June 4th to June 7th 2009

The clinic is moving along at an alarming pace. We will be building the roof tomorrow. The village seems committed to seeing it finished by the time we leave!
The day before yesterday Jessica and I took a walk through the village. Because we have arrived at the very beginning of the rainy season everyone is planting their crops. On our walk we ran into a group of five women that we know from working at the clinic. They gave a tutorial on hand planting. Here all of the work is done by hand, there are no tractors to plant the crops. The women take a sort of hoe, made out of a bent piece of wood and hit it into the dirt making the hole. Then, almost faster than you can see, they dump ten seeds from the bowl in their other hand and sweep dirt over the hole. The process is fun to watch because the women are so skilled. Jessica gave it a good try, but was only able to fill a few holes before the women took it back over.
At the clinic we have been adopted by a herd of children that live near by. We played a game of soccer with them. The ball they use is completely flat. When we left the states we brought two soccer balls with us, and will hopefully give one of them to these kids. The other one will go to the local kids soccer team. Their coach has been working with us on the site.
Yesterday there was an annual gathering of the areas Catholic churches in the village where we are staying. We attended the festivities. Though the churches do follow many practices of a traditional catholic church they do so in a very African way. There were drums an dancing, everyone was dressed in their best brightest colors. It was amazing to see! We are all beginning to have food cravings (cheeseburgers, mac and cheese, milkshakes, etc) but are loving the trip!
(Oh and make sure you look at some of the older posts as well, I was finally able to add some pictures to them!)
-Kate Dorrell