I wake up freezing in the transit house because they're BLASTING the AC with no mercy. It was like, 4:30, too. I tarried for the longest time in bed cocooning both my blanket and sheets around me as many times as possible before getting up and ready but it was a chill, non rushed morning. Kara, the volunteer who saved me and served as our main guide (go figure she was a New Students Orientation counselor, too) was so nice and made us feel even MORE at home by getting us breakfast sammiches. That's called being small boy'd/girl'd. When you do something for another person like they ask you to fetch something for them. I got half a sammich with fried eggs and beans again and a cup of warm (powdered) milk. I am addicted to powdered milk, it has a bunch of nutrients but also a lot of calories. I can literally eat it out of the can with a drop of water, it's really what I grew up on. Chinese kids (I mean, those who actually grew up in China) love that kind of stuff. I had the right amount of time to get packed, dressed, the red sea even subsided, and peed before we left. I would've been so miserable if I had to pee again because that means sacrificing my ankles to those goddamn bugs again. We also met up with Malcolm who arrived - he always has the BEST stories. He's the farthest volunteer out east into the bush and he absolutely loved his family. Of course it's no surprise when he told us he tried goat brain in the middle of a herd of goats during a ceremony and sat and watched a small goat terrorize this kid. A normal person may chase the goat off... but not Malcolm, haha. Anyways, out of all of us, he's 105% getting a donkey.
Anywho, we walked into Basse for the 12 PM bus and had time to spare. Soooo Kara took us on one of her favorite past times - fabric shopping! I can't even describe how beautiful (and random, some prints are all money signs or toilets or bowls used for pounding coos) the prints are and I'll be excited to have more time to check them out. I'm about to drop bank around the time I close my service on all these fabrics to bring back home/make something out of it to bring back home. We all said our goodbyes and the bus was moving by 12:05 PM. It was not the express bus so there wasn't AC but we got seats anyways which makes everything 50000x better. The bus was empty when we got on but within a turn of the corner, more and more people started jumping on (even when the bus was moving... because the door never shut, it just hung limply open), and it was full! Multiple co-workers and people we met on the bus fed me panketos today (small fried balls of dough, kind of like a munchkin) and Elizabeth got me a banana! The ride was delicious and smooth sailing. Lots of music listening and it was relaxing. We paid 120D and arrived by 4:30 PM. My pants had a huuuge sweat stain from my butt, though, so that was uncomfortable and I had to air that out pronto. We even got to skip a military checkpoint because the amicable guy sitting next to us was a soldier in the army! Sweet success.
We arrived in Soma and it was hot as hell. The guys secured a bigger car to get us all to Jenoi for 25 D a piece and we ended up being the last group back at 4:50 PM ish. We were only separated for four days but everyone was so happy to see each other and exchange stories. We were talking like we haven't seen each other in ever! I chatted a bit but straight away set my stuff up and took a shower. Good life decision right there, I had 6 layers of dried sweat on me. Anyways, I went back to the group and listened in. Like I said, everyone had different stories - in one village, some guy committed suicide while my friends were on their site visit, someone helped deliver a baby, someone else saw bush pigs and monkeys, some were spoiled rotten by their families with food, some had an American/British couple living in their community for 15 years - every site was so unique! BUT we had one thing in common - we all loved our new families. It was really everyone's biggest fear - not liking our family, but we were all so relieved. We spent the entire rest of the day and night talking and I ended up staying up way late. Daniel, the Health PCVL, came over to deliver our fabric for our asobes which look fantastic and I headed in for the night. It was very pleasant altogether :)
No comments:
Post a Comment