Livestock

We live in an area of Pleebo that is “cool and calm,” as everyone seems to say.  While that is true, that things are cool and calm, they are also noisy at times due to all the livestock that tend to congregate around our house.

Regina was brought a goat a few months ago by a family whose son she sponsored for school last year, and she had it around the house for a while.  We asked Robertson if this goat had a name, and he thought that was the most absurd idea in the world.  He did let us name it, however, and we chose to name it Julia.  Julia was around for a few weeks, and then they carried her to the village.

We heard nothing more of her and then two months or so later, another goat showed up at the house.  This was a boy goat, and we never did end up naming it.  This poor goat, however, was stuck in the neighborhood for three months with nothing to do but eat all the cassava leaves and chase the community children.  The children came to realize that they could terrorize him and he would then chase them around while they screamed like banshees. 

Robertson finally took this male goat to the bush a few weeks ago and he could not be happier to be out of town and back upcountry.  When he returned from his trip, he came and told us all about the experience.  After tying the goat to the back of a motor bike, he arrived in the village and the goat ran away as fast as he could.  Robertson did say that he saw Julia, however, and that she is pregnant!  A new baby goat on the way – it’s always good to know that something is surviving in the bush.  :) 

Termites!

Now that we have Margot, our rat problem has gotten much better.  She has also taken care of almost all of the cockroaches taking up space around the house and the lizards that like to hang out in the bathroom.  If only she could attack the termites, we’d be set!

At the very start of our time in Pleebo, we took down quite a few termite hills, but I thought that once we were eight months in, we’d be done with it.  Yeah right.  Every week, or so it seems, we have been taking down termite mounds around the house.  Some are small and easy to pick up; others are much bigger and take a bit of time.

This was found on the corner of the door to our bathroom.  It showed up over the course of eight hours!

It’s always fun to wake up in the morning and go into the kitchen, only to find lizards feasting on the giant termite hill that has been built into the corner of the walls.  Granted, now that Margot is here, the lizards don’t snack on these termites anymore.  :)  They still build all over the house, though, and it’s one of the small things that I absolutely despise waking up to. 

Oil + Water

Sarah and I have been eating a lot of popcorn as of late for dinner.  The Ole Ma cooks plenty for lunch, and we just don’t feel too hungry at the end of the day.  The downfall of this plan is that it often takes longer for the coal pot to heat up than for the popcorn to pop… That being said, often times, Sarah will light the coal pot, go take a bath, then come back and read a book until the oil is hot enough.

This is what she did on a Monday night a few weeks ago; nevertheless, the coal pot that night was exceptionally quick and hot.  She was reading (Nights of Rodanthe, actually – we were going to watch the movie that night) and wasn’t paying much attention to the comments of our neighbors.  Soon, however, she began to notice that they were congregating near the house and frequently mentioning “white woman”. 

She looked up from her book and noticed the coal pot was smoking – she took the lid off the pot, which was containing the oil she was heating, and flames were jumping out at her.  She put the lid down, took down the pot, and set it on the porch.  Then, she went inside to get water to throw on this fire…

Now, it has been mentioned that oil fires and water do not mix well, but in a moment of clarity, she forgot this.  Granted, I think I would have forgotten as well – how often do we deal with grease fires back home?  She came back outside, threw the scoop of water on the fire, and the flames jumped up at least six feet (they were higher than the door).  Luckily, our neighbor, Robertson, had run over to see what was happening, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to the far side of the porch before covering the fire.

While all of this was happening, I was inside, having just finished my bucket bath.  I heard the water hit the fire, but I had no idea what was happening.  I came outside to find our entire neighborhood crowded onto and around our porch and Sarah uncomfortably laughing to herself.  While telling me the story, I started laughing as well – I just didn’t know how else to respond to this situation.

Robertson told me that my sister was lucky, and I responded to him in the only way I know how – “Thank God she is alright.  Thank God nothing happened.”  If something had happened, I think I would have been as shaken up about it as Sarah was.  The children scrubbed the pot clean for us and that night (and ever since), I have taken over the popcorn duties. 

This is only lesson number five thousand and seven in why our neighbors are the best neighbors of any of the Peace Corps sites.  They protect us from oil and water fires and they do not judge us after the fact.  I’m grateful for them every day of my life.

Side note – Sarah was okay after this incident.  Besides being shaken up abou t it, she suffered singed hair (I trimmed off the ends for her) and a sunburn-type burn on her right arm.  There was a small blister, as well, but it was not too bad.  Thank God for her life and for Robertson’s quick thinking. 

Packages

We had a visit from our Peace Corps staff in January for a training session and with them, they brought packages!!  As many of you know, packages are a very exciting part of our life.  While we could definitely live with the items available here at site, the things that packages bring are a nice change of pace for us.

I just wanted to send a shout out to LaDonna for the package and the letter!  I’m grateful for your friendship and support.  I also want to thank Sue for the letter – it was a nice surprise and I love the updates on life back home :)  To Mom, of course, thank you for the boxes.  And from the looks of it, Sarah will be heading to Monrovia at the end of April, so hopefully we will have some more fun things waiting for us there.  :)

If you ever send me anything, it wouldn’t hurt to send me an email and let me know that you did.  I can then watch for it and let you know when I receive it!  And as always, I love updates from home.  I know I’m not updating as often as some of you would like, but I’d love to hear from you anyway!  Our internet situation is a little more stable these days, so I can access email/Facebook more often.  If you send me a message, I promise to reply.  Please just be patient with me.

I miss you all!  Stay warm over there, and I’ll see you in a little over a year :)

Love Sis Nyemade

Gifts...

Our students are notorious for giving us random gifts when they feel generous (or when their family has produce that they cannot eat before it spoils).  Lately, Sarah and I have been on the receiving end of quite a few gifts.

This week is finals week and on Tuesday, we received the biggest pineapple we have yet to receive – no joke, this pineapple was as big as my head.  We cut it up and ended up giving half to the children in our neighborhood; there is just no way the both of us could eat all that pineapple!  Another student gave us ten bananas on Tuesday, so we have been eating fruit like it’s going out of style.  We question whether they expect to pass their exams now that they have given us gifts…the answer to that, of course, is no, but we’re grateful for their generosity :)

The weirdest thing that I have had happen to me concerning gifts, though, came when a female student dropped $20 LD in my lap on her way to recess a few weeks ago.  I was helping another student, and when I noticed she had dropped something in my lap, I looked down to find this money.  Now, $20 LD is only about $0.25 American, but it can buy you something to eat here.  When she was walking back to class, I stopped her and asked why she gave me money.

Her response was that it was her gift to me, “from her heart.”  I explained that it is not correct for a teacher to accept money from a student, even if it is just small money for something to eat at recess.  I told her I appreciated the gesture but that I could not accept it.  She was very confused, as many teachers here still work on the bribe system – many times I have seen students slip $50 or $100 LD into a copy book for a good grade on a quiz or assignment – but I hope that she understood where I was coming from.

I don’t expect to completely change the culture surrounding teacher conduct while I am here, but if I can educate a few students on what is acceptable and what should never be done by teachers, then I guess I’m doing an okay job.  My stories about teacher conduct are plenty, and maybe one day, I will elaborate, but until then, just know that Sarah and I are the odd ones out at school some days.  That is fine, though.  I’d much rather be fair and disliked for not “helping a student” and changing their grade, than be a teacher who only works for small money here and there.

So until then, we will accept pineapples and bananas as gifts from our students, and maybe even sweet bread and juice at recess time.  I appreciate the relationship that we have with our students, and I hope that they are learning as much from me as I am learning from them. 

Growing Up

There is a two year old girl who lives in the house next to us named Grace.  Her mom sells fish for Regina and she has just started leaving Grace behind while she sells for the morning.  When we first moved to our community, Grace would go with her mom and all would be fine.  Now, however, her mom has to run away in the mornings before Grace realizes she is gone.  While I recognize it as a step in growing up, it is also incredibly sad to watch every day.

Lately, her mom has been telling her that she needs to “pee-pee” before going to work.  She will leave her basket on the ledge of the porch and run into the latrine building near the house.  When Grace sees her go inside, she’ll walk away slowly back onto the porch.  After a few minutes, her mom will peek out, see that Grace is gone, grab her basket of fish, and run out of site.  Ten minutes later, or so, it will dawn on Grace that her mom is still in the bathroom.

She will toddle her way over to the latrine and knock on the door, repeating “Mama?  Mama-oh!” until someone comes and hauls her back to the porch.  She cries and cries, falls asleep, wakes up, and the process will start again.  All this anguish is forgotten, however, when she sees her mom come home from the market.  The tears suddenly stop, she gets a huge smile on her face, and she waves at us as if to say, “See?  She did return for me!”  She is growing up small-small, but until then, we are left watching her question why her mom must spend hours in the latrine in the morning.  :)

Margot

March 9^th, Sarah and I went over to our neighbor Annie to buy some bananas and we inquired about how her cat babies were doing.  We knew that her cat had recently had kittens, and we still wanted to get one.  Sure enough, it was time for us to bring our cat baby home.  Margot has now been a part of our household for two and a half weeks, and she is finally starting to earn her keep! 

We feed her milk, rice, and fish on a rotating basis, and she has started supplementing her diet with creatures she finds in our house.  Lately, that has included cockroaches, giant flies, and small lizards!  A few nights ago, however, I stood up and slid on something in our living room (it was dark and I couldn’t see what was on the floor).  We grabbed flashlights and found vomit – yuck.  Picking it up, we noticed something long and white…and soon, we noticed it was moving.

After consultation with one of her friends back home (thanks Tressa!), we concluded that Margot has roundworm.  Lovely.  We are currently in the process of trying some homeopathic remedies, hoping that it will kill her roundworm.  While there is a veterinarian in Monrovia, that is two days away and roundworm meds just aren’t worth $120 in a taxi and five days of travel.

She’s fun to have around, and I’m grateful she has started to kill the creatures she finds in our house.  This is her territory, too, and I’m happy she wants it all to herself.  Now if she could just kill some mice, we’d be set.  In time, I hope!