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Sunday, June 20, 2010

New Pictures!

Tuesday, June 16, 2010 8:57pm

Beans cooked with pizza spice is not as good as it sounds. Which is truly a shame since it doesn’t even sound all that good.

But it is different. An appreciated change from the norm, and edible. Sadly, the rice too, is plagued by these small mostly clear whitish rocks, which as you can imagine are impossible to pick out when cleaning. Flora warned me about them, as they showed up in her rice too, and explained how to clean them out. But I seem to have failed miserably.

So pizza beans and rocky rice paired with an orange (they are coming in huge numbers from Tonga now) after a day of laundry and cleaning and putting together lesson plans and preparing for the onslaught of tomorrow through Monday.

Tomorrow, ISF will be coming for a meeting. The Spanish version of engineers without borders who have devastated our existing water system and are coming back, I hope, to make amends and fix things. They left the village before I came, and the stories surrounding the event are varied so I will try to remain neutral in saying that the work they completed did not provide adequate water. They were updating and refurnishing an existing system that when they finished provided significantly less water than when started. Part of this is due to drought. The other reasons I will let you speculate in order to remain neutral as a good little Peace Corps Volunteer is supposed to be on a public blog such as this.

Needless to say, the villagers where very upset when water became inadequate, and arguments began. ISF left without finishing most of their work about a year before I came to the village. In order to do my initial report, I tried my best to get an accurate picture of what had happened, and what could be done. Water, as has been mentioned in previous posts, is the biggest problem in my village, and can be traced to be the source of most other problems (along with lack of education). Without water, there is no life.

My initial thought was to figure out the source of the conflict and then A: try to collaborate with ISF to return to the village and finish their work as well as look into the reasons of the failure of completed projects or B: Find the original contract ISF signed with the government of the village as well as the Government in Same and hold them accountable to finish the work described within to an acceptable standard.

Sadly, due to a total lack of adequate communication and a number of failed meetings, and the inability to find the contract due to a change in local government, I put all that by the wayside and started working with the villagers to think of other ways to find adequate water.

And now all the sudden ISF has shown back up. And tomorrow I will sit through my first meeting with them and my villagers. They have come 2 other days now, which I had already scheduled projects.

I am very interested in what they have to say.
I am also nervous they will let my villagers down again.

It might be a contributing reason to their lack of confidence in my larger projects coming through and their reluctance to take part, contribute labor, money, or resources to projects that seem so obviously propitious to all to me. But they have been let down now. And who knows how many other times before.

Friday morning (8am) I have a meeting with the Forest Committee. We will be planting a tree nursery with 2 trainers from Same. We are hoping to plant about 500 seedlings. I have promised to bake banana bread, and made sure that was written into the announcement (meetings are announced by letter which are distributed usually by children or whoever happens to be going near the home of that person, as we don’t have cell network and people don’t own cellphones. . and no, no landlines either) The bread is a bribe for people to show up – as well as show up on time.

Just this last week I went to a meeting, planned between myself and important gov’t officials (I won’t name) about a big project I am trying to get running, and not a single person came. Not even the unnamed gov’t officials. I sat for 2 hours in the hope that another single soul would arrive.

So I have come to bribing them with banana bread. And I pray that it works.


In the afternoon I have my very first PLWHA (People Living with HIV/AIDS) meeting. This took a long time because they had to become used to me and trust me. Also, I have to be known as working with many clubs and groups in the village. Because no one is ‘out’ in my village due to tremendous stigma, it is important that they are seen as just another group of people that I am working with.

I am excited, which seems an inappropriate reaction. I have met with many of them individually, taken them food and sat with them to discuss the difficulties they face in getting medicine and proper care, and many even adequate food for themselves and their families. One of them is a dear friend of mine who is sick and has been in and out of the hospital, and just yesterday showed me the rash that she has all across her stomach and side. The doctors say it is a bacterial infection, but she is not getting better.

I worry about her. I visit her often.

She is known and loved in her subvillage. I wonder what would happen if they knew she had HIV.


On Saturday I will be heading into Same to teach a group of Secondary students English for the weekend. Mostly form 4 students who will be taking their national exam soon (August I think) and are in Same for ‘tuition’ which consists of classes held by teachers during school breaks (such as right now) for a small fee usually about 100/= (about $0.10) per class.

Anyways, sleepy now. Pizza beans and rocky rice makes for a heavy dinner J

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