Letter #11, November 2001,

Dear Mom and Dad,

Two days after I talked to you and said no packages had arrived, I went to the post office and found 5 there for me -- the books and UN fabric and bambara cards, plus treats and a book of outhouses from GG. and GG., and a Halloween box from Pat. Needless to say, I was extremely psyched. I immediately tore into the food and shared the jerky and M & Ms with Matt and Adam, the 3rd year volunteers. I'm now reading Allah n'est pas obligé, which is GREAT! Super! It should be assigned in all Francophone Lit classes. It's funny and ironic and the tone of the writing is just so direct and frank. Here's the 1st paragraph:

"Je decide le titre definitif et complet de mon blablabla est 'Allah n'est pas obligé d'être juste dans toutes ses choses ici-bas.' Voila. Je commence à conter mes salades." Which is, roughly: I decide that the complete and definitive title of my blablabla is 'Allah isn't obligated to be fair in all his doings down here.' Voila. I begin my bullshit."

Grandma and Grandpa asked for a definitive list of good things to send. I will eat anything, so don't feel limited, but I'll try to make it easier for ya'll. Quaker and Nature Valley granola bars, 'fun size' candy (esp. M & Ms, Snickers, Butterfinger, Reeses, Pay Day, anything really), trail mix, bags of granola, dried fruit, jerky (the Oberto stuff was great!), elit and Luna bars, taco seasonings, ethnic seasonings (thai, etc.), cinnamon, batteries, seeds for my garden. Don't send jelly beans or gummi candy or licorice. Hard fruit, or caramel candy is fine. I could use stuff to put on my walls -- maps, calendars, post cards, photos, drawings.

The mango tree has been giving for a few weeks but tonight they're falling off every 5 minutes -- swish-swish thunk - thunk - roll, as it falls through the leaves and hits the hill. Slope, really. OK, uneven ground. I am wearing my UN pants, that our friend Seydou the amazing Senegalese tailor made. He threw in an extra pair of pants, green ones, for free. Would a Gabonese do that? No -- because a) Gabonese don't make anything to sell and b) they're not as nice. I'm not gonna let him get away with being nice, I'm gonna figure out a way to pay him, because I know he doesn't eat 3 x a day. Soon, in a couple days, it'll be Ramadan, but he was saying to Abdoullaye that Karem had already started - you eat today, you eat tomorrow, but you don't know if the day after you'll eat or not.

(Also Kool-Aid and other drink mixes are good. And if you send stuff in baggies like dried fruit or trail mix or granola, it's good to double bag it. Things are kinda beat up by the time they get here.)

11-23 - Well, Thanksgiving was yesterday, and the plan had been to go to Mayumba to see Pete and the ocean, but of course, this being Africa, things turned out differently. A week before I was begged by the 1-e students (juniors) to take their English class. I'd had a bad day with the 5-e's, and a class of 9 smart ineterested students that could discuss in English was really appealing. I talked to the vice principal and got the class with the intention of dropping the 5-e's after Xmas. I also heard that profs are supposed to talk about AIDS for 10 minutes in each class for a week. I sat in on a bio class (the only bio prof -- he just got here) and was impressed -- he had all the info and a good attitude and I couldn't really add anything. However, talking to other profs, who were nervous about the subject and sex and should we really be telling 7th graders, 12 year olds, about this stuff? -- I thought it would be a good idea to do an animation with the profs -- go over the basics and then have a discussion about how to get the message across and problems with shame and embarrassment, etc. So I went to the censeur with my proposal and he was for it and said how about Thursday the 22nd? Oh, ok. World AIDS Day is Dec. 1 and I wanted to have AIDS stuff leading up to it and so it was really the best day. So, fine. Now I'm teaching 3 classes and doing an animation and no more Thanksgiving on the beach.

I gave a test that I didn't really prepare my students for and prepared the animation and found out the censeur was trying to get everyone in school to come. Ah , ok. So I knew no profes would show up and changed my plan. Mike did drawings and we went over to school and about 15 people were there, 30 by the end, maybe 40. No profs. It went great. We went quickly over the basics and did the condom demo and spent an hour on questions, debunking myths and reinforcing knowledge and talking about talking about sex and condoms and the difficulty of all this, especially the cost (you can buy a loaf of manioc, or 1/2 kilo of bad rice, or 2 loaves of bread, or have sex once). Anyway, I had fun and had good feedback, and felt like I got a lot of info across. A good start.

So that was thanksgiving and we tried to go out for pizza but the truck hadn't come in and there was no cheese or ham or olive oil. So we went to Chez Seydou and I had beef (and tripe!) with rice and Mike had a pea sandwich. And talked about what people at home were doing. Then we got drinks and made a fire on his terrasse and I went home and went to bed. I didn't remember until this morning you both were in South Africa and probably scrounging around for holiday cheer in the same way.

We also made a kitchen shelf and nailed it up. I'm very pleased with it -- Mike's a good carpenter.

So I am absolutely flying to LBV for Xmas and taking a big vacation. Which reminds me that last night I had a dream I went home for vacation, for a week, and was doing internet and eating out and worrying about getting back before vacation days ran out. In the dream I remembered the last dream I had like that and resolved not to let myself forget to get back in time -- weird. I looked up flights in the study on Mom's powerbook (Why not the iMac?)

"Cool Wind Blowing" Djilvan Gasparyan Transplant 3 or I will not be sad... - just heard that on the BBC, you should check it out. Armenian "English Patient" muysic. Also: "Run Cool" Positive Black Soul/Sound? (Senegal) and Gigi from Ethiopia.

Jenny in Mouila came through last week -- she's an EE PCV, in her 2nd year now. We had a long talk about life after PC - whether we're gonna try to keep working abroad and make a life outside the States. It's exciting -- you're always learning and having to adapt and react and understand and it's always changing. And there are things you give up too. People in the FS and development who spoke at the last COS conference for the departing PCVs said they never made a conscious decision not to go back, they went from place to place and realized one day going home was no longer an option. They lost contact with people at home -- one guy said, "yeah, I kept in touch with my mom for the first 10 years..." yikes! Don't worry - even if I never come home I will keep in touch. :) Still -- every success here means more than it would at home, I think. I think I was raised (you raised me) to be a global citizen and be abroad doing things. At home there is routine and comfort and PTA meetings and mortgages and football on Sundays and hockey and newspapers and seasons and cars, but as tempting as all that sounds, it's because it's familiar, expected, the norm, it's comfortable. I think I owe it to myself not to settle down until later. Maybe it won't be possible -- maybe I'll be one of those people who didn't really choose to stay abroad, it just sort of got too late, and too complicated to go back and be normal. Maybe that'll happen and maybe it will be a disappointment and maybe not. Or maybe I'll go home in 20 months and find a job and rediscover my love of office supplies and air conditioning and fluorescent lights and being able to buy "stuff" with express online checkout. Ugh.

Nov. 24 - I'm done grading - that's all I did all day today. My 4-e's are smart and my 5-e's are dumb as posts. Why are you in school when you get 5% on tests? The average is 45%, and that's supposed to be normal. A really good grade is a 75. But of course, in this system you get to go up to the next grade if you get 50% or better. It seems fucked up but maybe I'm just used to grade inflation.

This afternoon the wind started shaking the mango tree and the manioc plantation and I got up to take pictures of everything swaying and rattling. Out my kitchen window I could see the rain arriving, and heard it storm in like a train before I scrambled to shut the windows. Boom! Like a tidal wave, water pouring everywhere for 10 minutes and then suddenly I could hear the radio again. It was great -- a lot of times you can see the rain in the far distance, feathering out of clouds, but this literally was a wall of water moving toward my house, the edge of the cloud clearly defined. I could see the drops even, as they approached. Chikwang woke up and ran out into it and of course came back soaked and muddy. She's a goofball. Yesterday I took her to the carrefour to get some oil and she got distracted by other dogs and lost me in the crowd and ran in circles for a while, eventually going back to the last place she saw me - spooky. She was relieved when I came back and got her.

Nov. 28 - I've been reading - finished Allah n'est pas obligé and White Teeth (excellent, thoughtful, good language, bien-travaillé) and Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (funny, sentimental, hopeful, forgiving, like Oprah). Today was cool (people had coats on!) and I woke up with a Notezine hangover. Saw my 3rd birth, "don't push!" said the sage femme as the kid plopped out like a poop. She couldn't do anything til she had her gloves on so the poor thing just lay there wailing on the table, half on the bedpan we use to catch waters and blood and prop the mama's butts on. His joints were all flexi and dislocated and his skin was slack over his useless baby muscles, reminding me of the fetal pigs we cut up in Advanced Bio in high school. A good looking kid, though, cried well, kicked around. "Why is the skin peeling off his feet and hands?" I asked. "T.V. positif," said la sage. "Syphilis." Oh. Syphilis.

Why don't people get treated here? It is so easy to get rid of this disease. Penicillin! You take it. Your husband takes it. Poof! Gone! Of course, this is Africa, things are not that simple. First, there's not a lot of $. Second, maybe you're ashamed, so you can't ask your husband for $. Or you buy the medicine but only for you and your man gives it to you again. Or, you both get treated and your man goes and gets it from some other woman and there you are, back at square 1. Hopeless! If only I could hijack "the Democrat's"* truck and megaphone and drive around for two years. "STDs are not shameful. Get yourselves treated and use condoms. Wash your hands with soap and water. Eat meat and vegetables with your manioc. Space your births and breastfeed your babies. Give water and food, not Coke and medicine, to kids with diarrhea. And use condoms!"

Actually I could probably do that. But would anybody listen? Sometimes I want to shake people -- "prevention is so much cheaper than medicine!!" But they all want pills and shots.

(*The Democrat is a guy who drives around town badmouthing the prefet with his megaphone. He's running for office now.)

Anyway. That's the news from Lac Bleu. Where all the men are strong, all the women good looking, and the children -- have scabies and schistosomiasis.

I love you,

Hannah