What I do to keep me Busy and Meeting People

There is only so much you can do when you don’t have a specific project to be working on.  I make a circle every morning visiting a few people at the craft center, which is more now that they are trying to get a shipment out, and get a language lesson, as well as a sewing lesson as well as a basket weaving class if one of the ladies happen to be there. 

Then I stop by a ladies shop I am trying to help get her books with receipts together so she can maintain it for 6 months and possibly get a loan.  She would like more products but does not have the money to get them.  She tried for a loan once before and they told her no but not why or what to do to get one. 

Then I go by the seamstress on the main street and talk to all the women it is partly teaching me sentences or laughing on how that same sentence comes out of my mouth, and partly they are telling me the things they either wish for or the community really needs.

I then go to the junction to see what fresh they have gotten in and as usual it is very little but now we are getting tomatoes.  Hope it keeps getting better with the change of the weather because going into Bolga is not fun.  When you can wait over 2 hrs in the sun for a taxi or lorrie, it makes you want to forget it  except you know you will not have fresh food, you will miss your friends, and perhaps maybe a package will be waiting for you at the Post Office so you wait wait and wait for a ride.

  I then go to the house to fix lunch, read, and try to stay cool for a couple of hours.  Around 4 I go out front where the ladies are getting water, the children are playing or fetching water and see who will visit with me.  Mainly it ends up the children wanting to read or play games.  They range in all ages and abilities plus some are good with English so I always get a lesson in Fra Fra with what we are doing because some of the children have to be instructed in Fra Fra.

As it gets dark I try to get things finished before my landlord and his family come home so I am out of their way.  We share the kitchen so I try to eat my hot meal at lunch when they are at work and then just eat something small in my room and then read, watch a movie until it is time to put in the ear plugs and go to sleep.

Head Mistress at the Tailor Show that I visit.  She speaks good English and has a sweet little guy that is normally on her back but he was on floor playing about 1 yrs old.

Here are the children and I reading two books.  The little one with the book on his head is Peter and he is the one that swallowed the candy wrong.  He still comes over and does not seem concerned about it.

While we were reading the Uncle and his year old nephew drove up.  Yes he had ridden on his mother’s back from Bolga and now he was driving the Moto with his Uncle around town.  He knows the buttons to push, puts his feed in the rack and holds on when he is asked if he is ready.  Told the Uncle he would be in jail in American.  He laughed.

Here is the lady I am helping w/her books and her two children.  Her dau. I showed you her hair that she put on her and her little boy has the most awesome laugh.  She had just gotten off her moto, baby asleep and her hair wild.  Ha!!

Here is his football.  It is rubbers (their plastic bags are called rubbers) stuffed and stuffed and shaped round can see where it is tied on top so now he kicks it around while he is walking to bore hole.

When I do go to work I will still be able to do these things.  Everything is relaxed here.  People show up when they want.  Such a different life.