Joining the Peace Corps holds the promise of learning life lessons while experiencing a new culture in complete immersion. On billboards these lessons look like solving the youth of Africa’s problems while herding goats in your Teva’s. My life lesson billboard would be me hiding in my bedroom holding a cell phone with a look of serious analysis.
I’ve always had a big problem with social procrastination. Why answer your phone today when you could wait until tomorrow and avoid the invitation? In big cities this has some repercussions, showing up at a bar talking on your phone and running into someone you have been avoiding calls from, and I believe the amount of times things like this happened to me was statistically significantly high, but never enough to force me to answer my phone. I would rather write “Call Bill” on my to-do list everyday for weeks than pick up a phone call when I didn’t know what I was going to be asked.
My one road village (there are technically 4 roads but they all merge to become one before reaching my apartment) is teaching me the problems of my ways early and often. You can hear my phone ring inside my apartment from the road. Everyone driving or walking past can see if any lights in my apartment are on. Walking down the road I meet about 80% (all of the statistics in this post were created sans data based exclusively on feelings) of the people whose phone calls I have ignored. Even if said person lives in another village. If you don’t meet the person you meet his/her grandmother, cousin, or sister’s baby daddy who inquires about why I am not answering my phone.
I’m finally learning the lesson that the world has been teaching me over and over again; just answer the phone. Dominica adds a special incentive to the mix because only the caller is charged on cell phone calls. If I don’t pick up my phone (during the several calls in a row) then I have to spend money to call back (religious stereotype jokes should be sent directly to my email).
It’s still hard for me to pick up the phone when I don’t recognize the phone number or when I’m enjoying the British Law & Order, which is on all the time here, but I am getting better at it and spend less time staring at my cell phone debating whether to answer it. Knowing that I will see the person before the day is over and the questions/reasons for calling are never as dire as my imagination leads me to believe has done wonders for overcoming this hurtle.
Also I’m much better at killing mosquitoes.
Sundry:
I was walking with two Grade 1 girls today when one of the girls told me that their teacher told them not to make fun of people because G-d doesn’t like it. The other girl said, “She said don’t tease people with HIV which is good because I have never done that.”
I was shopping in town at a variety store, there are many of these new stores that are owned by Chinese immigrants and called “Chiney shops” by the Dominicans, when I found a display of Tim Hortons mugs on sale. (See below) I now own two Tim Hortons mugs. (For those of you not in the know- Tim Hortons is the best doughnut/coffee shop that originated in Western New York/Southern Ontario, about 70% of my teenage memories involve a Tim Hortons.)
These are pictures from Scottshead, the southern tip of the island where the Caribbean meets the Atlantic. How amazing?
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