Sunday

4/26/09

In Sia, 45k North of Gaya, visiting David with Mary Abrahams (our Country Director) and Lynn Foden (our Africa Regional Director).
Sleeping on a haussa bed – think millet stocks buddle together – with no mattress or sheets and then going to bike back to Gaya in the morning, some true good-ol’ Peace Corps living.
Day started out pretty normal. Sunday – tried to sleep in, thought I slept in, but when, after what I imagined an hour of laying there, I got up to find that it was only 7AM. Normal morning routine and then off to market to find ginger, mangos and limes; I’m brewing up a batch of mango wine which I hope to have ready by Cinqo de Mayo.
After walking all over Gaya looking for decently priced mangos (one problem of whiteness is that everything is more expensive) and limes, I came back to my house to wait for Mary, who was on her way down to pick up Lynn from the Niger-Benin border.
She showed up about 11:00. After chit-chat for around half an hour, she got a call from Lynn saying she was on the Benin side of the crossing and so we went down to our side and the timing was great as she was just finishing up the paperwork when we got there.
From there, I took them to lunch, my new favorite restaurant, Maquis de Tropique. Couscous and chicken. Yum. And Mary paid! Double yum. And we had cokes! I felt spoiled.
Back to my house, showing off my kittens and then to inspection for a brief meeting with some counterparts.
After the meet and great and small talk with one of my inspectors and some other people, Mary and Lynn invited me to come up to Sia with them for the night. I would have to find my own way home, but that’s not too big of a deal, I just told them to strap my bike to the top of the car and I’d ride back in the morning. I’ve done it before, I can handle it.
We came up the road to Sia, stopped shortly to drop things off and then went out to visit two volunteers who live right near by, Ely and Emily. Emily was the first stop and her village was great. Beautiful place. They have a couple of big trees right in the middle of the village which have been hijacked by this parasitic tree which grows up around the existing tree’s trunk and slowly crawls upward taking over branches and sending down creepy hanging ‘roots’ or something as it progresses. Cool trees, they have a naturally haunted look and it’s weird to see two distinct sets of leaves and bark on the same ‘tree’. Unfortunately, her village also has a lot of malnutrition, nothing extreme, but it’s all the more sadder that it is normal. Too many distended bellies and faded hair.
Then we were off to Ely’s, where my good buddy Kim was before here time finished. The big surprise was that he got a goat so he can enjoy fresh goat’s milk each day. Good time watching him milk it. Then it started to RAIN. I love rain. After a short visit, it was back into the car and back to Sia for dinner.
Been fun hanging with the two directors for the day. It’s not just us volunteers who live in a small world and thus talk about each other, catch up on the gossip of people, events, and Peace Corps changes, but PC staff is pretty much the exact same, small and interlinked with many connections. They’re just privy to a lot more information than we are as volunteers.
Dinner of rice and beans and CHICKEN! Boy, chicken twice in the same day. Really, meat twice in the same day is a rare and amazing thing here, so I ate my full and now am sitting happy with a full stomach ready for bed. Sleep now.