November 18, 2009

Tomorrow is Thursday, we will have been at our site for a week tomorrow. The plane only flies to our airport on Thursdays, so that's easy enough to remember. After we get off the plane, we have to find a truck to get a bumpy ride to the solwota (bislama for ocean) and then an hour long boat ride, then a short uphill walk to our house.
Our village is beautiful to say the least, we're on the side of hill beside the solwota, facing west too...it's fantastic. Our house isn't finished being built, in fact, it has a long way to go, there's a frame and roof (most of a roof) but that's about it, we're optimistically hoping it will be finished by the end of the year. In the meantime, we are staying in a relatively modern concrete building, owned by the successful villager whose work requires he lives somewhere else. He's a provincial health director, so technically one of the big boss-man of Alex's supervisor. We're hoping he'll want to stay at his nice concrete house over Christmas and orders our house be completed...hoping.
Awkward is probably an appropriate word to use to describe the last week. The children stare at Alex and I A LOT, people regularly tell us things we don't understand, when we ask the same questions multiple times - we ALWAYS get multiple different answers. There's lots of us not knowing what to say or do. Children under the age of 5 or 6 and many of the old women in the village often don't speak bislama, only the local language.
I cut my hand (very minor cuts) multiple times trying to open these chestnut-like nuts, Alex enjoyed pointing out all the young children (ages 3 and up) who were much more efficient and much safer with a bush knife than I.
Alex and I planted some basil, mint, cilantro, lemon grass and aloe vera, and some tomatoes, literally - just squeezed some fresh tomatoes until all the seeds came out and then covered them with dirt - Does anybody know if this method might be effective?
We have two guitars with us and are finding the time to play with those everyday too, besides that, just a lot of awkward storian (that's story-on, bislama for sitting down and just talking with some one for no reason other than to story on and pass the time, Alex and I do it to make friends and INTEGRATE a buzz-word that Peace Corps uses a lot) with the locals, we're learning about the community and our bislama is getting stronger most days.
I'm going to finish now and save the precious computer battery-life.
Lukim yufala bak bakagen sam taem klosap