past few days

(insert empty promise about uploading pictures here)

This weekend was pretty uneventful but I did go to the internet café and did indeed fail at uploading pictures. First I had to wait a while to use a computer because apparently all 5 of the available ones were out of order. Then the speed of the upload was glacial and Sr Vicky had sent a boarding school girl to accompany me so she was sitting there staring at the screen with me. Then I became convinced I was about to have a stomach crisis and wouldnt be able to make it back to the house and the mental images were enough to make me give up and go home. So I guess I’ll just have to wait…UNTIL I COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!! (flight purchase pending…)

Sunday after mass I was walking back to the house and this group of girls was waiting for me and told me to sit down so they could mess with my hair. Sure knock yourself out. It was pretty funny but then this one girl took my arm and looked at it really closely and said ‘your skin is so pretty I want my skin to be light like yours’. That really bothered me so I tried to explain that ‘chez moi’ girls do things to make their skin darker- you know a kind of ‘we want what we cant have’ thing. Unfortunately I got kind of tripped up on the necessary vocab and I don’t think they had any idea what I was talking about.

Monday I didn’t cry at the dispensary so that was cool. I did however get a reminder of how clueless I am. This guy came in who weighed 41 kg (not trying to be obnoxious with the metric system here but I don’t know exactly what that is in pounds) and was so skinny and apparently had had diarrhea for a month! I was thinking ‘what a nasty case of malaria!’ and ‘that was really nice of his brother to come with him!’ and ‘if I was sick for that long I probably would have started a blog about it!’ Bloat d’ivoire? Ugh sorry. Anyway sr Vicky told him to go get a blood test at the hospital and while I was thinking about what kind of illness would last that long sr Vicky suggested that it was probably AIDS. That thought never crossed my mind and I figured he had malaria like everyone else.

Other story of note was this pregnant woman. She was 9 months pregnant and had walked alone all the way here from where she lives in ‘the bush’. Hard to say how far that is but when youre that pregnant I would imagine that any distance would seem too far. Why no had come with her was beyond my understanding. Sr Vicky did an exam and told her she had to have it today so the woman was going to walk all the way home and try to have it there with the help of god knows who. Sr Vicky told her that if she hadn’t had the baby by 5pm, she would then have to get all the way back to the hospital in duekoue to be induced. The woman reacted as if sr Vicky had just suggested she try a new shampoo. No sense of urgency. No need to rush. Her reaction was especially surprising considering the way sr Vicky described the situation. ‘you have to have it today. If you don’t the baby will be dead. Then you too. Youll both die and that wont be good. Look at this. (there was blood) This means your baby is suffering. You need to have it today’ etc etc. She is not one to mince words but despite that the woman got up and started to walk home calmly.

Sr Vicky also sometimes does this thing where she looks at what someone has named their baby and says ‘what? What is this? What kind of name is this? That’s not a name, no one knows that name. That’s not French. Do you see that here? (points to a calendar with names on it) No, that name is not here. You have to add one. When was she born?’ She then unceremoniously chooses a new name for the baby and adds it to the babys record. It is so bizarre to me that you would take your baby for a check up only to have the nurse tell you that the name you chose isn’t real and therefore you must choose another. I laugh every time it happens because its so strange and sr Vicky is so intense about it.

This afternoon after my English class at the technical school we were finishing lunch and one of the priests came over looking for food because apparently whoever cooks for them made only eggplant or something like that. So he started eating the rice we had and insisted we turn on the TV so that he could continue watching this heinously dramatic movie from the Philippines. So dramatic you would have thought it was a spoof. He knew all the characters and we all ended up watching it. The French was simple so I liked it and the high drama combined with the low budget was hilarious. He also brought the good news that theyre sending Americans to supervise the elections- and not just to the capital! He seemed to think some Americans would be coming here to duekoue- hello new best friends! We’ll see what actually happens but its fun to think about.

Well this was longer than I expected so thanks for reading!!!