Hey yo

Hey guys how's it going, I'm back again with sunny words from the hot side of the globe. That's right, you got it, it's hot as hell here and I had the devil over for an expresso yesterday. Hey, according to most religions I'm going to hell anyway, might as well smooch up the landlord. ;-) FYI, the big horned guy does not like cream in his coffee.

OKAY!
Onward, so what's going on in my neck of the horn of Africa? Many wonderous and stupifying things. You betcha.
Actually there is some good news.
I moved back, fully, into my old house. It's still standing(for now) and I'm so content to just be there and away from prying eyes all the time. I adore my private toilet and shower, I just hum in my hovering as I piss. Good times. My house is, of course, not good as new. I am contending with a well embedded family of lizards living in the eves of the roof that wasn't completly sealed off from outside crevasses. But hey, they don't point and giggle everytime I work out in the morning, and they do a pretty good job at keeping the insect population down, so I'm cool with the lizards.

My asshole major finally left town for another clinic far far away(in the bush) and new one came to replace him. So far, I'm not expecting any miracles, this guy seems pretty nice. Fortunately, he was fully briefed of the problems existing at our clinic due to the previous major(i.e. EVERYBODY in village, except the COGES pres, hated him). Being that he left plenty of evidence of his mismanagement strewn around the Clinic grounds, I didn't have to argue the case too much. For example, last December, the a-hole major decided to build Aline(my counterpart,another nurse at the clinic)a new house, because her old one is falling apart. Using the Health committee's money(same committe who said they couldn't afford to repair my house), he commissioned 10-12,000 mud bricks to be prepared for the building of the house. This cost about 50-75 mille($110-170), alot of money locally. Then in January he recieves notice that he will be leaving. He decides to stop all work being done,(on Aline's house, my house and his new "office building") and leave the several thousand bricks sitting there, blocking paths and being inconvenient. So, he doesn't leave until the 3rd of May, and guess what started in April? It started raining. Alot. Guess what happened to all those mud bricks left out. Well, we now have some really interestingly arranged "hills" surrounding the Clinic. His "office building" is an empty shell with an additional 2,000 cement bricks laying around for the past 5 months too.
If I hadn't of force my hand and had the PeaceCorps Bureau call his boss about losing volunteer in his district then I'd be in another village right now.
So this new chief nurse(major) does actually seem pretty nice. His wife is friendly as can be, and his kids are pretty well behaved(good sign). So we're tentatively starting to work together. I'm letting him know my program and he's not being an asshole, which all I can hope for, for right now.

Not so fun news:
IT's HOT. OMG.
I'm sleeping outdoors and I'm sweating the night away and I wake up with headaches from being so dehydrated. ugh. I've resorted to taking benadryl to enduce coma's to get some rest as I can. It's supposed to let up by the end of this month, so I've got two more weeks of night sweats ahead of me. Don't even get me started on the days. Icky pools of sweat, I'm a puddle.

Other stuff...
People have asked if I've seen some pretty awful things during my tenure here. I have. The more grotesque and unfortunate one's I've chosen not to write on this because, honestly, they would make you cry. There are visions and events that will stay with me. I know I have a written on a few unfortunate scenes already, but the one's left out from this blog are scenes that smack you upside the head and leave you feeling numb for hours or days. The fact that the events I mention happen in a regular fashion here, is what is so hard to take. They happen, I'm shocked, locals aren't and move on swiftly because that's all they can do, and I sit there trying to stifle my tears. By the time I'm alone, I've gotten so used to stifling, that the tears won't come, and I just stare off into space and look for happier thoughts, like the devil coming for expresso.

That's all for now.
Take care
L