I really love my site, and even though the pace is slow, I’m starting to have successes at work. There are still lots of ups and downs, but overall I’m happy in Macia and with what I hope to achieve here. In particular, I love my dependencia and my host family. I entertain their children and send over a lot of baked goods. They took me to a wedding, and during a recent power outage, brought over a thermos of hot water for tea in the morning and a tray of beans and xima for dinner since they know I cook with an electric stove.
Kids
The majority of my friends at site are children, and I love it. My host family’s kids are always excited when I return from a trip, and they are constantly over my house to color or dance to Michael Jackson while wearing my giant shoes (see picture). And they love me too, although recently perhaps a little too much. During a game of animal bingo, an 8-year-old neighbor told me I was pretty and winked at me. My 9-year-old host brother gave my left boob a quick squeeze and then later that week said I was his woman. He looked so guilty after the former and it was such a surprise that all I could do was laugh. However, when a few weeks later all the kids started smacking my butt (or lack thereof) and telling me I looked like a vovo (grandmother) because I didn’t have a butt, it was time to have a discussion about private places. Since then, they’ve been keeping it PG, literally. We rolled out a straw mat on my kitchen floor and watched The Lion King on my computer one night; they loved it, and we watched it again the next night. And then Finding Nemo the following night. (Even though the movies are in English the kids can generally follow along and I give the older ones plot updates in Portuguese.)
Children’s Day on June 1st was also a lot of fun. The girls in my REDES group (youth group for teen girls) had collected money from their class and came over to bake 3 cakes for their celebration. The kids joined them while the cakes were baking and we played games, ate pasta salad, and danced. The REDES girls have since baked another cake at my house (chocolate this time), and the kids have formed their own group. For their first activity, we made peanut butter from scratch, which turned out really good but took nearly 3 hours of roasting the peanuts, removing the paper, and hand-grinding with a pilão (giant wooden mortar and pestle).
Simba
After I was gone for a week due to a conference, Simba was downright adorable when I returned, running over to greet me and cuddling with me in bed for hours. After being gone for a long weekend due to a meeting shortly after that, she had had enough. She started living in the family’s cozinha (shed used for cooking) and adopted Casstilio, the son in charge of feeding her while I’m away, as her surrogate parent. She was living the life, killing 3 rats in the 4 days I was gone, and even after I returned, she would run to greet Casstilio when he got back from school every day. Message received, Simba; your love is a privilege not a right.
All of the rat hunting finally caught up, however, and Simba had a bad case of worms. The agricultural clinic in town only gives rabies shots, but they wrote down the name of a deworming medicine and sent me to the pharmacy with the instructions to pretend I was buying it for a child. The pharmacist totally knew I was full of shit (“how old is the child?” me: “pequenino? (very little)” “how many years?” me: “ummm… two?”), but he sold it to me anyway. The agricultural clinic had told me to put a small piece of a pill in Simba’s mouth rather than putting it in her food, and with one of the kids holding her by the scruff, we forced it down her throat. After the serious cold shoulder she had been giving me, I thought Megba/Simgan might be over forever, but luckily she’s back to being healthy and my friend.
Work
Like I said above, work is going slowly, but at least it’s going. Since my last update, I led a two hour training on monitoring and evaluation for AJAAB as well as a series of short organizational development workshops. We’ve written a mission and vision, and are currently in the process of designing home visits for the families of escolinha (preschool) students. Additionally, an activista from Associação Cristã and I attended a weeklong Peace Corps conference for activistas that included two days of medicinal plant training. She and I are currently in the process of planning a two day training for all of our organization’s activistas at the end of this month, covering topics related to HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, nutrition, diarrhea, hygiene, and orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). Thus, even though work is sporadic, I am definitely making some progress.
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