Written Thursday, November 15, 2012

Good mid-morning everyone- I hope the week is passing along nicely, and that you are all getting excited for thanksgiving next week! I’m sad I wont be around to celebrate that wonderful American food-fest with all my loved ones.

So I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of things here, after being away for a week. Its kind of tough to pick up where I left off with my organizations because we were somewhat out of touch, and people here don’t keep calendars. For example, today was the day of our “machamba” (aka- garden) at Despertai. There was a group of about 8 women who decided that the 15^th would be the best day, and if we showed up at like 6:30/7am we could get our work done early before the hot sun hit, and temperatures rose dramatically. So I showed up at 7am with my hoe, water barrel, and some seeds to plant – only to find that one other person showed up. So together her and I re-arranged some of the beds, planted some corn, beans, and peanuts – things that will be good during this hot time.

Needless to say I was a little disappointed in everyone – something I’ll talk about on the 29^th during our monthly meeting (again, depending on attendance). I know I was away for a week, and I couldn’t remind everyone that we had our gardening project today, but then again, that’s not my responsibility. They decided on the date and time. . . meh. Frustrating.

So yeah, after some back breaking work in the garden this morning – I came home, took a cold bucket bath, and am going to relax with some water and maybe an afternoon movie. I have a delicious mango for lunch, and am thinking about making an egg scramble for dinner.

Yesterday I had a wonderfully interesting day – like I think I said before, I never know what my days have in store for me, and enjoy seeing where they go. For example, I showed up at my one org, ACOMUZA, yesterday at 9am, thinking we had our weekly meeting – instead to find that they are having a training with IRD (another international organization), so I sat in on that for a bit, and left around 2pm with one of my colleagues. We went to her house, and hung out there for a while. She has a baby (named after my mom) so most of my time was spent pretending I liked playing with and holding babies. . . as most of you know – babies aren’t my thing. But I went with it, and that was that. She’s a cutie – baby Diana, huge eyes that mirror back anything she is looking at because they are so dark, always smiling, and curious as to what is around her.

After hanging around her house a bit, we walked down to her neighbors, were I was presented with a HUGE bunch of banana’s and some sugar cane. YUM. I then proceeded to get into a discussion with her other neighbor, a nice well-meaning guy, about religion and science. . . .again, as many of you know, my ideas about religion is that its silly and has caused more bad than good in the world – to each their own. I cant say that I’m shocked that so many people here have strong ties to religion, it’s a form of education in some ways- just not the correct form.

For example during this rather heated discussion, I touched on some subjects like evolution, space travel, shifting tectonic plates (describing Pangaea) and then last but not least other countries in the world and other religions. He kept asking why I didn’t want to have a religion, and I explained that in my opinion, religion is just another thing to fight about, and that it has caused so many wars, hate, and death. He tried to dispute that – so I asked him what he thought of the Islamic faith, what he thought of Catholics, those who were Buddhist etc. (for the life of me I cant remember what religion he said he was) but he would respond that “those people” were wrong, and that his religion was the only one that would provide salvation after death. Thus proving my point entirely. I think I shocked him, I shock a lot of men here – I’m not afraid to speak my mind, constantly advocating for women here, for better education, stating that – no I don’t want children, the fact that I play soccer, live alone, drink a beer every now and then, know how to play checkers etc. . the list goes on.  I’m hardly a demure lady in the states, why should I be any different here?

Anyway – with that being said- I bit you all adieu.

td