Full of shit

The room of potatoes is empty. The 2 civil servants who think they live at my house have not been back. But now I have the biggest problem of all, which is the title of the blog entry. My latrine is FULL. Completely full. And the door is broken, so other people have been using it and I have been peeing in the drainage hole in my shower because it is so ridiculously disgusting! I apologize to all of you who think that's gross, but it's the truth. Yesterday Boiro, our regional coordinator, came to Timbi and I showed him how the situation that was only a little bad a few days ago has reached epic proportions.

Also, some guy is reading over my shoulder right now and it's really distracting me and pissing me off, so if he can read this I hope he takes the hint. (which he did)

Okay, so Boiro came and saw. We then went to talk to some people about how to fix the situation. I'm told that putting motor oil down the latrine would cause everything to go down - one of those funny things that sounds like complete b.s. but would probably work. But the community promised to build a latrine by Sunday. That's 3 days. During Ramadan. If this happens, it will be a bigger miracle than Jesus walking on water. But I'm going to give the people in Timbi the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Rose, a friend who transferred to Burkina, is in town and should be coming to Labe today, which is why I'm here. It was agreed that I couldn't stay in my house until I had a bathroom, so my choices were to visit my neighbor Jacqui, who lives 15k away, or to come to Labe. Seeing that Rose would have no way to find me at Jacqui's site, I'm here in Labe. We'll see how that all turns out.

My friend Beth just arrived last night and will be about 65k outside of Labe, so I'm looking forward to having someone to drink bad, cold red wine with over a pizza at the hotel. Camilo gave her some education materials for me, since I'm an idiot and left Conakry without grabbing anything relevant to teaching English! I managed to get syrup and buckets, but nothing that will help with lesson plans...I'm an idiot. Thank goodness Camilo came to my rescue.

School won't start for another 3 weeks or so, which is weird. When I got to Mamou I had about a week before classes started, so I was really busy and had a lot to accomplish. That's not really the case anymore, so I'm going to have to get creative with how I pass the time. Today I'm hoping to get some furniture commissioned so I have somewhere to put all my stuff! It's hard to feel at home when you have 2 chairs and a table and are living out of duffle bags.

A few funny things have happened that make me happy/relieved/content to be back...

• the boys in my compound, who are about 5 and really cute, have taken to waiting for me while I'm in the latrine and giving me a high 5 as I walk past them. This is good because it makes me feel like I just accomplished something. Also, I'm heading inside to wash my hands, which means that any germs they give me are immediately taken care of.
• I just leave my 20 liter water holders on my porch and they magically fill with water in a matter of hours. I have no idea where the water is coming from and honestly don't care. As long as people are around to take care of it for me, I'm happy.
• there was a huge storm the other night that completely busted the transformer and blew out the electricity in my neighborhood. While completely scary, it was also so amazing. If the storms that happen here were in the US, there would be warnings on TV every day for 6 months of the year. It's just unbelievably strong rain that comes down in buckets and causes flooding everywhere.
• I decapitated the World's Largest Cockroach. Camilo called me out to my living room our first night in Timbi to tell me about it. I then sprayed it with the poisonous bug spray you can get here that will probably cause me to grow another limb. But cockroaches are tough and that's not enough to kill it, so I took my broom and chased it around. When I finally hit it, I screamed and jumped because something hit my leg...turns out I managed to decapitate it and the head hit me on the shin!!!! Once I realized what happened I was bizarrely proud of myself, like I'd passed a "welcome back to Guinea" test of some kind.

I know what I have to do to make Timbi home. Now it's just a matter of taking care of it. But so many things here take so much time - for example, finding educated women to befriend. I don't want to make friends too quickly because the people who try and find you first are generally the sketchy people. So I just have to be patient - I've done it before, so I can do it again. Now I'm off to get some furniture made - until I have a comfortable place to sit I know it won't feel like home. I also need to investigate the cost of a new mattress. Mine is so thin that I am basically sleeping on wooden slats!

An added bonus to spending so much time in Labe is that I've gotten to know Boiro and the guards and driver, who are extremely nice and interesting and have been helpful with getting me back into the habit of speaking French.

I'll keep you all posted...cross your fingers that my latrine gets fixed quickly!!