You are all wondering what the village is like, and I don’t really know where to start. People eat with their hands, they cook over woodstoves, families sleep together on mats outside, etc … I was doing the dishes a few days ago near the “kitchen” (the fire where food is cooked) and the 4-year-old girl came up next to me, pulled up her skirt and peed. Then she grabbed a mango slice and ate it. It wasn’t the peeing outside that surprised me, it was peeing in the kitchen.
Things are mostly communal. I was sitting in a telecenter trying to get out of the heat when I set my fan on my lap to drink some water. I shouldn’t have done that because the man sitting next to me assumed I was done and took it for himself. He gave it back eventually.
Today was good. I tried to pitch in with the housework by sweeping the yard. The yard is dirt, so the exercise is about 90 percent self-defeating. Still, I got a lot of mango pits and stray leaves and I think the gesture was appreciated.
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