Fairy Tale Memories

I am living in a fairy tale.

I would love to write about all the things I've seen and done this week, but it would take several hours of typing just to communicate it all. The Mutomboko ceremony was Friday and Saturday. Zeger (a Belgian volunteer) and I went to pretty much all of it, and Timmy, Troy, and Jasmine joined us for the running with the chief. There was traditional singing and dancing, several different ceremonies, thousands of loud drunk people, a goat sacrifice, a few minor injuries, and more memories than one person could ever possibly remember.

We worked a little, too. Thursday evening we went to organize and inventory the clinic.  Before we could put the medicine on the shelves, we had to clear the dust off. But then there was dust on the floor. When we tried to sweep it up, it coated the walls. Finally, we  pulled everything out of the clinic and scrubbed the African dirt off of it. The linoleum was covering an impressive amount of termite leftovers, so we ended up yanking it up, bleaching everything from the ceiling down, and then putting it all back together again. What started as a 30-min tidying chore morphed into multi-day renovating escapade: the window needed a curtain, the door to the pharmacy won't close, the doorframe of the clinic has a busted piece, and the bed broke a few weeks ago when Zeger and I sat on it at the same time with Jessie. 

After four days of work, the pharmacy still needs inventoried. The bed is almost done, and we need to clean up the mess created by painting and drilling, but for the most part the room looks really nice.  I had a really great time doing it-- it gave me something to obsess over for a few days.


In other news, I have a pig skull! The Morrows roasted a pig (and by roasted I mean dug a giant hole, lit a massive fire, wrapped a pig in a piece of cloth and buried it for 24 hours-- it tasted like heaven) and Amy held back the skull, bones, and major organs for me so I can do anatomy lessons with the kids. I felt like a kid at Christmas. We're going to cover it all tomorrow.

There are a thousand other things I want to do this week too. I'm dying to make a solar system model with the kids. We need to make thank you cards for the volunteers who just left. We taught the kinders how to jig (courtesy of the Belgian) last week, and I really want to do it with them again. One of the Texas volunteers, Sarah, brought a bunch of super fun science stuff for the kids, and I definitely want to make the volcano erupt with the kinders.  Beyond school, I'm also hoping to find some time to just hang out with the Morrow kids. We haven't really had time for that since the volunteers left.

I simply cannot believe that in just four days I will be leaving this paradise. I love this. I was made for this. I truly could not be happier. A friend told me to take pictures for others and memories for myself. I think I've made plenty of both.