Fish Heads and Pig Snouts!

I've now tried fish heads and pig snouts. The fish head was fried, I fried it, and complete with eyes. It was by far the best part of the fish, but scary to eat. The pig snout I didn't know I was eating, until afterwards and I was telling my host mom I enjoyed it. I told my peace corps friends that after we are in our own places, I'll fry up some flying fish for them, but only if they eat the heads.

Other than interesting food, I'm going to try to address some questions I've been getting a lot of in emails. First of all I do have a cell phone! I just got it today, incoming calls are free for me, but outgoing calls are really expensive. I guess that's what skype is good for.

I did finally make it to the beach, a beautiful beach with a cemetery on the other side of it, rather strange, but it was easy for all of us to get to. I went with most of the other trainees after we went to the saturday market. It was a nice lazy day complete with my favorite local drink lemon shandy, a mix of beer and lemonaid.

As for more information about where I live and the conditions I live in, well I basically live in the rich part of a farming community that is pretty poor. It is about a 15 min drive from the nearest beach, but its a beach you would not swim in because people in the village use the ocean as a toilet. As for the closest good beach I'm not really sure. The island is pretty small, and if I had a car it would be really easy to get to a lot of beaches, but having to use the bus makes it more time consuming to get to some of the better beaches I know about. If you walk around the "neighborhood" you'll see a wide range of things: rum shops, shack house, nice houses, field after field of banana trees, a lumbar yard, a police station, but mostly plants growing.

As for my current house, I'm in a 3 bedroom place with my own room and bathroom. Peace Corps requires that I have my own room, which really makes sense for what I'm here for. I think it would really hard to be effective if I was sharing a room, because I really need time to process everything I do. Even when I'm just relaxing I'm learning and working, so the only time I really relax is when I'm alone. It did initially make me feel really awkward though because here I am with my own room, while my three host sisters and host nephew share a room. We have wireless in my host families home, and when I move out I want to get Internet because I really need it for research purposes. Additionally if I want to use skype it would be really hard to speak freely anywhere else because my every action is being watched, partially because I'm an outsider, partially because I am one of 2 white people in the valley, and because everybody is watched closely.

It seems that at the end of training I will be moving across the street to a two bedroom place, I haven't seen it but my host mom says its nice, and if that doesn't work I know of other options...the peace corps takes care of the logistics I just move in.

So far I've had running water whenever I need it, but am told that it is normal to not have water for a while. Sometimes you don't have water because its too dry, it floods, or something blocks up the tank. The mosquitoes haven't been too bad, I've managed only to get a little sunburn, I'm managing with cold showers (they're only bad in the morning when you don't want to be up and the sun hasn't warmed the water at all), and I'm loving not having AC.

Things are going really well so far, my primary school kids make me feel so loved, the secondary school kids make me use my mind, and my peace corps people keep me sane and balanced. Bon swe!!! Thank you for all the emails I really do appreciate them even if I don't respond to all of them, I love hearing about everything that's happening!!