Bamena

(Sent by Chritina by mail September 27 - Earlier than the previous post)

After my first night in Bamena with my homestay family I now respect each and every PCV/RPCV infinitely more. I am not sure if I was just not prepared for the transition mentally or what. My French completely failed me and my family has taken it upon themselves to teach me basic French because that is how bad my communication skills were the first night.

Thankfully the first night is a hump that I have gotten over. The initial culture shock has worn off and my excitement and enthusiasm has returned. My family is really nice. My mother, Meredithe, is a housewife and my father, Romeo, is a driver in Bangante (a nearby bigger town). I have three brother and two sisters. Lots more people are constantly in and out of the house and eating dinner here. Most of the children are younger and my oldest sister, Terrance, does almost all of the chores. I would say that she is 13 if I had to guess.

My house is the blue house in town and that is how I and others identify it. I am really excited to have a light in my room because it starts getting dark around 6pm everyday and all year round. But the electricity is not guaranteed and we have lots of power outages. My house does not have running water, although some other volunteers do have a spigot at their houses. This means that we have a latrine and the shower area outside. In order to shower I must take a bucket bath. I think that this is an experience everyone should try. It is especially exhilarating if you use cold water!

I have definitely become very conscious of how much water I use each day, whether it is for drinking, bathing, washing my hands, etc. Water is not a given or especially easy to come by, so it makes you think about it whenever you do use it. Today I carried water on my head for the first time. It could not have been more than a five minute walk, but it was very difficult to do. I like to think of myself as a fairly strong individual, but my 13 (or so) year old sister upstaged me completely. As I came struggling back to my house my mother took the water from my head and told me that it was too heavy for me to carry.

We have finally begun training sessions so now I have lots of classes - technical training, language immersion, and cross cultural classes. These will keep my days very busy full of training that will help me to be an effective volunteer.

I think that I got sunburnt today, but I do not have a mirror to check and see. It is interesting to realize a lot of the things that we take for granted. Another interesting thing that I have noticed - they do not have trash cans here. You would think that might be a huge problem, but everyone reuses anything you can think of and I am told the very little trash that is produced people burn periodically (not the best strategy). But no food gets wasted - either animals or humans eat all of it.