Spare Time

Since I’ve been here I’ve read half a book (same one I started on the plane), saw one movie (as a social event) and watched one episode of a TV series.

Some things simply take longer here. My morning get-out-of-the-house routine seems to take longer. It now includes cleaning up my room (a bit) from the dust/spiders/mosquito corps of the previous night and includes applying all kinds of sun-screen lotions.

Any kind of meeting takes a very long time. An example meeting will usually include:

-         saying something

-         translator translates

-         person doesn’t understand

-         saying again

-         translator translates again

-         noticing a mistake in the translation (creole improving painfully slow)

-         person unhappy

-         trying to understand why person is not happy

-         getting more unhappy

-         …. 30 minutes

-         finding out where the misunderstanding was

-         moving on to the next subject

I spend a lot of time sitting around, watching kids play and trying to talk to them, answering questions.

our friend Bantigula and his aquarium

I spend some time staring at the wall because it’s the end of the day and we finally managed to get the village kids to go home.

me, updating my new blackberry. Soon to become a close friend

I spend some time updating this blog.

I go to sleep quite early, and wake up earlier than I did in Israel.

Still – time moves differently here. The concept of efficiency seems to be foreign to many of the daily operations.

     This weekend, for the first time since we got here we took 2 days off and out of the village. We came to our city hide-out on Friday evening (and celebrating the fun the city has to offer went to sleep at 9 PM J). Not going back until Sunday afternoon.