Rainy Season

It is rainy season here. Usually it lasts from mid-May until the end of August. Last summer I was here too and it rained, but there was not nearly as much rain as there has been this year. I think that over the past month there have maybe been two clear days; that is until this week. The rain has finally started to clear out some, and that means that I'm getting to go outside more. The rain really does change life out here. Back in the U.S. if it rains you just get in your car and deal with it. It might slow you down some and may inconvenience you some, but the rain isn't all that big of a thing. Here everyone has bikes or walks and all social activity is done outside. So when it rains here it really changes my day to day life. This past month it has been hard to connect with people, play basketball and go out to villages.

The rain cleared out on Monday though and I've been able to go to several villages this past week. Monday I went out to the south end of town to fertilize some corn with a couple of friends. I think that field is cursed. We planted it about a month and a half ago and it poured down rain the entire time we were out there. So when we went back on Monday the skies were clear and we left all of our rain gear in the truck. About halfway through fertilizing the field the clouds came rolling down the ridge (which we were right under). My friend ran back to the car to grab the rain gear, but it was raining when he was only 2/3 of the way there. I got soaked and spent the next couple of hours soaking wet.

Monday was the last rainy day here though. Tuesday I spent the entire day with friends out in the village. We had a great time getting to catch up with some people out there. I also went out yesterday too. My next big project for this upcoming semester is to try and find a location and set up an ag training center for locals here. It will be a place where we can have a few classrooms, land to try out new farming techniques and some places to raise pigs and other animals. Ideally we'll be able to bring locals in, train them, and then send them back out to their villages. So my roommate and I have been going out once a week specifically to talk to people to see if we can find some land to rent. We were out doing that yesterday and my roommate got a phone call from a friend in his class. His friend's family owns a big orphanage out here and he wanted us to come out and do some things with the kids for a few hours. It was a lot of fun and there are about three hundred kids there. They are wanting me to come back and teach basketball once every few weeks, so I think I might be spending a little more time out there. I'm sure I'll get some good pictures over the next few months from being out there.

Way Out in the Village

So random story for the past couple of weeks:

I was out yesterday with a friend and we were scoping out a fairly remote village. The last time that I know anyone had even been out that direction was 2001, and that was basically just to plot it on the map so we know it exists. Actually as far as anyone had ever been was the larger village, and we went about two hours further than that. We did stop in the larger village for lunch on our trip out though. When we stopped for lunch we got out of the truck and immediately these two local guys came up and wanted to talk to us. We kind of figured that since we were so far out they were just amazed to see white people, but it turns out one of the guys was on his way home from college. He had been staying in the city I live in for a few days with his aunt and was just now heading back to see his family for a month. It also turns out that he spoke good English, which also never happens out in the village. So when we met this guy he started talking to us, mentioned that he was going to the same village we were going to and asked if we could give him a ride so he could practice his English. So we said sure and took him to lunch before hitting the road.

While we were at lunch we started talking and it turns out that his aunt lives in a house right behind my apartment complex. I told him that he should come over the next time that he is in town, and he said that he likes to go to my apartment complex to play basketball. He said, "I went there a couple of days ago and there was this foreigner playing basketball." Since I'm one of two foreigners in my apartment complex (and the other one wasn't playing basketball that day) I filled him in that was me. He was pretty amazed. I told him that maybe it was a divine appointment.

The rest of the day out was good. It was a couple more hours out to his village. We had some great conversations along the way. He also lives next to an ancient stone village built into the side of the mountain. It is supposedly a big tourist attraction, but after having been there I've realized that it is WAY too far out of the way for anyone to go to. We went to see it and it took a five hour drive (two of which were on dirt mountain roads) and then another half hour to hike down to the village because there was no road. It was kind of interesting but I think if I'd had been going out there just to see it I'd have been VERY disappointed after the long ride.

My friend wanted us to spend the night with him (which we almost had to do because it was getting so late), but since we had things to do today back in town we needed to leave. He has my number and knows where I live so hopefully we'll get together and play some basketball this next month when he is heading back to school.