Hello! Hello!

I am so sorry for not writing more in the last, well I guess almost five months... Somehow life became normal, almost mundane, the quiet rural life with seemingly nothing exciting to report. But I suppose that isn't quite true. Life is good, and maybe the normalcy of it all means that I have now adjusted, the screaming children have become like the morning roosters, the sound of women pounding is the ryhthm to my work, and maybe the work has actually felt like work. The rains have come, they were late though, but we've been planting millet and squash, and a large field maize and watermelons. Its a facinating as well as frustrating process to watch unfold. All of this work is dictated by the whims of nature, the late rains meant long days of waiting for work to begin and when they did come, they were infrequent. We had to replant the millet field twice due to the seeds sprouting in the early rains, only to be burned by the sun when the rains didn't come back. But the farming is archaic one might say. When our turn of the century seeding machine towed behind a tired donkey broke, we resorted to the technology of millenia, simple iron hand tools and a lot of sweat on the brow. I can't say it was pleasurable work, one might find some satisfaction in fighting back the bush to grow a meager subsistance out of poor soil, but it purely is toiling under the hot sun for hours without much in the way of benefit. But I suppose planting might be the easy part of this process. The bush never seems to stop trying to reclaim its land and there is endless work clearing grasses and other weeds from around the plants. All of this is done with a small hand hoe, and when it takes you an hour to do and thirty by ten foot area, looking up at the sprawling area of unfinished land, its about the most depressing feeling in the world. It all seems a bit phyrric. So this has been where I draw the line for myself. It sucks up to much of my energy just to mindlessly scrape away grass from around the stalks of millet and only see that land be reclaimed again in two weeks. But I suppose it is all necessary to achieve some level of subsistence out there for the locals. This is definitly the reason they have so many babies, the minute a kid hits eight years old, he or she is out in the fields working, doing his part for the family. Interestingly enough, the relationship between parents and children here is quite the opposite than what we have become accustomed to in America. Here its the children who care for the parents, that is, they act almost as servants and definitly as farm labourers. And when they reach an age to be semi-independent, they have to continue to support their parents financially. People joke here that the more children you have, the better your social security will be. And thus, men can have four wives and as many babies as will come.

I just wanted to give you a brief snapshot of my current life, I'm back to the bush today. I hope to put some pictures on here in the coming weeks to give you more of a glimps of life. Hope you are all well where ever you are.

Lots of love
Nick