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Date: Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 1:13 AM
Subject:
i think this might be too long, maybe ill just choose stories from here when im up there lols, any suggestions which ones to leave?
im and i was a health education , around ten years ago. i asked to be put somewhere rural, because i wanted to learn a lot lol, plus that is also a tropical region, and that was the most different from what i was used to. i studied art history because i liked connecting to people through something like art. so, it was neat to keep connecting in pc.
we actually got placed in our country by surprise, and mine was a pleasant surprise! mada has nice landscapes, and the people are fun, kind of serious at first?, easy going, and surprisingly straightforward .-i miss its foggy mountains, -beautiful but carsickness-inducing, neon flowers in the capital, neighbors dancing to upbeat music without shyness, and watching babies grow, whose mothers i advised with local health educators, and who i met when they were still in their moms bellies. it was so much to know, i dont think id ever tried so hard at something before then lol, n havent tried so hard at anything since !
so, the first time i my my host family, pc'd barely taught us any malagasy beforehand! one of the only things we learned were the words for "whats this". that was pretty much all i said , trying to learn new words . we got picked up, and mine found me, pale with nervousness, and language-less, but she took my bag on her own tiny shoulder, and held my hand reassuringly, the whole way home-even though my vocab was narrow, we connected in nonverbal ways. some things are just universally funny or relatable, no matter how well theyre verbally articulated. like, i brought a deck of cards to play, but it was hard to use them, without knowing how to explain games. instead, my brothers and i played songs on the radio and danced, using brooms as air guitars, so my host mom called us the "backstreet boys kely" aka little backstreet boys.
after living w them, at site before dinner, i kept my window open, and everyone else did too, and we'd each be singing our own pop songs to ourselves, kind of loudly, while cooking - i found people in my region to be, kind of surprisingly, expressive ! :) then, like ten neighboring kids'd come to my door and come in to chat every night, for like my first two weeks there, cause i was a novelty ! they sat on every little surface in my tiny house. they tried on my chacos and headlamp, joking that theyre me, drew me pictures which covered my wall, taught me to make rice while clambering through all my silverware, after id tried myself, but overflowed it , to my disappointment, :p, and practiced singing songs and accompanying dances with me, for when we go to the town's next party. they grilled me in gasy nightly, full of thoughts and questions lols, two of us sitting on my pc trunk, and thats how i ever learned how to speak smoother sentences lols. afterwards, i heard them playing in our sand street under the highest moon ive seen, which was bright enough that it shined through the slats in my walls lols :) later, either the cries of like four of my future fav babies who were born together at my neighbors houses, would wake me up, or stray dogs fighting outside each night, and their vicious barking woke me, leaving me spooked like a nightmare !
in mornings, farmers call out, "watch it!, my herd is coming!-"a omby!!". so i wake n bike to my favorite local health educator, who lets me call her "grandma", and holds onto my waist, to help cover me with her little parasol, when we shuffle with our health info notebooks, knocking on doors, to tell everyone what to watch out for this season - mosquitos, poop in the kabone, etc.. id sometimes lose my sandals, stuck in wet road, or one floats away during a big storm lol , and id meet eyes with a girl who face planted while running, through the same rainy season mud, and we exchange surprised, somewhat amused expressions lols. later, everyone usually went home to lie shirtless in their dark house, trying to sleep through mid day heat, and eat liches, cause at least hot season is also liche season!
in the afternoon, id go to market. my entire way through the village, little groups of kids, who i dont even know, would call out my nickname as i pass them, "mituvetuve !"- somehow, children as far as in the next town knew my nickname! i think its good natured, and its a funny story: my first week, i was talking to my neighbor kids, and mispronounced the word for "similar"- its supposed to be "me-tov'tov', but i misprounounced it, "me-too vee too vee", so they called me that, and called it out whenever they saw me, and i responded back w it, even from all the way down the road! xD
i approach the market, and i was told to get to know my community. so, we had one isolated paved road, that went westward across the country. most food stands, passing buses, and the market are there. and when you get there, it smells of cow poop, fried bananas, bus diesel and cooking-fire smoke, which sounds like a.. distinctt combo, but id recognize it fondly, if i smelled it lols. so i went all the way up this road, the section spanning my village, stopping at stands and making the lamest, but best conversation i had the vocabulary to muster : whats this food, where does this road lead? but we connected eventually! we got to jokes, like my friend, who ran the food stand at the bus stop and sold fresh juice, asked me, you like tamarind juice ? i didnt know how to say sour, so i just gestured, to say, it makes me go *shivers!* she laughs, and shivers back jokingly, at me xD. it iss an acquired taste - which i did eventually acquire!
so, at the end, i was on my way home, eating a snickers bar in the back of a taxi when i got to the capital, which i always bought myself first thing, every time i finished a long trip between my site and the capital, as a reward for idk, - not barfing on the long twisting road ? i choke on gasy words all over again now, if my host mom calls, which is frustrating since id worked hard to speak well! but i went there to learn about others/myself, and now im again relearning my place in the world, through the lens of what i saw there, about curiosity and connection, in a similar, but also different way, from during pc.
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
baratheonpilled
tangentwithtanner
