With a little help from Orange...

A quick word that I’ll upload when I can about my first day at site.  This is a small village.  It’s about 450 people, 3k down a sand road from a small town on the national highway. It’s all sand, but like my beloved Mboro has a surprising amount of foliage.  So, frankly, it’s beautiful. And it’s hot.  Yesterday I tried to take a nap, but was woken every few minutes by either the grossness of the sweat completely covering my body and the feeling that I was baking alive, or by the grossness of the flies that seemed to think my sweat was a tasty marinate for my baking flesh.  Today I’m going to try spending those extremely hot parts of the day being social by lying under a tree with people. Less hot there because you can at least feel the breeze.

The people here are wonderfully kind, and threw a second party for the day of my arrival, as I had missed the one they threw a day prematurely…  No one seemed at all upset. They just wanted to know if I enjoyed their hospitality. 

A present on my first night: I made my bed after sweeping thoroughly, to dispel the mistaken assumption of a large number of ants that this was, in fact, their room.  I laid out my yoga mat alongside my bed as a substitute for carpeting or a floor mat. Right before I got in bed I removed my shoes, stepped onto my mat, and barely noticed in time that something was seriously amiss. Just next to my foot was what looked like a spaghetti noodle covered in pepper.  But the pepper was moving.  And so was the noodle, albeit slowly… Upon further inspection I realized that this was actually a centipede being eaten by a gang of ants. What a treat, on my first night, to have this happen less than a foot from where my head would be! I thoroughly squashed everyone in this little party, turned my yoga mat over to deal with the mess later (like, today, soon probably), and thanked god for the cocoon like comfort of my mosquito net.