A Day in My Village

I have been asked to describe a typical day in my village. There haven't been any typical days; every day is different. I wouldn't say I have a routine, so let me just tell you what I did one day, and wouldn't be surprised if it happened again.

I got up around 6:00am, and cleaned the house a bit. After cooking and feasting on rice with powdered milk and sugar, I hopped on my bike to go to the one remaining water pump that still works in the village. The water flowed so slowly that I was there for an hour, 40 minutes of which was waiting for my 20-liter bucket to fill. Some kids arrived, and of course were very shy. One started drumming on his empty water buckets, so I joined in, and soon we had a small band going. After returning to my house, I bathed quickly in about 2 gallons of water, and then headed to the mission, where I had been invited to see the monthly clinic, where all the kids under 5 years old are taken to be weighed. It was jam-packed with mothers and bawling babies and toddlers running around poking each other. They put me to work recording the health status of the kids, which apparently you can tell just by their age and weight. They are given a color-code which corresponds to their health. To weigh the kids they stuff them into over-sized underwear and hang them from a scale like the ones at the produce section of the grocery store, but it has a hook to hang the underwear on. After all the kids are weighed, there is usually a nutrition session where the mothers are instructed on how to make nutritious baby-food. The nurse then gives shots to all the kids who need vaccinations (polio, measles, diptheria, etc.). It runs pretty smoothly considering the number of babies and little kids all crammed into such a little space.

After this I went home and felt too lazy to cook, so I went to my passion-fruit vine in the backyard and made a lunch out of a few of the fruits. I was waiting for a woman who used to be the chairperson of a mama's group in the village, which was disbanded after the departure of my predecessor. I want to start the group again, but I don't want it to by MY mama's group, so I am working with her to get it going again with as little input from me as possible. I want them to get the idea that I will help them but will not run the group. We were supposed to meet with the village executive officer about getting all the mamas together for a meeting, but there was a death in the village, so he was out. This is very common- meetings and important dates are often put off because of deaths in the village, as graves must be dug, and other arrangements made.

In the afternoon I holed up in my house for a while to paint, then went out to visit neighbors and teachers. I returned home to translate a session on AIDS from English to Swahili, as I said I would do for the chairperson of the AIDS education club. The story on the AIDS club parallels that of the mamas' group-- after the previous Peace Corpse left it no longer met. Now I have met with the chairperson to advise and motivate him to get the group going again with as little involvement from me as possible.

On my rounds in the village I met a woman selling bread, which is akin to finding clementine oranges in the grocery store for the first time around Christmas-time. I was excited, and bought up the remaining 4 rolls she had. I ate these for late-afternoon snack. I usually eat a little better than this, and intended to cook up some Chinese cabbage I bought, but I had a lazy food day.

By 7:00 pm you need a lamp to see anything, so I usually water my "garden" (which right now is only 2 small beds) before this. Realizing I didn't want to waste any of my clean water on the garden, I went down the hill to haul water from a ditch where the water is dirty, but I don't have to wait in line. I hauled it back up to my house, and decided that it was too late to go for a run, and I had gotten a bit of exercise anyway. I read and painted by candlelight until 9 or 9:30, when I went to sleep.

A typical day usually consists of me running around the village chasing people down and setting up meetings and then going to those meetings and then waiting for hours for those meetings to start. Now I have the work of translating AIDS sessions and planning of permaculture sessions. I don't feel like staying in my house all the time, and of course there is no library where I can study, so I was thinking of trying to use the teachers' office as a less solitary workplace. Yesterday was atypical only in that I got away with very little cooking, didn't wash any clothes, and I didn't have very many visitors at the house.

I hope that was at least a little informative!