cyclone day

Time flies when you’re in Mahabo. I’m serious—you need a weekend to get adjusted, and then it’s as if you escape to this timeless place where you simply exist and live your simple life.

So it’s been a few weeks.

The mouse thing is NOT being resolved. The current way of dealing with the problem is by moving things I know he likes. You know, because then he’ll have trouble finding them as he scurries in the night? I’m less than convinced, but it’s the best advice I’ve gotten so far, and it seems to work a bit. I was also told to leave the lights on all night (so thrilled that I actually have lights!). This does NOT work (not that I’ve tried) because I once came back from the shower to find the little bugger (and I mean little) sitting calmly in the well-lit room. He’d found my spaghetti reserve, had pulled the noodles out of the package, and was nibbling away. No joke. So I have to move that stuff around too (I’d already found the bites he’d taken out of my tomatoes). Only this morning I found the relocated spaghetti pulled out and with slightly weathered ends. Oh no he did not. Unhappy. And he’s too small for me to realistically catch him. The only solution I see is a new cat in the neighborhood. Please. . . . I don’t enjoy messing up my house every night simply to confuse a little mouse.

On a minor note, the cockroaches are getting OUT of control. Before they just kind of chilled in the shower. You turned the light on, let them scatter, and took your shower by yourself. But now. They’re trying to migrate into my house. Aka my bedroom, because it IS only ONE room. And they don’t just hide in the corners, as I’m pretty sure they did before. They fly. Yeah, I know—I didn’t realize they could fly either. They fly and are ginormous and way too close to my sleeping area. That’s all.

A couple quick updates: I got new bed things, so now my entire room is coordinated. No I’m serious, it’s incredible. Blue, green, and brown everywhere. It’s so nature. In any case, I’ll try to get some pictures out there. Then you will see just how cozy my home is. And there’s a new volunteer who lives near me. His name is Andrew and he’s cool. I think we’ll end up hanging out a lot while he’s here (well, once a month—but we’ll thoroughly enjoy it!). It’s fun having another white person around—and it’s always lucky when you happen to get along well with them!

It’s funny, because in Minnesota, school didn’t get canceled for ANYTHING. No amount of snow could stop our education. At most, it’d get delayed to give the plows time to do their work. And then at Duke, I definitely got a snow day or two my freshman year. A snow day. Because of an inch of snow.

Well I do not have school today—and possibly won’t for most of the week—because it’s a cyclone day! I guess a lovely cyclone by the name of Fanele will be visiting Morondava this evening (around 5 or 6 I’m told)—coming from the Mozambique Channel. It’s kind of cozy (even if I can’t watch a marathon of movies and random things like last year, since my DVD player got stolen and I do not yet have access to a computer that reads DVDs). And that explains why it was actually kind of chilly this weekend! Well, by chilly I mean low 80s and I had to wear a t-shirt. Regardless, it gave me an excuse to get all the errands done that I didn’t this weekend because I was too busy making Mexican food with my new neighbor Andrew. Note: I was just now interrupted because my Peace Corps doctor in Tana called to check and see how I was being affected by the cyclone—generally trying to be supportive. So hopefully that will reassure any of you slightly concerned about this. Plus, by the time I post this, it’ll be over (ha).

A quick story esque thing for you before I get to my coffee (with Baileys) and studying (for random things I invent to keep myself busy and learning). My English Club students have at least doubled this year, and lots of them are older, and they are very serious. They want to study every single day after school (which I’ve given them), and they’ve chosen days for pronunciation and conversation (the rest are grammar). It’s really cute and I’m hoping they become much better and actually speak English. They once asked me questions for like 45 minutes before class began. Straight up vocab and pronunciation—curiosity I guess you could say. It was great.

But so one week we did little interviews of each other. It was mostly a way to get them talking. Two amusing things that came of it. First, there’s a girl who’s very very good at English and generally smart (the proviseur’s neice, can you tell?)—actually, she’s one of my closest friends here—along with the proviseur and the Catholic priest. She’s 13. But so my proviseur and I discuss ALL the time how we need to guard this girl and keep her away from boys, because her friend got pregnant and if she gets pregnant, her dreams of being a journalist or singer will be destroyed. And it’s risky because she’s very pretty and already almost as tall as me—and she likes playing basketball, but is one of the only girls out there with the boys doing it. In any case, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this.

So this girl was being interviewed, and the questions (and her responses) went something like this (note: each question was asked by a different boy):

Q. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
A. “No.”
Q. “What abide you?” (read: Where do you live?)
A. “Ampasifasy.” (our neighborhood)
Q. “Will you go with me tomorrow?”
A. “No—I learn my lesson and watch the TV at my home.”
Q. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
A. “Because I don’t like the men.”
(to which they got excited, thinking she was saying she was a lesbian—so I calmed them by saying “because boys are naughty” which is unfortunately too true here)
Q. “Why are you so kind?”
A. “I don’t know.”

We’re hoping this will keep her nice and protected for a while. Hopefully she will continue not liking the men for most of her adult life, or at least until she has a job of her own and can’t get tricked into making babies for years and years.

And finally, a couple questions that made me smile. I’ll include their translations.

“You water yet in the bed?”
(translation: “Do you still wet the bed?”)

“You are growing, my lord?”
(translation: “Do you believe in God?”)

Clearly we still have a long way to go. Thank goodness English Club is every day. . . .

POST CYCLONE.

I changed my mind. I forgot what cyclones are like DURING the cyclones. My kabone (already in bad condition) got the roof ripped off and is now at a slant. Part of my house’s roof came off too. Meaning I spent the night NOT sleeping, moving things in the house around to keep them from getting soaked (including myself and my bed). I listened to what sounded like huge waves crashing—only it was rain and it was crashing into my house (I almost wrote my face—ridiculous). It was rather creepy—I honestly didn’t know if my house was going to make it. In any case, while pre-cyclone days are kind of fun, actually cyclones are kind of scary, and post-cyclone days are spent cleaning up the mess. FYI.