I’m sitting here on the pink rocks again watching two of my three ausis running back and forth and doing situps and pushups in the grass. I think I have definitely inspired them in the exercise department, plus it’s the school vacation boredom stretch, so they’re just entertaining themselves. I have also been reading Harry Potter with them on my kindle, and giving my oldest ausi some English and math assignments to get ready for the school year. She in particular is very inspiring how she wants to learn, and it’s quite smart of her to take advantage of me living with them so she can ask me for extra help
The first thing that’s starting to get on my nerves is that there are always people knocking at my door (“koko!”) just to say “I am visiting you.” Uh, yes, I can see that, thank you. Then there’s an awkward “OK then…” and wordless standing around, then they say bye and leave. A few days ago, one of the Form C girls came in, and after a few minutes of nothingness and standing around, I told her I was working and that I would see her later. I opened the door and she was like “oh, it’s so hot out” so I just told her she could stay inside but that I needed to write some things on my computer. I had some music on, and it was a long while later when I thought that if I turned the music off, maybe she would leave. Bingo. It’s like the same, but opposite, phenomenon of when those stores would play classical music or that high pitched noise to make loitering teenagers to away. In this case, it’s the absence of house music that deters them.
Last Wednesday at the nearby orphanage, I had lunch with Lauren (my across-the-valley PCV mate) and Jill (the old, British lady who is the director of the orphanage) at the orphanage. It’s an orphanage for orphaned/abandoned/abused kids, and just hearing about how some of the kids came to live here was really saddening. It’s really big, with lots of animals and trees and it seems very well-run. The area is called Plenty after Plenty, Canada, the place the people were from who started the orphanage and some other agricultural and water projects around here many decades ago. Jill is all about helping these kids because it’s relatively easy and inexpensive to change a life around completely. After talking and eating lunch, I went back to Lauren’s house and she showed me how to knit. One of those things I was never interested in is now going to help save me from my boredom. As I was coming back to my village from her house (I’m gonna blame this incident on the fact that it was getting dark out), as I was crossing one of the streams, I was actually thinking to myself, “wouldn’t it be funny if I fell down this little raised part and into the water?” and I must have jinxed myself. Somehow, in slow motion, I did an entire forward roll down the three-foot drop and landed on my butt in the mud/water. No one saw me fall, fortunately, but one ‘me did see me climbing back up, so naturally everyone knows. There’s also the fact that I slipped on the path going from my house down the big hill as I was coming back from xmas vacation, so everyone probably thinks I’m a super klutz.
In other news, I’ve been hallway trying to do these oh-so-lovely Phase 2 Assignments that PC gave us to do. There are so many questions to answer- a selection of the questions include: meet-and-greet profiles, description of my school, organizations working in the community, healthcare, shopping, business, community dynamics, and key community figures. Basically, what it amounts to is busy work for people to get out of their huts and to explore the world around them and talk to people instead of being a hermit.
In other other (more exciting) news, I found a little bat chilling in my curtain. This would explain all the flapping noises last night. I thought it was a bird flying around outside, but nope, it was a bat inside. Good thing I have this mosquito net, or I might be a superhero with bat-like powers by now. Or rabies. My oldest ausi tried to get it off the curtain with my broom, but I thought this might just cause it to fly around chaotically inside the house, so I got up on a chair with a peanut butter container and somehow kind of scraped it off the curtain, trapping it between the curtain and the container. It was kind of squealing or squeaking or chattering or whatever bats do, which was pretty unnerving, but I got the little sucker in there and threw it in the bushes outside. I have since seen many bats flying around at twilight, and it seems that they live in the underside of the roof outside. I must remember to close my windows after it gets dark, or I may actually return as Bat Girl.
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