You can either laugh or cry

Hello everyone!  I know it’s been a while, I thought I’d be getting
more internet access during training, but it turns out that the hours
for the internet café are not ideal.  There are about a million things
I could/want to write about, unfortunately there is not time for that,
so for now I’ll stick with one story.

This is the saga of the optional outing:

Last Saturday we (the trainees) were offered an optional trip to go up
north to a national forest park where they are suppose to have lots of
cool animals (pigmy hippos, chimps, birds, alligators, etc.).  Of
course everyone took the PC up on this offer, who would want to miss
out on pigmy hippos?!?  We were told it was a 3-4 hour drive from
Makeni so we planned to leave at 7:30am, get there by noon, and leave
by 3-4pm.  That is no where near how the day turned out.

Surprisingly, we met the 7:30am leave time.  A good start to the day.
There were 48 trainees, along with a handful of Peace Corps drivers
and staff, and we were all piled in to 3 PC vehicles and 2 poda podas.
 Quick note on poda podas: they are slightly larger than a VW bus (but
not much) with metal benches welded to the inside of the car.  We
squished about 20 people into each of the 2 poda podas.  The four of
us sitting in the back row had to alternate who sat forward and back
because there wasn’t enough room across for us to all sit with our
shoulders straight.  Not only do we have 20 people crammed into a VW
bus, but the roads we were driving on were riddled with potholes every
10 yards; meaning every 10 seconds we’d have to slow down (or not
depending on how the driver felt) as everyone went flying over the
bumps.  I guess the good news is we were packed so tightly there was
nowhere for anyone to go.

After driving for 4 hours the 2 poda podas reached a town up north,
but there were no PC vehicles to be found.  We all got out, asking
what was going on, but got no response or indication as to what we
were doing in this town.  So, making the best of the situation, we
bought a bunch of binch balls (fried balls made from ground up beans)
to satisfy our craving for lunch.  I also got to participate in a game
of pick-up street soccer with the local kids: PC vs local children.
Not sure what the score was, but pretty sure they kicked our butts.
Eventually we found out that the deal was the poda podas would drive
only as far as this town, where the PC vehicles would then ferry
everyone back and forth to the park.  Somehow it got lost in the
planning that it took an additional hour to hour and a half to get to
the park from that village.

Quick timeline recap: leave 7:30am.  Drive for 4 hours.  Spend 2 hours
in random town.  We are now at 1:30pm.

After hanging out in the town for 2 hours the first PC vehicle finally
showed up to start transporting us to the park.  When I finally
reached our destination it was about 3pm and it had taken a good 7
hours to get there.  It gets dark here by 7:30pm, so with another 7
hours of traveling to get home, looked like we weren’t going to be
home before dark.  For an added bonus, it turned out that the place we
arrived at wasn’t actually the park.  The park was across the river.
Except, now here’s the kicker, we couldn’t get across the river since
it was the rainy season and the river was too high.  So, not only did
it take us almost double the travel time to get there, and we weren’t
going to make it home before dark, but we couldn’t actually get to
where we were supposed to be going.  No pigmy hippos, chimps, or birds
that day.  Thus begins the trek home.

I ended up leaving the park at about 4pm for the hour and half drive
back to where the poda podas originally dropped us, where I was
promptly ushered into a poda poda.  And so began the roller coaster
ride once again.  But wait!  Then it started to rain.  These roads,
are not paved or designed to drain, so the innocent potholes on the
way up became monstrous lakes on the way home.  I was sitting in a row
with Allison when the rain started, and she just looked at me and
said, “Today was supposed to be fun.”  We just busted up laughing.
For the next 2 hours we laughed at every small detail that would
normally not be funny in the slightest, but the odd combination of
being tired and bruised seemed to bring out the humor in everything.
At about 8pm (it was now pitch black) we stopped in a village to drop
off one of the current PCVs who was helping us with training.  We were
driving through his village, so it made sense to drop him off on the
way home.  Unfortunately things are never that simple in Africa.  His
bags were in the other poda poda, which did not stop with us.  After
frantically calling people for 20 minutes trying to figure out whether
the first poda poda was going to turn around, or if we would have to
do something else, we finally climbed back in to the poda poda for the
rest of the drive home.  We were now about an hour and a half from
Makeni.  About 30 minutes into our drive from the village, our poda
poda broke down.  No joke.  At this point you can either laugh or cry.
 So we decided to laugh.  A lot.  Eventually the car got started again
(probably by the magical powers of duct tape) and we were on our way.
Low and behold, another 30 minutes later, our poda poda broke down
AGAIN.  For the second time that night we were stuck in the middle of
the bush, no cell signal, in the pitch black.  All the ingredients for
the best night ever.  Have no fear, the little poda poda that could
got going again, and by 9:45pm had us rolling in to the Makeni
training site.

A small representation of what life is like in Africa.  You’ve just
got to go with the flow (and have no expectations that any plans will
work out).

I have been getting all your emails and I love them.  Keep ‘em coming!
 I’ll try to respond to some of them as I get the chance.  I have also
gotten some letters, so a huge thanks to those of you who have written
some.  I’m in the process of writing back, so you should get a reply
semi-soonish.

Much love to everyone!


P.S. Quick post-blog note, I've been getting all your emails and
letters and I love them!  Also, I think mom updated a few people, but
I got my site placement last week and I'm headed to Yele in a month
and a half.  If you look it up on google maps it shows up as an island
on the coast of Sierra Leone.  This is not where I'm going.  The Yele
I will be going to is in the dead center of Sierra Leone, so search
for a town there.  Not sure it'll show up on google maps, but give it
a shot!  I have started learning Temne, the local language, which is
an adventure in and of itself.