“The Peace Corps Experience”

…is it waking up at 6am on a Saturday to bushwhack with my 7-year-old neighbors?

I am pleased to report that after a year, I am slightly more coordinated with my bushknife than they are with theirs. Although they’re still much more efficient garden clearers. We’re clearing a big bush area between my house and the field to plant stuff in. The current problem is it’s been raining, so we’ve cut all this crap and it’s just sitting there rotting when ideally it should be drying out in the sun so we can burn it. Oh well, sun just came out. Maybe by Monday it’ll be good?

…or is it having three little girls help you shampoo your waist-length hair in a creek?

We went swimming in the creek to wash off from our gardening. I felt kind of like a mom; I took my laundry with me and was washing it while they were just having a grand old time splashing. I finally made them go splash downstream because they were stirring up mud in my wash water. But they came back when my hair came out of the braids. I gave them each a drop of shampoo so they could wash their hair too.

…or it could be the young man who’s romanically interested in me who showed up on my doorstep with a giant piece of fried tuna he caught himself on a recent trip home to the Torres…

It was actually painfully cute. He’s already discussed me with Nicole, and I have passed back the message (through Nicole of course, we would never directly communicate) that while he’s a very nice guy, I don’t plan on dating here. Maybe he was trying to salvage some dignity after my rejection? Or maybe still trying to woo me? At any rate, there’s lunch AND dinner taken care of (lunch tomorrow too if I had a fridge).

…or was it attempting conversation with a yachtie who only speaks Italian?

We may be a small island where up to 15-20 different languages are spoken on a given day… but Italian is not one of them.

Sometimes I just shake my head and think, Yes, this really is my life.

(And yes, all these things have happened today. And it’s only 2pm. What’s next??)