June 18^th 2007 7:30 am

This was my first morning at the house. The stupid scrawny cat named Suti woke me up with its yowling.

Erin (who is a peace corps volunteer who is assigned to VOLSET too) came by and we got to meet her.

I haven’t seen any huge cockroaches which I am excited about.

Last night we had electricity (from a generator)

June 18th 2007 Ntenjeru 7:00pm

I just took a shower, and used the latrine. In the latrine there was a ginourmous gecko just hanging out on the wall and watching me go pee.
My shower consisted of a bucket and two jerry cans (one cold, one boiling-and I do mean literally still boiling) water. I had to mix the two waters to a tolerable level and then juggle between pouring it on myself and lathering up and washing off. There also has to be enough water for everyone else in the house too, so you can't use that much either. It is an art.

I also used my shower time to wash my underwear (the girls will wash my other clothing, but it is inappropriate for them to do any "underthings"). I guess I didn't believe my mom when she said it was UBER concentrated soap that she got me, and I ended up putting way too much on and will probably have soapy underwear for the next 3 weeks (which might be a good thing considering I have yet to master the eastern style toilet...don't ask).

Today was a good but super long day. Everything takes time here and time passes very slowly.
Joe, Erin, and I went into Mokono early this morning (8:30ish-it takes an hour from Ntenjeru) and took the "taxi" there (a taxi is really just a glorified VW van). It was my first experience in real African transportation.

It was okay, and actually kind of fun-minus the driving and the smell. If the African version of driving doesn't kill you, the smell will.
I had to learn how to breathe through my mouth without smelling (which is a lot more difficult than it sounds) it is kinda like when you are yawning (the only side effect is that it induces a lot of yawns..).

I literally had to cover my eyes on several occasions because I was afraid we were going to hit the masses of people walking on the road. At some points it seemed they were driving directly towards people like they were targets.

We stopped several times along the way to pick up and drop off people. In the towns we passed through we stopped completely and waited until the taxi filled up (which can take quite some time, I am getting many lessons in patience here). And the taxis get FULL. On the way home I counted 26 PEOPLE (only 3 of those were babies). I couldn't believe it, even with my own eyes. I have no idea how they managed to fit that many people in. Apparently, this too is an art.

In town we used the internet cafes, had lunch, and met a bunch of other GVN volunteers at the house.

I am out of day light though and can't really see the paper anymore, so I'll stop for the night (no electricity kinda limits the extent of activities you can do, and they are already spars to begin with).