Planted more peas and green beans on Monday. Monday night, the rain decided to go crazy and since I have this wonderful tin roofing, it made it impossible to sleep. I tried to watch an episode of scrubs, but couldn’t hear a thing even with the volume at max. I find myself singing the scrubs theme song when I get ditched at work. Sometimes they’ll just leave me to fend for myself, and since my language skills are not amazing, I don’t get much accomplished, especially when left to fill out patient charts. Crazy thunder and lightning storm Tuesday while cooking dinner, almost pooped my pants when lightning pretty much struck right outside kitchen door. Loudest scariest sound ever! I was shaking for about an hour afterwards, I think my heart stopped beating. Wednesday the power went out in the morning and we didn’t get it back until late Thursday afternoon. Emily and I were pretty much inconsolable. What is this real peace corps experience?! I want my electricity back!!! And I have to say, I am sooo happy to have it back. Had to go charge my phone at the bank Thursday during work, since it is the only place in my entire village that has a generator. I was getting worried because we don’t have one and the vaccines were in a fridge with no electricity! Oh, and I have a new aspiration to be a sheep farmer and use all natural dyes and sell the yarn to crazy hippies in America for a profit.
Friday my friend who lives in Gisakura came to visit. She waited until after work to start on her way, so she showed up in the dark. It started raining and she still wasn’t here, Emily and I were getting a little worried, so I sent her a text message and got one back saying that shes stuck, that the gate is locked. So, I went running out to get her, in the middle of the thunderstorm with only lightening lighting my way, I lost my shoes, kicked mud up my back, my glasses fogged up and there was the loudest thunder ever, in which both of us screamed bloody murder at the top of our lungs but did not hear the other. The next morning I confessed to my embarrassing scream and she confessed to the same and we realized that neither of us heard the other. Three girls followed her to my house, so we took them inside and had them wait out the rain. They were soaked head to toe and were freezing. I was only outside 5 minutes or so and was completely soaked through. There was another giant thunderclap (or lightning bolt, I really can’t tell which is causing this ear shattering sound) and we reacted worse than the three small girls. It’s indescribable how loud the thunder is here. During the entire storm there are only 2 or 3 of these ear drum breaking thunders, but every time it scares the living daylights out of me and sets my heart running and my hands shaking for an hour afterwards. Emily and I were almost in tears after the one on Wednesday. Anyways, the rain finally stopped and the thunder and lightning passed on to the hill behind me. We had a fun night and Saturday morning decided to go for a walk. Well, we ended up walking with a group of kids and one teacher whom we met on a previous walk and he took us with him until we started going to the bottom of the valley. It was getting really steep and we knew we were going to have to walk back up eventually, so we left before reaching the bottom and took the path he told us would take us home. Well, that path ended up taking us to the bottom of the valley anyways, after traversing over a few rivers we finally started going up again. And we went up and up and up! The last hour or more of our walk was straight up. We all almost keeled over and died. It was about 11am at this point, the sun was beating down on us and the humidity was ridiculous. I don’t know how we made it back, but when we finally did we all just collapsed. I think that hike took a few years of my life with it. After lunch, we packed up and headed to the clinic for the first ever “abana bo muri club”; the club for the kids at my clinic with HIV. It went well, except the Rwandan who was helping us kept it going for 2 hours! I was planning on only an hour. The poor kids were exhausted. Kate, Emily and I went for a drink at the restaurant afterwards to wait for her moto to take her home. Sunday, the kids who helped Kate get here in the rain came by to visit and then Theodore came to visit. We didn’t leave the house.
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