Friday, August 3

·        6:30 – Wake up and immediately have a craving for oatmeal (maple and brown sugar, thank you very much).

·        7:00 – Shower, sweep, cook oatmeal and coffee, and head out to porch for my morning lounge/work/read session.

·        8:15 – Eat and read.

·        9:15 – Tackle the laundry from yesterday’s maggot extermination. Today’s load even includes my Bananagrams case, which the maggots also decided to destroy. Bastards.

·        10:30 – Decide it’s finally time to get dressed in real clothes (as opposed to a lamba, a traditional wrap for women in beautiful patterns, similar to but less complicated than a sari, that most village women all day every day). Going through my suitcase, I see a pair of shorts I bought last month that are too big and decide to sort through the rest of my clothes for things I don’t want or need anymore and give them to Belia.

·        11:00 – Bike to family’s house and present a very excited Belia with a bag of new clothes - she loves shopping and fashion. My brother comes in and decides to turn on the generator because he wants to watch… THE OLYMPICS! Having totally forgotten these were going on, this is a great surprise, and we spend the afternoon watching track and field events. So fun. Go USA. Remember it’s Luca’s birthday today and Belia gives me a t-shirt and money to buy a beer for him when I go to Ambanja this weekend. We eat a late lunch of coconut chicken. Before I leave, my mom, very uncharacteristically, approaches me shyly, and says she has been thinking for the past couple of weeks about what she wants from the US (I wanted my parents to bring her a small gift but was unsure what she would want) and she has decided. She wants a watch just like mine. My watch, by the way, is a $9.00 target purchase that she loves because it can get wet, i.e., she wouldn’t have to take it off to do laundry, her main daily chore.

·        3:30 – Bike home and pack my bag for tomorrow. I am going into Ambanja for a couple of days for the fete de veloma (goodbye party) for Josh, Jason, and Katie, three volunteers that arrived exactly one year before me in the Health/Education Stage 2010. I am really sad to see them go.

·        4:30 – Go for a 30-minute run, come home, and do some yoga and stretching for 15 minutes.

·        5:15 – Shower, sweep, and look in my food bag to see what’s left for dinner. I have an eggplant, two tomatoes, and two potatoes, so vegetable sauté it is. Don’t feel very hungry when dinner is done, so I cover the food and decide to go to PSI.

·        6:00 – Walk to the EPP for the second PSI night. Tonight is about clean drinking water (basically using Sur’Eau) and Malaria, and the presentations are much better than last night as there is much more audience participation. At the end of the evening they publicly thank me for inviting them to Betsiaka. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the event because my camera was stolen about a week ago. 

·        8:15 – Walk home, eat some eggplant and an orange, and wash my feet.

·        8:30 – Get in bed and finish book before falling asleep.