later in Anna’s concession. Our conversation that day quite literally consisted of the following subjects: about 50% poop or lack there of, 20% foods that we can’t have here because it doesn’t exist, and 30% of home because we had gotten letters for the first time a day or 2 before. This is a fairly exhaustive survey of PCT conversations.
Robyn got Harry Potter in the mail and we watched it! I mean the Harry Potter movie that is out in theatres now! Her brother sent her a bootleg copy to here asap, and it was a damned fine bootleg copy! Robyn’s brother rocks J
Last week we had GAD-gender and development- Olympics. Our teams competed in the following events: tea making, bucket on head with baby (sand sac) on back in a skirt carrying, and peanut butter pounding. My team came in second over all by a half point and won the peanut pounding event because we are world class peanut pounders (and also maybe because we surreptitiously threw a handful of sugar into our batch). But hey, the judges chose our peanut butter and choosy mom’s would have chosen ours too.
