Monday, April 21, 2008

Rain Rain

First weekend at my site without all the students staying at the house.

Saturday my host mom left me alone in the house almost the entire day. This is quite a change from not leaving me alone for five minutes. While trying to cook dinner, I managed to blow a fuse and shut off all the power to the house. Apparently my host mom has good reason to not leave me alone. I was able to solve the problem though but was then too afraid to try and cook again. Luckily, we have a microwave, and I was able to have something to eat.

Sunday was my first laundry day since moving to site. I had about three weeks worth of laundry saved up. My arms are sore now. I was dressed in my worst clothes because I wanted to wash all my other clothes. My host mom was catering an event and she wanted me to go with her, which to told me after I had all my clothes wet and hanging on the line so I had to wear what I was wearing to do laundry. It was a budget meeting for the municipality in which the whole village was invited to attend. I was the only girl not wearing a skirt, not that it was the only reason I stood out. My host mom is a very good cook, I got to eat some of the food before the big meal. Clouds were looming the entire day and I was concerned about all my wash, i.e. all the clothes I own, out on the line. I managed to get home just as it started pouring and rescue the clothes. I don’t have anywhere to put clothes yet so I am still living out of my bags. I managed to take everything and spread it around the floor. So now I am unpacked but everything is on the floor. It rained all night and is still raining now. The temperature has dropped and I am now wearing all the warm clothes that I brought to South Africa. It is about 60 degrees and all the little children were dressed for a blizzard, hats, scarves, winter coats.

2 comments:

Peddie said...

You are so clever and funny... I love your posts, Becky. Way to wash the clothes in the rain! Haha... these stories are awesome.

Anonymous said...

LOL...you are becoming quite the cook :-) Your story about the clothes line and rain brought back fond memories of my summers with my grandmother in Jamaica. I got in trouble more than once for not getting the clothes off the line before the rain.

BTW, can you get "care packages" ? What do you need? Email me.