Yesterday was the big marathon march! Good thing I woke up
at 2:30 AM. I was awake and couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard I
tried. I did some origami, wrote in my journal, and got all mentally ready to
get up and get ready at 5:30 AM since, you know, Seth my PCVL told me to be
ready by 6-6:30 AM. Good thing Peter the Driver pulls up to my compound at the
same time that my alarm rang. I yelled out to him to give me 15 minutes and indeed
I rolled my naked ass out of bed and was out at the van by 5:45 AM. My phone
died and I didn’t get any calls, womp. Fortunately or unfortunately Alicia and I
were the first to be picked up so that I had the entire back row to myself so I
got to lie down while we picked up the rest of the crew. One of the LCFs/language
teachers, Gibril, shows up shirtless out of no where on one of our stops to
pick up the trainees, chucks an empty bidong (empty half gallon oil containers used to fill up with water) in the bus, greets “hey hey hey”
and leaves, lmao. We finally stop in Jenoi where we had a short breakfast of
bread, banana, jam, and eggs in addition to meeting our trek leaders! Laura,
the sole pioneering lady, told me she actually knew where Guangzhou (my
hometown) was and have been there! We bounded over our love for dim sum and how
badass she was traveling by herself down Southeast Asia. I also met Dan, who I
call Boring Math Dan, Jeff, and Josh, my Serehule site mate who lives across the
river from me and is also a Serehule speaker! He’s an Education Volunteer who’s
pretty far into his service. We started marching at around 8-9 AM. The trail
was hard as hell but also beautiful and pleasantly relaxing. It was around
12-13 miles I think (not an actual marathon) and overall super fun. I forgot my
hat stupidly in the rush to get out this morning but luckily Lizzie, my first
roomie back in Philadelphia, didn’t want to wear hers so it all worked out. All
of the stopping points (to rest) had great names – Treeception, Dead Man’s
Bridge, Living Man’s Tree (I think), Mordor, etc. It truly felt like I was in
Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit walking through grass way taller than me,
walking on grass that was thatched thickly over mud beds, and just mud/swampy
areas where I was certain I would sink and sprain my ankle but DIDN’T sweet
success, walked by natural water springs, dry racked earth, stalks of
something, thorns, sticks, past massive mahogany and other magnificent types of
trees that were so grand, everything was great. I mean does my feet feel like
it can fall off about now? Absolutely. But the conversations we had throughout
the day and exercise was priceless. We were all so broken by the time we got to
the finishing line and everyone was out of water – good timing, too. We took a
group picture on the see saw and got on the bus. We also had these DELICIOUS
sugar covered doughnut balls that I’ve never had before, more like 5 of time.
We went back to Jenoi where most of us took a shower, I missed the memo to pack
of course so I had to borrow stuff from people. I put on my gross sweaty
clothes again, bleh. After everyone had a nice shower we all went into a
classroom and had beers, lmao. Alicia saw me studying and she had none of that
so she bought me a bottle, haha. Legit 1 sip of nasty palm or cashew liquor,
and ¼ bottle of beer later, I felt the drunk end of buzzed – wtf. I skipped dinner because it was just goat and
potatoes and they served it at like 4:30 PM. Bad idea. I walked back to the
drinking chambers and tried to identify all of the states on BoringMathDan’s
shirt and failed miserably but I choose to blame it on the alcohol. We sat and
talked in a cricle before going home. I had like 4 spoonfuls of coos for dinner
before passing the eff out at 9 PM.
…Only to wake back up at 2 AM. What. The. Fuck. Maybe it
could be that I’m subconsciously really exhausted, or maybe I’m secretly super
anxious about all the shit I have to do before Wednesday morning, or maybe
both. BUT I laid in bed for what seemed like ages and worked on my present for
my family. When I got up, though, I awoke to a hectic ass morning. First, I
brushed up and got ready, packed a little because I thought Peace Corps was
arriving at 10:30 AM to pick everything up to transfer to site. I tried to call
Elizabeth to warn her about it but her phone was off so I had to haul ass all
the way over to her place. Rawr. I then trekked to Ida’s house just to find out
that the pick up time was changed to 12 PM, retrieved my two wooden stools I
ordered from a woman who locally makes them, double fisted both of them to a
bitik/shop to buy locks for my luggage, talked all along the way, and finally
made it back to my place. Elizabeth finally had her phone on so I didn’t need
to go back to her house again to deliver the news of the change in plans. Thank
God because it was getting hot as hell. I finished up packing after explaining
I was taking my two stools to Kulari for the 1000th time (I thought
news traveled quickly here dammit). I started dragging my first luggage to the
road to meet up with Elizabeth next and had to roll it on the dunes of sand in
front of my friggin compound. That was a huge struggling moment… The kids tried
to help me and one of them got on his hands and knees to push. It was adorable.
I told him thank you and that it was quite alright. Of course the school
dismissed their students for an afternoon break and Elizabeth and I were
swarmed by a crowd of kids. They all just encircled and it was pretty annoying.
It was also hot and the kids would not listen to us at all when we told them to
go away. Elizabeth went back with one of her sisters to carry the rest of her
stuff out while I watched our luggage. Again, the kids were not leaving and
just standing around and staring at us despite multiple attempts to get them to
leave. When Elizabeth finally came back, I saw her sister carrying a TRUNK on
her head with Elizabeth screaming obscenities about how useless men are and how
women rule Africa/the world haha. It was quite the site. She paid her sister
some money and she goes to help me with my trunk. Christ, these women are
strong. If it’s anything watching Dragon Ball Z taught me, it’s that men take
10 episodes to accomplish one damn thing. We headed back to the side of the
road with my heavy trunk on top of her head while I (and her 7 year old
daughter) tugs my big hockey bag full of food along. The 7 year old is just too
adorable and she frequently delivers Elizabeth her breakfast in the mornings.
She’s also a Mariama! As you can tell, Elizabeth loves her. Well, at that
point, we assembled almost all of our things and were waiting on the road. 12
PM comes along by, still waiting and still encased by a ring of kids. I swear
it felt like the entire population of under 8 year olds were surrounding us.
They kept on imitating us when we told them to leave. Talk about annoying. I
took the advice of one of my PCVLs, grabbed Elizabeth’s shovel, smashed it on
the ground three times and pointed at them. Most dispersed but most also came
back, fail. So, I took a rock and threw it at the ground by their feet. OF
COURSE a kid runs into my projectile and it hits him in the butt. He left, but
some more remained, grrr. The Alkaloo’s daughter rolls on by and drove some of
them away and I was forever grateful. 1:30 PM comes by and FINALLY the Peace
Corps truck comes. Elizabeth and I are starving at this point but luckily we
had each other’s company and I was telling her all about Marathon March. We had
to go back to retrieve our bikes and drop it off to get transported to site. It
would’ve been lovely if that was communicated to us earlier… My stomach was
almost as loud as a steamroller but we trudged, trudged, trudged to Ida’s
where… SHE COOKED SPAGHETTI FOR US WITH THE MOST SCRUMPTIOUS SAUCE AND A TON OF
VEGGIES IN IT. We all unloaded on her what happened to us and it turns out
Alicia’s family was super upset she was leaving. Mine’s pretty bummed but
clearly they don’t want to see me go but no one has cried over it. Alicia has
the youngest family of us all so she thinks they just haven’t handled this type
of stuff, IDK. Anywho, we stayed at Ida’s for awhile before heading back
because Jalanbereh was just in a funk. I thought I’d have more time to work on
my gift for everyone but it turned out Peace Corps had other plans for me and Ida
handed me a crap ton of papers to fill out. I did that, studied, wrote up some
math assignments, and had no time to study L It was a pretty quick day. I was still so tired from
Marathon March and waking up early BUT I did go to Elizabeth’s to clean my feet
so that I can finally see the bottom of them! All the mud from the other day
was caked on, ew. It took a good 45 minutes for them to look clean again –
that’s how dirty they were. I couldn’t do math lessons since I realized my body
would hate me if I had to study+test under 5 hours of sleep so I went outside
to drop off their homework, and jumped right back in to go to sleep.
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