Life en brousse has swallowed me whole…

It has been a very long time since I’ve updated my blog.

Things have been progressing well, though it seems as though time has been slipping away from me as I try to get all of my projects running smoothly. I constantly find myself wishing that there were at least 3 of me to run around and meet with farmers/eleveurs and another clone to just hang out with some of my favorite people in their outdoor kitchens or at the nearest raffia wine shack. There’s never enough time and after 6 days in row in the field I’m way too wiped out to do anything more than shuffle around my house trying to pound some laundry or attack the never ending pile of dishes I seem to always manage to have. Forcing myself to take a breather is the hardest thing, but most of the time my body forces me to slow down. I get sick and am consequently stuck in my house for 2 days recouperating, all the while feeling like a caged animal with the things I would prefer to be doing rolling around in my head.

Sounds like I’m going crazy, eh?

But not really. I am already having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that I’m going to be leaving this place in December. I want to see my projects through, not necessarily to the end, but to a point where I can pass them along with a sane and steady hand… Time’s short and I am going to have to ween myself away from this place at some point. Just don’t know if the end of the year is the time for me.


Sounds all dandy, but of course there are times when I want to run away screaming… those are usually the times I feel a bout of malaria hitting me, or the 5 moot moot bites that day, or it’s the day I have to take my weekly nauseating dose of notezine. I can stand some of the random derangement now and am numb to some things that used to bother me, it’s just when my physical well being is being attacked from the inside that my defenses go down and I just want to go home and eat some Sapporo ichiban ramen with egg on my parents’ couch.

Small scale in field development is a difficult thing. Most of the people I work with understand why I’m here and what I have to offer, but there’s always someone, every time I go into town, every time I step out of my work orb, I encounter who thinks I’m just here to give out things, be it money, seeds, money, pigs, money, chemical feritilizers, or of course money. Or, really I’m here to find a husband to take back to my mansion in the concrete jungle. I’m exhausted by the neverending explanations/arguments I’m obliged to throw out, now from rote memory. At least I’ve given out a few helpful tutorials on how to approach an asian person… greeting politely in French or English instead of the loud goat like “HEE HAW!” we usually get. If I could only find that fricking singer who decaler’s and decouper’s his way unto my ever increasing hit list.

Here are some things that may surprise you…

Common misconceptions about the United States of America I’ve gathered in my area of Bare-Bakem
-every square meter of land is covered in cement
-it’s connected to or the same thing as Europe
-EVERYONE is rich with a nice house en dure
-everyone is WHITE (generally noone here sees anything other than black and white-which makes me by default white)
-the US was totally uninhabited when Christopher Columbus discovered it
-Americans brought AIDS to Africa (because of the first well documented case in 1981)
-education is generally easier (grade school, high school)
-that if someone here could just get over there, it would be easy to find someone to marry within a few weeks-which may be true, but not within the circles I run with…

These are the subjects of many of my conversations with various people in my village. I do feel relatively good if I do actually get somewhere with it, but after the 100th time discussing the things people have learned either in school or through word of mouth, well, c’est fatiguent. And of course there are those who will not listen to a word I say and will die holding on to their prefered faulty view of the US. So be it. I tried.

Other than combating random stigmas and misinformation, my days consist of zipping around with my favorite mototaxi Carlos (and deftly avoiding his subtle advances), seeking people out in their community fields, transplanting trees, making sure my ladies are weeding their garden, and promoting the sale of seeds to others who are constantly asking me to work with them. Not a bad gig, I must say, though with the frequency I wear myself thin and get sick, I’m not sure if I can continue like this indefinitely. Maybe in a bureau job with field visits (god, am I saying this)… my body and spirit are constantly at war living where I’m living. I am in the field I am basically living where I work (though my living situation is significantly better than most around me). I am surrounded by possibilities for work, but am already stretched too thin. Too much to do and only me to do it for the moment.

So that’s it for now. I'll try to be better about updating this thing...

Yune Lee, PCV Littoral signing out…