It is 19:00. I am handwriting this blog by candlelight. The air is crisp, clean and cold from this afternoons chilly rain. My feet are being kept warm by the charcoal that is cooking my dinner. Eric Clapton's Greatest Hits is playing from my iPod. Layla is the perfect blanket over the chorus of village noises that the night often brings. (i.e screaming children, and the drums that can be heard every night, the frogs, and my Atate chatting and giggling with passerby's)
Today was one of those perfect days. The kind where you don't really notice it as it is happening until the night falls and you realize that you are sad to see the day go. Nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary happened today. I did some laundry. I really needed it to it. Sadly after rubbing my fingers raw getting caught up on laundry I discovered that a rat ate through a bag that I stored my heavy blanket in throughout hot season...more laundry to do again tomorrow, weather permitting.
I also helped my host family get water. They are cementing the floor of their house. Yeah that is right! i said house, not hut...a mother fuckin' house. In case you are new to this blog, my Atate is a bad ass therefore they have a brick house with a nailed down tin roof. Badass status established and maintained! Go Atate. After the water was drawn my Amai helped me tear down my fence and weed and clear my future garden area,
Looking back on today, I think, that it was during all of my family time that the perfect day was in the making. While my Amai was helping me with the garden I still had clothes on the line and the rain came. We hustled around to get all of my clothes off of the line and my garden tools into shelter and out of the rain. When my Amai realized that I had it under control she rushed over to her compound to perform the same jobs. When I finished with my hut I ran over to help her put their firewood undercover. My Amai and I had a moment of eye contact when she first saw me helping that seemed to say everything. I was in the family, it was my job to help just as much as everyone else's job. I ran around with the women getting everything away while the men delt with the farm equipment. When everyone was finished I scattered to the comfort of my own hut to watch the beautiful rain in dry shelter. My Amain kept running around doing "mom jobs." She still had to deliver all of the boiled corn to all of her kids huts. The last stop on the afternoon snack tour...her newest daughter. I am pretty much the equivelent of a Zambian toddler, but she loves me still. :)
Today was confirmation that I am totally apart of the family. I think I knew that for a while, but I needed today to see just how much apart of it all I really am.
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