Four day weekend

I had four whole days stretched out before me with nothing to do due to public holidays and the weekend. My past few weeks in the village, I haven’t wanted to cook anything for the simple reason of not wanting to wash any dishes since I couldn’t really figure out a good method. Since I had many days of nothing to do though, I decided to go ahead and cook. My first attempt was a cheese omelet. I think it turned out well, it tasted like scrambled eggs with cheese which I am not sure is how an omelet is suppose to taste, but good nonetheless. I also cooked mashed potatoes and pasta. I quickly learned that those are the only three things I know how to cook. I need to branch out because none of those options are very healthy.

I spent the rest of my time reading Infinite Jest, a very long book about tennis players and drug addicts. I am really enjoying the book and came across some lines I felt fit the Peace Corps experience as well as they described life in a halfway house fro recovering addicts:

That you do not have to like a person to learn from him or her

That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person

That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them

That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.

That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear

That cockroaches can, up to a point, be lived with.

That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene.

That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it.

Yesterday I did laundry again. I got back at noon from a parent’s meeting at a primary school and even though I knew there would not be enough time for the clothes to dry before it got dark, I decided to go for it anyway. It is not that I don’t like doing laundry, it is just that I don’t think the clothes get very clean the way I do them. My host mom hasn’t made any comments about me wearing dirty clothes yet, so I assume I am doing a passable job. At 6 I had to go take down all my still-wet clothes from the line and then had to get up early to hang them out again.

My host mom had to cater an event on Friday and ended up staying the night there since it was far away. I, subsequently, spent my first night alone since coming to South Africa. I woke up at every noise, which was a lot, but overall, survived the night.