Friday, March 12, 2010

Just Some Stories

Just Some Stories
Many of the volunteers have been eating fish. I definitely have not. They don’t chop off the heads here. They jus t serve them whole. No thank you. Anyway, a lot of the volunteers have been commenting on the size of the fish. Well we got an explanation as to why the fish are so big here right now… last November there were really bad storms here. Hundreds died inland and near the coast. Well in a developing nation someone apparently thought it was a good idea to put the bodies in the sea. That being said, the fish had more than enough food and they are now VERY big because of it. So more or less the volunteers who are eating fish are also eating human.


During the first week I remember people talking at lunch about their diarrhea and I couldn’t believe they were talking about that over lunch… and I said something to them and a staff member just laughed and said “Sam…get used to it… this will be your dinner conversation in a couple of weeks.” Well she was right. We talk about it; we tell each other were going to the bathroom before we go… we discuss it after. And it’s all normal. Today we were lucky enough to get a ride home back to our village because one of the other volunteers in a nearby village broke her toes and she doesn’t want to take the bus.. so we all get a ride. It’s actually really nice when you don’t have to take the bus. Anyway, our conversation was all over the place, but at one point it started from the rats in Emily’s house last night who ate through the rope that holds her mosquito net up causing her to have to turn on her flash light though out the night to scare them… none of us were phased and neither was she. Then Jordan shared about the tarantulas in her bathroom and her bedroom. Again, none of us were phased. I then said out loud… isn’t this weird that none of us even thinks it’s strange that any of this is happening.

Last night I realized that not one of my family members except for my sister is able to read. I have 3 brothers and a sister and of course the mom and the dad. The two older brothers are 22 and 24. They both left school after 6th grade. Which I have come to find out is not out of the ordinary. I asked my mom about why they did that and she just shrugged her shoulders and said they aren’t students. I was shocked that in this day and age a 22 and 24 year old can’t read. A lot of the neighborhood boys come to my house at night and ask my sister to read magazine articles to them if it is accompanied with an interesting picture.

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