it's too hot to live in a village

so i'm in chipata. i've been here all week, partially because I'm lazy, partially because the allure of ice cubes is so great. it's really, really hot. Today is independence day. we are celebrating by watching prison break and baking cookies and pizza.

I'm feeling a little disillusioned with village life, probably because I've been away from it for 2 weeks and the distance makes me feel nostalgic for the developed world and also feel like "what the hell am I actually doing in the village anyways?" Hopefully I can get some things done come November, and get my garden ready for the rains, and have a couple meetings with health committees to start setting up some facilitation trainings. But mostly i'm feeling a little annoyed with people. My clinic staff is pissing me off, people keep hitting on me and it's annoying. The lack of respect that educated people here pay to villagers is incredibly frustrating. And my clinic staff thinks people aren't having sex and thus spreading HIV because they are too busy watching traditional dance, which is crap. The problems just feel daunting because they are so vast and the harvest/ weather schedule really dictates everything we do so you really have to work around/ within that. People also are very stuck in their ways, they have a very hard time trying to think creatively about problem solving. And there is no planning, or rationing of resources. The few people who do these things are doing well for themselves but the cycle of life here is just set in stone. Right now our water pump is running low, so the clinic ties it up all day so that the villagers won't use it, but I get to use it because i'm the white woman. Frustrating.

We always tend to feel guilty when we are out of the village, but the reality of this job is that we are out of the village almost 50% of the time between cultural days, vacation, required trainings and meetings, provincial house time, medical trips, and visiting friends. I'm starting to utilize these breaks from the village more too for my mental sanity. Once the rains come we can't work very much because all the farmers (so.... everyone) is really busy, so we tend to go on vacations. Otherwise we are just sitting at home watching the water come through our grass roof.

One of my neighbors just had a baby. It's her 5th boy and it was born a month premature. It's so cute and tiny. When the babies are really tiny their skin is a lot lighter so everyone says "ah, it's brown like kerry!" They might have me name this one. When you name a baby you are responsible for buying it lots of presents - a lot of volunteers end up naming a lot of babies.

books: Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer, A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon, Atonement - Ian McEwan, Faking It - Jennifer Crusie, When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris, Adventure Divas - Holly Morris, Jesus Land - Julia Scheeres.