The sun is shining and it's not so hot...yet.

Past the year and a half as a volunteer mark.

Today is going to be full of funeral festivities. Got a late start on the day because yesterday was also full of funeral festivities...I was up 'til one in the morning. Whoa, baby. I might be missing the church service this morning but since I sat in on two of 'em last night I don't feel so bad about it.

I don't want the experience I end up getting out of my two years here to be "ugh, I survived that, it was hard and look at how tough I am." That really diminishes the value and importance of this place and the people I know. I'm very glad to have opportunities to be a part of life, to celebrate with my friends and neighbors like I did yesterday and will be doing today. It gives a bit of balance to the days when I really DO feel like I'm surviving here and it's hard.

I had more eloquent things to say about this but I am a bit sleepy and I have to get ready for the day. Hello, day!

So You Want To Join Peace Corps?

Also...

watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wDq17zyN0

Run for fun?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The completion of an entire marathon begins with one step. Now there may be some of you who have not heard of this goal of mine. That's ok. It's a pretty recent one and I am living far away from most of you readers at the moment, with sketchy access to the internet. But anyhow, marathoning is not the point.

While visiting my dear friend Marita, who threw herself a birthday party for town friends and PCV friends alike, I allowed John to convince me to take a morning run with him. I finished red-faced and sweating (and very impressed with my rugby-playing college self) and absolutely not wanting that to be as difficult as it was, so I decided to let the momentum continue into everyday life here in Kongoussi and have been running every other morning at least and loving it. Looking forward to it.

Unfortunately I did not run this morning...I woke up later than I intended to wake up because of some righteously terrible dreams and lamented that the cool morning weather had already disappeared. ...I was a little bummed on biking over to the internet (where I find myself now) to discover that it really hadn't gotten too hot yet by 8:30. I may try to run this evening to make up for my loss, because I don't intend on trying to squeeze a run in on Wednesday mornings, when I have to be up at the school to teach classes by 7. It's possible...but there's not a whole lot of room for error, so I don't want to count on it.

Anyhow, running is great. I've been starting slow, working the kinks out of my body as I get these particular muscles used to moving again. I take in the landscape as I go, I listen to music with the one side of my earphones that works, I take time for myself to do something good for my body, and it feels great.

Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, socially, sexually...there are many different facets of well-being that can be attended to. I've started relecting on this lately because getting through the days seems to be taking a lot more out of me the second time around. I need to find ways to take care of myself so that I can keep putting a good amount of effort into the things I am doing here. It's not always easy. Having everything I do be self-motivated...it can wear on a person after a while, especially for those tasks that no one really holds you accountable for. Self motivation...perhaps something I should write a little more about here sometime soon.

...it's what gets me up and running.

mortal combat yuurle

Thought I could go the entire two-plus years without it happening, but no! Saturday night I was stung by a scorpion, on the ring finger of my left hand. Ouch, baby.

I had been dumping my bucket of dirty kitchen water out into my latrine (sometimes I just dump it over my wall so that the animals can come by and eat the bits of food in there, but it was a little too intense this time around). When I had finished pouring everything into the bottomless abyss, I put my hand against the mud brick wall and PING! A white hot bolt of electric pain surged through my hand. At the same time I heard a weird rattlesnake-like bark-y shriek from whence the pain had come. Looked up and saw not one by TWO big momma scorpions there on the wall. Got my butt out of the bathroom and over to the porch outside of my house where I stood clutching the fingers of my left hand and using the Lord's name in vain. For a good minute or two I was convinced I was never going to stop squeezing my hand ever.

After the pain subsided a little bit (perhaps because it had diffused up into my entire arm), I went on a search for someone brave to come and kill the b@$+@&#s for me. I heard Antoinette in her courtyard, talking up a storm with someone else and figured, hey, 16 year old girls are incredibly brave, aren't they? So I called over to her, but she didn't hear me. A few seconds later, however, two nine-year-old girls came walking by in the dark so I called THEM over instead. "Are you brave?" I asked. "Oui," they replied...but changed their tunes a little bit when I told them their task.

Ok, so I didn't make the nine year olds kill the scorpions for me, but I did have them follow me back into my latrine so that I could be brave. By this time a pretty large crowd had gathered in my courtyard by the light of the moon, mostly kids and teenage girls. Claudia's two nieces did a very thorough inspection of my latrine with my phone flashlight and determined that the scorpions were nowhere to be found. Several people suggested that they had moved into my house. Pretty much everyone asked me if the sting hurt, and then agreed that yes scorpions do hurt, and wanted to look at my finger (which I had let go of by this time, sort of enjoying the throbbing pain in a masochistic way).

Several remedies were suggested to me, one of which included blood letting and Maggi cooking tablets. I refused that one. The best thing woulda been ice, but that was obviously not going to appear from anywhere.

Knowing it wouldn't do me any harm and enjoying having pretty much the entire quartier occupy themselves with me, I allowed myself to be led across the quartier to the house of an old old woman who mixed some powdered leaves with water in her palm and then rubbed it all over my fingers with her leathery hands. Didn't you know scorpions sting? she asked me in Moore. Why did you touch one? It took me a minute to figure out what she was asking me and to explain with a laugh that I just hadn't seen it sitting there.

The kids were crowded around me as I sat on the little wooden stool in the old lady's courtyard, and they moved back to follow me as I got up and thanked her and walked away. At this point, Claudia came out with a long white scarf, which she tied around my upper arm to stop the pain from spreading. "Wend na kof laafi" she said with a smile as she turned to saunter back to her house and I continued on my way.

...and you know kids, so considerate...two crowds of them showed up at my house at 11pm to check on me. I was in my bed, which is pulled up next to my door to catch the nighttime breeze, dressed in very not-public sleep clothes. Never am I even out and about after 8pm, so this 11pm call was super special. The silly full moon with its ability to keep children out all night long. I created quite a ruckus in my telling the rascals to get the h#!% away from my door, to leave me alone, that they are very nice but this is not normal, that I would see them in the morning.

They must have thought I was weird. Why wouldn't someone want to be woken up by a swarm of children in the middle of the night--twice--to ask about an insect sting?

They really are sweet kids.

Cross cultural fun.