Losing the Battle and War

I am losing the battle with the mice. It seems as if my old boyfriend, Mr. Mouse, had a slew of girlfriends and offspring. There are not enough sticky traps in all of Madagascar to deal with them.
I consult and whine to all my neighbors and they look at me as if I am the one out of my mind, complaining about mice. Yes, they say, everyone here has mice, get a cat. Some just laugh and say things like, “They don’t eat much, don’t worry about them”.
After contemplating the situation, I decide to try to be more flexible and tolerant of the culture I am living in. I come to an agreement with myself and the mice, if they stay in the kitchen I will try to ignore them. They seemed to be pleased with this arrangement for a few nights. Then they start coming into my sleeping area. What could they possible want, there is no food in there.
I challenge myself to stretching beyond my comfort level. One night I realize just how much I have stretched when I pull down my bed covers and discover a small mouse dropping near my pillow. I brush it off and say “OK just don’t hog the pillow tonight!”
Tolerance and flexibility are important traits to have when traveling, or even when you are at home for that matter. I have a gift for adapting. I take no credit for it, it is one of my very few God given talents.
But there are a few things I will never be able to tolerate or accept. One is how they treat animals, dogs to be specific. No one in the villages have “pets” and all animals must have a purpose to be meaningful. Male dogs are treated a little better than females since they act as watch dogs. But all the dogs walk around emaciated and scarred with fleas. Some treated so poorly that all I can do is pray to St. Francis for a speedy road to doggie heaven.
I will never be able to tolerate eating the pickled cow intestine and cow skin they serve. The pickled skin glistens and jiggles under the hot sun, covered in flies. The texture is something not of this world – well not of my world. I have tried it twice, only as an act of good will. Both times I had to spit it out, graciously of course, but I could not swallow it.
I don’t feel too bad about not being able to eat some of the food. When I took a bowl of Mexican chili with ground meat, beans, tomatoes, cumin and chili powder, they looked at it with slight disgust, then sniffed it, made a face, took a small bite and had the same reaction I did to the pickled cow intestine.
When I see them peel potatoes and tell them that in the states we eat the peeling of potatoes, they look disgusted and shake their heads. Potatoes peelings are for the pigs, not humans they tell me.
Despite the cultural differences in what we eat or accept as normal, I am humbled by our human hearts and the spirit we have toward each other. I am reminded how small I am in this vast world I share with billions of others. All of us living in different types of homes, eating different foods, wearing different clothes, speaking different languages, even dancing with skeletons.
But despite the dissimilarities on the outside, on the inside we all seem to share a desire to nurture our souls with something meaningful to do, something to love and something to hope for. Those are the traits we all share and where I can bond with the people here.

Sometimes it may seem as if my life is filled with adventure, excitement and wonder but there are plenty of times it is just difficult, depressing and boring. My program director, Ghislain Ravelonjatuvo – thank goodness, he has us call him Tuvo, called me on my Peace Corps issued cell phone a few weeks ago to see how I was doing. Tuvo has a background in Public Health and speaks decent English. He is responsible for training the volunteers in health programs in the country, choosing our sites and making sure we are safe and productive at our health clinics. He calls each health volunteer every 6-8 weeks to check in.
When he called, he asked me what accomplishment I was most proud of and I answered” I am most proud that I am still here in the country”.
He laughed and said “Well, what is your greatest challenge.” And I replied “Staying one more day.” We both chuckled and I told him, “Tuvo some days it is all I can do to clean my chamber pot, haul water to cook, clean and wash, cook a meal and sweep up all the mouse droppings. Then the day is almost over and I sit down and convince myself that I can stay one more day.”
I told him before hanging up that if he calls on a Thursday afternoon or Friday I am generally excited about how many babies we vaccinated on Thursday morning and how many mothers I taught how to make a Tippy Top. (a reused water bottle, with soap on a rope attached for washing hands)
I do occasionally ask myself why anyone would want to get on board of this unnerving journey, taking me so far beyond my comfort zone. Why didn’t I just sign up for a medical mission for a month abroad?
If I am honest I know that most of my life I have lived on an outer journey and now I want to explore and experience an inner journey. Something that takes me away from all the materialistic things in my previous world and takes me deeper within. I am a slow learner in all aspects of life and probably need more than a month or two to go inward.
I cannot escape my inner life. In the end, it will be the one that will matter to me, my family, friends and most of all God. I had better get into this inner life and the only way in, is out of my comfortable outer life and through it. If I am honest I can admit I am not getting any younger and am in the autumn of my life, although at times I still hang on to some summer.
Autumn reminds me that the life I knew is dying back. The green growth of spring and summer will not be seen again. I hope to enter autumn with a new appreciation of the magnificent colors it brings, the crisp, clear air and a deserved rest.
Peace Corps is not the only way to work through this but it is the journey I am on now, and all I can do is embrace it, one day at a time.

The fingers of God touch your life, when you touch others.
Doing your best, is more important than being the best.

Hand washing demonstration with reused water bottles and holding babies on vaccine day

Hand washing with reused bottles

Holding babies on vaccine day

Above: Sunscreen the women use and two children in my village on the first day of school at Sacred Heart.

Sacred Heart School