The dreaded, but understandable, question. The problem is that I’m still asking it too; what do I do? I have some ideas of what I hope to do for ‘work’ and I will share those later, but first a little bit about what I actually have spent time doing:
- First, there is a fence. It is quite fun to work on, but I still look forward to the day when I’m not working on the fence but on the garden inside the fence. At first, through a series of miscommunications, my neighbor and I thought we had to build a fence around my house as per Peace Corps policy. So there was a community meeting and workdays set up. No one really came, which turned out for the best because after clarifying with PC, it is now a fence around a future garden rather than a wall around my house shutting me off from neighbors; had people actually showed up when they were supposed to, I would be sitting inside my own fortress right now. Close call.
How is a fence an activity in and of itself?
Well, it involves cutting down and peeling the bark off of many small trees. At first, this was a process that I was welcome to watch. Then it became a semi-participatory process with my neighbors’ kids. Now they are in school and it is a satisfying but lonely process that I do myself. It is still not finished though, I need to find some time to work with a neighbor and get it done (read: I’m going to keep bugging them until they take pity on me and send their small children to help me). Along with the small trees (all eucalyptus, not rainforest trees), there is lots of bamboo splitting involved. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of working with bamboo much, know that it is razor sharp. Keeps it interesting.
- I eat. This takes up a lot of time, luckily. Pounding rice, hauling water, finding somebody willing to sell or give me vegetables; all quite time-consuming.
- I look for bugs in my feet. There are days when this is quite a project, and definitely not my favorite activity.
- Then there is soccer, which is probably my favorite pastime (also, unfortunately, probably the source of many of the bugs in my feet). There is a loosely defined women’s team, which is awesome. I say loosely defined because for ‘practice’ there are generally a couple grownups, many teenagers, a few girls, and an opposition team of young boys. Nevertheless, we take ourselves quite seriously and have our first match this Sunday (if all goes well). Yesterday after practice they took me by surprise when they asked if I would be running with them at 5am the next day. I thought they were joking, but no, it was for real. Kind of. The intention was really there, but the next day one woman’s daughter was sick and the other was still asleep. So the 17 year old, the 10 year old, and I went for a jog.
Despite playing with me twice a week, many of them are still scared of me. Their fear, however, has evolved slightly. Mostly it is limited to post-proximity giggling and commenting on how white, tall, fat and therefore scary I am. But still, there are times when they straight up run away. Still a year and a half to go, so maybe we’ll work through it.
- Meetings. They aren’t my favorite. For a while there it was averaging 3 meetings/week. Way too many. Meetings often go like this: scheduled start, 9am; first people show up, maybe selling bananas, 8:30; 10am meeting leaders/guests arrive; 11am enough people are there to actually get things going; 2pm (possibly) still unresolved issues, but people are too hungry to stay, so the next meeting is scheduled and people go home. There are shorter meetings, for sure, but they are the exception. One upside is that all that listening has helped my listening comprehension immensely (especially since the Gasy style involves lots of repetition of the points being made – if I don’t catch it the first time, by the 3rd or 4th I might).
- Hanging out. I love my neighbors, and I often feel that the majority of my time is spent distracting one person or another from working. This might sound familiar to anyone who lived near me during school. In the mornings I often take a quick tour of town to see who looks distractable that day, and off I go.
- Laundry becomes quite time consuming when it involves a brush and a river rather than a machine. I’ve come to enjoy my laundry time though; it doesn’t take much brain power so I can let my mind wander, but it is accepted as ‘doing something’ by both me and my watchers (yes, there are many).
- Usually I spent about two nights a week in Andasibe, checking in with my partner organization, the other volunteer nearby (she is AWESOME), and staying with a wonderful Gasy family there.
- Crosswords. Thank you Grandmary!
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