Living in a Maize Field

I have no idea how a place can have such consistently beautiful sunsets, amazing clouds, wispy colors floating in the sky, but here they are. Makotse, my village, is a beautiful town. Not take-your-breath-away gorgeous, but reddish-brown dirt roads, rocky foothills in the distance, gardens everywhere and big blue skies. Just yesterday I realized why I kept thinking of the beach whenever I walked out of my house. Basically, the air is so fresh and clean, one of the few places in the US that has such fresh air is the ocean. Plus, the elementary school teachers use whistles just like lifeguards.

Let's see, I've been here a little over a month and am still settling in. I have been gone almost every weekend, and last week I was at training for the incoming volunteers, but I like it here. It feels like home. I have a house to myself, rare for volunteers, but it suits me well. I'm living in the old office of Makotse Women's Club, the NGO where I'm volunteering. In fact, the backdrop for my living room is a big hand-painted banner that reads "Makotse Womens Club Empower and Develop our Community With Pride" and my "rooms" are actually makeshift cubicle walls. But it's a fabulous set-up. I live right next door to the founder, Ma Mello, who owns this land. When I first moved here, the land was being used as cow pasture, which meant that the flies were insane until all the cow patties dried up. Now, they plowed the land and planted maize. It's up to my knees now and starting to grow over the path to my pit toilet.

So, even though I feel like I'm not here that often, I'm happy to be here and content. I have to catch myself not to stress myself out with all of my ridiculously high standards and what I "should" be doing here, but that's just me. Makotse Women's Club (heretofore known as MWC) is a great good of hard-working women, well-organized and dedicated to the work. After living through and hearing horror stories of corruption, lack of motivation, and pettiness, I'm lucky to be with MWC. And I get to do cool stuff for an NGO-geek like me. Currently, I'm helping with the strategic planning implementation (they have a strategic plan! Non-profits in the US don't even have those!), a fund-raising strategy, development of their training center, and various typing projects. A new priority is to get them to be faster typers so they don't automatically look to me for that. If my mom comes to the center with her 90+ wpm, they might just explode! They're just impressed that I don't have to look at my fingers.

It's odd. I'm finally where I'll spend the remaining of my Peace Corps time (barring those wacky unforeseeable circumstances), and the situation was almost exactly as I hoped it would be: rural village, fabulous woman's organization, internet access through my cell phone and a place of my own, cooking my own food while gently exposed to traditional food (if you ever wondered where the chicken feet and chicken heads go, I think they're deposited at Makotse for stew. Not so easy to eat, those chicken feet). Things I didn't imagine were the cows jogging through the streets at sunset, their bells jingling as they go. A much nicer alternative to sitting in rush hour traffic on the Beltway. And the butterflies that swarm the puddles by the pumps. They look like yellow and white flowers growing out of the mud until you get close, then the flutter away for a minute and go right back to drinking (or whatever they're doing).

My goodness, this entry is much too positive. And I'm not making anything up just to feel better! Fortunately, since this is life, everything is subject to change. Check back later for the next installment. Ya never know what it'll be!