Eight Days a Week

So many people ask me what I do on a normal day and it’s difficult to answer that question. It’s also hard to answer the question “how is your work going?” My work here is so different from checking off tasks on a to-do list from 9-5. At the most basic level, I’m supposed to be helping my village build the capacity to improve their own health status and facilitating cultural exchange. Specifically, the three goals of Peace Corps are:

Goal 1: Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women

Goal 2: To help promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served

Goal 3: To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans

Having very broad objectives like these means that sometime I can go for two weeks at a time without doing “real” work, then spend the next week chasing down one person to try to meet, and the next doing something more tangible like teaching a week-long health class in school. If you talk to me on a week where it’s harder to tell exactly what “work” I’m doing, it may seem like Peace Corps is just about sitting and reading on my porch with kids and the next maybe I would be able to tell you I received funding for a clean water project and it seems like I’m accomplishing way more than I actually am. Who knows.

My dear, beautiful friend Marin, who is a TEFL volunteer serving in Cape Verde and Mozambique, did a post a couple months ago called “A Week in the Life” that chronicled her day-to-day activities over a random week. I thought it was a great way to give a sense of what I do on a day-to-day basis in regards to both work and simply living in Betsiaka. Like Marin, I thought about choosing a week where I knew I would have more to do but since every week is pretty different, I decided just to start.

Sunday, July 29

·        6:30 – Wake up to see Jason off. He was visiting Betsiaka for the weekend with John Shen, another great friend of mine from Wash U who is also serving as a health volunteer in Madagascar. For breakfast, we finish the leftover Thai-peanut pasta we had made the night before. One of the advantages of the cooler season (which is very unfortunately ending abruptly) is that it’s possible to save food overnight as long as it’s reheated well in the morning. Jason hopped on his bike to go the 30k to Ambilobe. The road, while still in horrible condition, is now possible to navigate in a little under two hours on a bike.

·        7:30 – Fetch water from well, take a shower, and get dressed. A note about bucket showers – I have come to not only enjoy these, but prefer them to normal showers. They’re such an amazing way to cool off, use considerably less water than a real shower, and I always feel cleaner.

·        8:00 – Sweep house. This is a two or three-times-a-day chore, especially during the dusty season – basically the entire year except for rainy season – because Betsiaka is extremely windy and dry and there’s pretty much constant billows of dust blowing into the house. Set up my laundry buckets on the porch and spend the next hour listening to my iPod and cleaning my clothes.

Laundry on the porch!

·        9:15 – Hang clean clothes out on line and refill water buckets from well.

·        9:30 – Make tea from bags I brought from the states. I’ve been trying to find citronella seeds so I can make tea just from boiling the leaves, but for now Jasmine does the trick. Take the first of my deworming pills (yes, I officially played host to my first African worms), and set up on my porch with work materials. Fill out leave request form to submit to Peace Corps for vacation with my family in September, go through rain water harvesting materials Jason left for me, and read about World Map project I am thinking of doing.

·        10:45 – Walk to market, stopping to talk to friends on the way. Everyone wants to know where my two visitors are and I tell them “efa nody!” (they have already gone home). Buy tomatoes, eggplant, cabbage, eggs, rice, two carrots (an expensive treat), and meat (another luxury but is available in Betsiaka on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays). With the road more passable now, we are lucky to have many types of vegetables available lately and I’m taking full advantage! For the past couple of months the options have been pretty much limited to tomatoes and onions.

·        11:15 – Walk home and throw carrots, cabbage, and meat into a pot to slow-cook, and sahafa (clean by picking through to get rid of the rocks and husks) my new rice until lunch.

·        12:00 – Eat lunch and do crossword puzzles.

·        12:30 – Take a nap on the porch.

·        2:30 – Wake up, put away dry clothes from line, sweep house again.

·        3:00 – Start a new book: “The Secret Scripture” by Sebastian Barry.

·        5:30 – Eat leftovers from lunch, wash dishes, and chat with my parents on the phone.

·        7:00 – Get in bed and read.

·        12:00 – Finally fall asleep after finishing my book, no thanks to the cacophony of termites that are aggressively chewing down my house.