1/4 of the Way?

Hard to believe it has already been over two weeks since I left the US and that 1/4 of my trip is already past me. Not a lot has happened worth writing about since I last posted, but as a quarter of my trip is already done, I wanted to just write about some of the daily experiences I've been having that I haven't mentioend yet.

Yesterday and today have been the two hottest days since I've got here, so hot that you really don't feel like doing anything but lying around all day. At night it can cool down nicely (which is probably still like 90 degrees, but it feels nice), but in the middle of the day, it's devastatingly hot. I've started getting used to it a little bit only because you can't escape it with air-conditioning, because there is no air-conditioning. But, I've found that the only way for me to stop sweating is to take off my shirt and socks and lie completely still. If I do that, after like 20 minutes I stop sweating.

Every day, from the moment I step outside I am constantly conscious of how different a world I am in now, because EVERYTHING looks different than it does at home. Even the grass looks different, not to mention the trees and plants. The scenery around Cambine is beautiful, but it gives you a strange feeling, especially when we are driving around, because one moment you will be looking at a beautiful natural scene, the next moment you are passing by houses made of sticks and people in rags and stuff.

However, the thing that stands out to me the most about the poverty here is not how little many of the people have, it's how different the things people do have are. Some people have cell phones, but they all look like models from 10 years ago. Some people have TVs, but the ones they have are small with what we would consider horrible picture. A very small percentage of people have cars, but the cars all almost all old and run down- the choppas I talked about last week were so old that people had to push them before the drivers could coax the engines to life.

I think the greatest experiences I've had so far are when we have gone out of town and off the roads to meet people who are pretty much living in the bush. When we were planting rice, we came across one fellow who was living under a makeshift shelter, which was basically a bunch of bark held up by some branches, and had a little area around it where he was growing a few vegetables. The same day, I went for a walk by myself and came across a 3 or 4 year old kid who surely had never seen a white person before, because he stopped walking when he saw me approaching and stared at me very apprehensively until I got to him. I greeted him and asked him how he was in Portuguese, which I guess made him feel a little better. To me, I think the coolest part of my trip has been moments like that.

I talked about this with a few people before I left, and I just wanted to confirm that it looks like I will be able to watch the Super Bowl. Dieudonne gets ESPN International, and they showed the Jets-Colts game, but not the other. I didn't find out until a few days later that the other game had ended partly thanks to a terrible Favre interception, which brightened my day considerably. Everyone here is big soccer fans though, this month there was a tournament to determine the African champion that people had been coming over every day to watch, but it ended on Sunday with Egypt winning. So that was also a fun experience.

I want to again thank everyone who has been taking the time to read this. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of your comments, it's great to hear from everyone. So far my internet success rate is around 50/50, so I will try to have another post up Friday or Saturday. Until then...