A villagers life

Gone are the days of living at site where everything is set up as if you are still living in the first world. It's taken a month and a half but i finally have a routine down. Everything takes longer, and things are definitely more challenging but i am learning to think outside the box.

We start our mornings waking up around 5, depends on Aiden he is now our alarm clock, and he is an early riser. We have our charcoal stove so breakfast does not come quickly, but we manage it. I will usually go next door to our sister in laws house and take so coals from their already burning fire. I then place our stove outside so the wind Will keep the coals hot and start the charcoal. When everything is burning I bring the stove back inside ans start to prepare food for the day. I will usually start by boiling water to wash the dishes from the night before. I always place a bucket outside at all times, so when the rains come it will fill with water that i can use for various things. (No running water inside or close by.) We have two large buckets inside that we try to keep filled with water.
Breakfast is usually potatoes with some kind of vegetable. After pealing and cutting all the potatoes i can then began to cook them. While the potatoes are cooking I will wash dishes in a plastic shallow "dish" as they call it here. When that is finished its on to washing diapers. I like the days when we have really good rains because it supplies me with plenty of water for the many things i need it for during the day. You never know how much you need water until it requires more than just Turing on the tap.
Showering usually happens in the evenings, which requires 3 buckets of water, (one for each of us) but also means everyone has to wait for water to boil. We don't shower all on the same day; because by the time dinner is cooked and the last person's water boils its pretty late at night, and not to mention very cold when you shower outside.

Now that the kids have returned to site Aiden and I will go in the afternoons when they get out of school. Aiden is very excited to have all these people around to hold him and play with him again, and the kids can't believe how big he got over the month they were all away.

I had a peace corp friend who taught me how she made her oven to bake, so taking her version and adding some things of my own i have discovered how to bake bread! It's a lot of work and the guys eat it in about 10 minutes but i am excited that i am making it on my own. No recipe even! I made banana bread/cake the other day which turned out quite nicely!

The is a leak in the roof of our toilet and it happens to be right above the place where you squat to go; makes a restroom in the rain trip a little more interesting.

We do not own a mirror. I have not seen my own reflection in i don't even know how long! There is something very freeing about not having one, you never worry about appearance, how you are looking doesn't play in to how you interact with people around you.

I go a little crazy with all the "advice" i am given about raising my baby in a third world country. Basically I can do NOTHING right, and there is a double standard for Aiden and I then all the other mothers and babies. I can often just laugh it off and come up with things to say to brush them off, for instance "where is his hat?" (on very warm days) " oh he doesn't need it, he is half white". In some cases people will continue, "but what about the bugs?" (as if we have tons of bugs just swarming around our babies, or anyone for that matter) "Oh he likes them". Now that rainy season is upon us, going out in the rain with baby- no going out in the rain with Aiden, is a total no-no. "You have a baby in the rain!"(Oh and this is with using umbrellas, sorry i know its not very Oregonian of me, but it takes forever to dry clothes here!) The other day we passed a women when we were walking to Kay's house. It had started to rain but the lightest sprinkles. The women (without even greeting first) told me i needed to run home it was starting to rain. I told her it was not a problem we had an umbrella, but she persisted, and persisted and then she started to get quite rude. She told me that Aiden was going to get malaria because I had him in the rain. I was trying to be polite but i couldn't stand it anymore. I asked her he is going to get malaria because of rain? She said  yes. I said yea ok, in a very unfriendly way and walked off and then admittedly felt guilty. It is frustrating to have them constantly have a set of rules for us and then a set for everyone else. Makes being "one of them" a hard task. However I want to be a light and sometimes that means biting my tongue and remembering who i want to be for these people.

I often thing i must be crazy to choose to live here over the conveniences of the states, but there is something so wonderfully fufilling about living life the simple way; because on the days where it does rain hard and I can collect more than one bucket of water, on the nights that are warm and i do take a shower outside the stars are a stunning view, on the days when the bread comes out perfect in my make shift oven, on the days the villagers just greet us or send us away with a small gift, all the days i get to see the kids who stole my heart more than two years ago, at the end of long days when i get to sit and play with Aiden, and the fact that I get to go everywhere with Aiden (even to work), those days make living this life worth it, and not seem so crazy after all.