palm wine and peace corps
Friday September 19, 2003
Today is moving in day. I moved in. The place is clean enough, and way to big for me. I didn’t really go to work, but I had some surprise guests: the Peace Corps. It turns out that they are pretty well represented in this neck of the woods. They were here because there is a Johns Hopkins project that is going to start in the jungle later this year, and the Peace Corps are going to help staff it. It’s a pretty cool idea, part lab technician, part development worker. Anyway, from what I understand of the project they are going to be looking at bat disease (and rodent) transmission patterns in the jungle. So, from a totally practical standpoint, they treated me to dinner. That is two great dinners with interesting people in two days. Not really what I expected being out here, but I’m not complaining. I get the feeling that this is a real oddity, and I should enjoy it while it lasts. I did do some business as well… we talked about the project construction using wood from the communal forests. I am pretty much a salesman at this point. After dinner Kara, Tara and I went to the palm wine bar area about 100 meters from their hotel (Peace Corps pays for nice hotels, food, and they have big 4X4’s with American flags painted on them). It was very laid back, and we were pretty much the biggest entertainment around. Three white people drinking palm wine and chatting with the locals. One man called me a messiah. I told him that I stepped in a puddle on the way over and I sunk… so clearly I am no messiah. I seem (from anecdotal reports) to engender a pretty different response from the locals. I am not really getting called white man so much (except in the local dialect Zime), and I don’t get the regular marriage proposals that others seem to be getting. I am locally known as the giant, and seem to intimidate many people. Maybe I’m just getting a grace period because of my boss, maybe it is the sign of something different. Who knows… all I know is that if anyone else calls me a messiah, I am going to freak out on them. I really don’t want that kind of responsibility. I think that is really has more to do with the fact that they think I have come with money. Oh, and the CIA thing came up again with the Peace Corps. If this keeps up, I’m going to contact them and at least see if they will pay me to be the representative that many people think I am. So after dinner, and palm wine which I didn’t really like, I walked back in the pitch black. I walk so much faster than everyone here it seems to freak them out a bit. It felt really good to walk. Oh look. Cockroaches….well, I think that is my sign to end this evening’s writing.