Sunday, March 15, 2009

Mood

OK I'm better now. It helps that we're in Chipata for a conference, and since the Peace Corps house is beyond capacity, Trevor and I are staying at a hotel instead. It's clean, electrified, quiet. Bliss.

I should explain that behind my mood the other day was partly hidden sadness, in addition to anger and frustration. Last week my friend Hilda's little boy drowned in a well. Hilda is a volunteer literacy tutor in Chadiza. A month or so ago, the other tutor, Kistry (the one who taught me to make cowpea sausages), died too.

Zambians have a system for coping emotionally -- the ritual wailing, three days of funerals. They feel it and move on. I have a harder time dealing with it. Less practice, for one thing.

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