September 2nd 2002

Hi Everyone, Things are acceptable here. I had a first mild success. I have after a day of clear blue skies my hot water got hot. It got so hot in fact that when I was doing my dishes that I actually got to mix the cold water with the hot water to get really warm water! I know that it might sound silly but as being a person that for over a month of cooking for myself to have running hot water for the first time did not upset me too much at all. On the other side I am not getting very good radio reception and while other people joke about it I am basically refusing to get a TV. I do kind of regret not getting that "clear channel" radio that is supposed to get really good reception versus the radio that I wind up. You know though a guy would much rather have a wind up radio that can be plugged up with lots of electricity to plug it into than a state of the art radio and no place to plug into.
One of the other volunteers I went and visited has a little square house made of stone with dung walls, a dung floor, and a grass roof with lots of insects and spiders. Her sqauredovel is not even as big as my living room. This kind of really makes feel special to have such a comfortable place to live. For her though as far as I can gather it is the worst place she has ever lived. Once the pest problem is stopped I am sure it can be livable and she should be fine and living in such a place can be a growing experience for her. Some of my feelings on the situation is as a person that has lived out of my car before I don't need anymore "learning experiences" with housing. It seems things are just fine for me in comfortable pest free housing with electricity and running water.
I still haven't started work and am in a after training before work transition still. So far people have been nice and it seems like quite a few of the volunteers are working together to plan parties. I would not of minded having a party but then again I right now am not to worried about it.
My telephone line seems to be up 011-266-2240-1198, but I won't know for sure until someone calls me :-) I also am planning on only checking my e-mail every other day because of the cost.
My garden is coming along. It is still not clear to the exact things that are to be planted. It does seem like it would be right to plant a variety of tomatoes, onions, carrots, peppers, and lettuce. Already in my garden are two rows of some types of spinach and radish. A person that lived here before must of planted these and they just continued to grow. The idea of being able to eat food basically that is growing out in the front lawn is really comforting to me and also might save me some money in the way of having to buy vegetables but there is only so much of these few things that it seems like a person would fancy eating. I am attaching a picture of some kids that use to play soccer. As mentioned before soccer is one of the main parts of the culture here. In the picture the kids and I are standing in the soccer field. As one can see it is a little ruff but that does not matter. I am serious when I say they would borrow the soccer ball from me almost every day and play if they could from early in the morning till it was dark. That field in front of the house became a regular meeting spot for the local kids sometimes five would be playing but often times very many would play. I bought that ball new and after three weeks of daily wear and tear they had completely worn it out. I am not sure if I before this had seen an abused soccer ball that worn out and they managed to do it in a mere three weeks. love, jeff