I am slightly ambivalent as to whether or not i should begin this post with a positive energy or, get the negative energy out of the way.  It maybe better to just get the bad stuff out of the way and finish up strong with the positivity–which always prevails.

December was a horrible month. During the month of December I had to deal with two deaths and being away from my family for the holidays.  On December 17, I got  a call from my neighbor saying that their baby had just died. I think its necessary to give just a little background to this story. I’m very close to my next door neighbors. So close, that when one of the women on the compound gave birth to a baby boy back in October, they wanted me to help deliver the baby (which I didn’t do, but would have had I not been getting money out of the Post). They said that had the baby been a girl, they would have named her after me. And thus, as a side joke we would call him my baby because of all the time I spent with him. This should paint the faintest picture of my relationship to this infant.

While at my IST (In-service training), as I said before, I got the call that he had passed away. As I’m sure you can imagine, it was a rather difficult phone call to digest; particularly because I’d never really dealt with any kind of call like that. I biked 15km back to village the following day to see and pay my respects to the family. I would have to say the hardest part of the whole event was seeing the mother. She is only 18  0r 19; and he was her first child. Not to mention, this all happened 5 days before his two month birthday and about a week before Christmas. I will refrain from truly delving into the matter and all of the details simply because the thought of it all over again is making me rather sad again. After paying my respects, I went back to IST for two days before getting a call that my puppy had died. I was really exhausted at that point. When they said that this would be the hardest job I ever loved, I didn’t believe it. I though, like all other things that I encounter, this whole Peace Corps thing would not be as difficult as everyone has made it out to be. As a result, the month of December was a very humbling one.

I have obviously truncated much of the detail and emotions for the sake of brevity, and; not wanting to evoke a certain air of “woe is me” or pity. I just promised to allow many  of my family and friends to live vicariously through me; and so I use this blog as a medium.

On a brighter note, I have been able to get a lot accomplished in village! I have a lot of projects underway. The first group of women….the ones who took forever to show up to the meetings…well, they fell through and really weren’t motivated. But, there are two other groups of women who live in satellite villages that are extremely motivated to work with me on various projects. As a result, I’ve already had a soap making session with one of the women groups that turned out really well. I’m also about to start working on a garden at the primary school.  The garden will be taken care of by the children….this way I can teach them about nutrition, hygiene and gardening all at the same time. I will actually be posting on this school-garden-topic again this week because it’s a project that I would like to extend to some of you in the U.S. But I won’t get into that just yet….. The month of February is going to be flooded with development projects. And I will say, it’s moments like these that make the whole month of December seem all the more bearable.

I have to go. To my friends and family….you can’t even begin to imagine how much I love and miss you all!! I promise to post again this week. Until then,

Peace, Blessings and Poetry

Song: Don’t Let Me Down- The Beatles