Well, my APCD came for a visit. Yesterday she came through on her way to and from Ian’s site and I hitched a ride to John’s site so I could buy some stuff in the marche this morning (15 eggs for 11.5 mil and only one broke on the way home!). Then after John got locked outside of his house and they had to break the door to get in, we finally set off for my site.
In the car I asked Kristine for advice about my feeling of not fitting in with my community. She basically just said give it time. Every experience is different and it can take awhile to feel like you are fitting in. She said when she was a volunteer she didn’t feel like she was really a part of her community until she had been there for a year.
My conclusion is that I need to do more language study. Kiki sent my Pular-French dictionary on the mail run (and Kristine brought with her whatever mail we had) so I have that now and that should be helpful. It was made by some missionaries.
Anyway I showed Kristine and her sister (who is visiting from the States) around my village – the main drag, where my garden will be, the schools, where my water is, the pepiniere, my onion lady, the health center and we had rice and soup sauce at the Sous-Prefet’s house. There isn’t too much to see here! Unfortunately my counterpart had been whisked away by some delegation from the Prefecture so she didn’t get to talk to him at all.
My right ankle is swollen. It started to swell yesterday and today it has been blowing up. Tonight I noticed that it sort of sprang a leak at the top and is leaking some sort of pus from this weird sort of irritated/scarred area. If it gets worse tomorrow I will have to hike to the reseau spot and call Traian (the PC Medical Officer). I hope it’s not some sort of weird parasite. I know it’s not a sprain because it doesn’t hurt like that, just hurts from the pressure of the swelling. And kind of itches. Weird.
Got my second letter today, again it was from Megan (THANK YOU MEGAN!). COME ON PEOPLE. SEND ME A FREAKING CARD! It would just be nice to hear from you all and hear what is going on in your lives and in the world (I get next to no news here, even what may seem the most mundane or obvious of news will be completely unknown and appreciated by me). She mailed it February 17 and the stamp on back says it was received in Guinea on the 20th (but I don’t know how accurate that stamp really is). 94 cents. Seriously. My address is on the right. Oh also a book my mom ordered for me finally got here with a stamp on it that says, “Your mail was mis-delivered to Papua New Guinea”, hence why it took so long to get here. So whenever you send something just make sure to write WEST AFRICA at the bottom so they send it to the right continent.
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That is hilarious. I cannot believe they sent your book to the wrong continent. When you first told me where you were going I thought of Paupa New Guinea, but I knew that was in the South Pacific somewhere, not in Africa. So I figured Guinea had to be a separate country in Africa. But how does the POST OFFICE make that mistake?
continuing to lmao
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