Earth Day and other things

Other big news from Titao: The government-run electric company has finally finished their 5-yr long expansion of their power lines from the nearest city 28 miles away and we now have electricity!! Life is pretty good on the grid. It hasn't made a big difference in our lives except that we have street lights on our two main roads and we can finally find yogurt. Who am I trying to kid...yogurt!...it's made a huge difference. The other big arrival that we are constantly reminded of has been the infamous hot season. It seems to be the favorite pasttime of people around town to ask us how we are dealing with the chaleur. Honestly, it's hot, but I was expecting much worse. After months of hearing about the hot season, I was ready for unimaginable awfulness but it's really just a lot of imaginable sweatiness (and I mean A LOT of sweatiness), and the occasionally heat rash in unexpected places.

We are now finishing our first school year - hurray! It's been fun... sometimes. Lately, I've been trying to incorporate the kids' knowledge of American culture into our classes. Last week in Review-Jeopardy, Barack Obama destroyed Eminem, Shakira, and 50 Cent. I also taught the girls club some American dances. Really, they couldn't have found a worse resource for American dance moves...I know nothing. So far we've done the electric slide and the macarena. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know; otherwise, I'll have to bring out the lawnmower and maybe the sprinkler.

We heard the best song on the radio on Easter Sunday. It was set to lounge-type music and the only lyrics of the song were: "Jesus, il est comme ca" (Jesus, he's like that). Enough said, I guess. The kittens are now in their cute phase. Before they were boring and slept all day, and later they will be too big to qualify as "cute" so these are the golden weeks right now.

Yesterday we did our Earth Day tree-planting with the students from our school. We had about 45 students come representing almost every class at our school. The first hour or so was a sensibilisation from our local forestier about the importance of trees, deforestation, littering, etc. and then we had another PCV who lives near us speak about the nutritional and other properties of the trees we were going to plant. Finally, we got to work opening water sachets, packing them with pre-mixed dirt, sand, and manure, and planting the seeds. They planted 1000 sachets with 2 seeds in each sachet just to be safe. The majority of the trees were moringa which are becoming popular here for their use in malnutrition but we also planted some neem seeds that will be transplanted with our moringa trees because they are supposed to keep termites away.

Overall, the tree-planting went pretty well. There were the normal surprises and hiccups: like when our school told us three weeks in advance that there wasn't class Tuesday through Thursday only to tell us the night before that there was class and we needed to change the date for the tree-planting; or when the forestier told us 2 weeks ago he had extra seeds, but then he didn't bring them for the planting so he left to get them, and came back saying he didn't have any. I would still call it a success. Of course, we aren't done yet. Our work for the next month will be planning out the area at the hospital where we will be transplanting the trees, finding people to dig the holes and a way to protect the trees from animals, and teaching the people at the hospital about moringa and how to use it in their malnutrition program.


By the time we finish that, it will be time for a vacation! Tanzania here we come...