Limol #9

Second Sunday. I can't believe the second week has come and gone. I've gotten into a running routine of warming up on my walk to little Dabi's house to give her her medicine at 6am and then a quick out and back run, back to Dabi's to pick up our plate and spoon and a cool down back home. Lately this has been followed by a water run around 7am with Grace. We take one of the big water rollers and a bucket and walk first to our friend Mecklyn's house who expertly ties a nice long rope onto our bucket. We then walk down to the new well, which is close to the health post that is being built. The well is deep so one of us throws the bucket in and the other pushes it down with a stick. Then we have to yank the bucket up and out in such a way so that the bucket doesn't hit the sides of the well which are covered in clay. We pour about six or seven buckets to fill the roller and then Grace and I both pull the roller back up the steep inclined path to the road. It's steep enough that we lose our breath in seconds and by the time we're up at the top it takes a few minutes to catch our breath again. But it's a shorter climb than last year so we are grateful. Walking back through town we drop off the rope and I'll get my fourth chorus of "Kate, mer ag (good morning)!" of the morning. Once we are back and because I'm already so sweaty and it's still slightly cool, I pull weeds in Wagiba's garden, and maybe go check on the new puppies that were born the day we caught the crocodile. Wagiba said I could have one - I decided to name her Misi after the crocodile song "Käza misi mae sae mae, Misi misi mae sae mae". 

Today and yesterday have been really hot, kinda lazy days. I've gotten a fair amount of work done in the hammock and our solar panel is so full that I can't get the battery level to go under 100. It's embarrassingly awesome. I had to treat a poor little boy with 3rd degree burns on his thigh today. I had to clean it and the parts that were only second degree must have hurt so bad. Luckily I brought some burn gel and we gave him some Tylenol. His mom had some burns on her hands too. I lifted my dress to show how I burned my thigh when I was little too, but there was hardly a mark, so I'm not sure he got what I was trying to do. 

A health success story - Donae, our neighbor who had cut herself with a machete a week or so ago came by with some bia up bananas to thank us for how beautifully her wound healed (remember it was to the bone). What a beautiful and delicious gesture. So happy it turned out this way. 

Lauren revealed a very funny anecdote the other night. All the houses in Limol are built on stilts, under which is a packed dirt area that needs to be swept clean from loose dirt daily. Women make brooms to sweep these areas out of branches and twigs from a Palm tree, and they're held together in a bunch and usually left under the house. Well, when Lauren first arrived, she went foraging for sticks to make her morning coffee fire, and what would you know but there were these great bundles of sticks under all the houses that were perfect fire kindling! She didn't realize she was burning up people's brooms until we had to sweep a few days later. So innocent and so funny. :)

Kate