Éloigné (Tuesday, 2010 November 2)
[Edit: this post was once called Déconnecté, but that name was taken by a post on 2010-10-15. The new name, Éloigné, translates as "made distant", and corresponds to the fact that I’d left my Internet key in Bangangté.]
Haven’t had Internet for the last few days due to stupidly leaving my Camtel key someplace. Should be getting it back soon. I was talking to some other volunteers lately about how not having bought Internet has changed their experience, and how at first it’s tense but then it changes to feeling like you don’t have a pressure to keep up. I feel like I almost had a moment of that, but then it went away. Mostly I’ve been a little bored, feeling like there are lots of things I would love to be able to do this week, since I have a little bit of free time, but cannot because I’m déconnecté. This translates into: doing housework, going shopping (iron: 6000 CFA; frying pan: 4000 CFA), cooking a little bit, and helping Parfait and Bonheur with their English lessons. They come to me with notebooks full of notes on what happened in class, which was given entirely in English, and they try to make sense of it all while I watch.
This is my day off, but I was still dragged into school for two or three hours to help various administrative people with computer stuff. Somehow I still managed to scrape together exactly enough time to watch Serenity, which was long overdue. It made me feel a bit better, counteracted the looming feeling that my service here is going to be the foundation of shared experiences which makes me feel nonunderstood by the people I care about.
Still haven’t quit service. The Big Meeting with all the other people from my training is in a little over a month. You can do it, comp sci..
Here are some random pictures of Emily that I took at graduation. These weren’t staged or anything, just my typical "Surprise!" kind of shot.
Emily is lavishly and profusely photogenic.