Like a phoenix, a freaking slow phoenix

The last time I wrote, my house was nothing but a flattened piece of dirt amongst the banana trees. Unfortunately, it remains nothing but a flattened piece of dirt, despite how much work we’ve put in to it in the last week. It’s much cheaper (and cooler, I think) to build my house from local resources, so the plan is a bamboo house with thatch roof and a dirt floor. Sounds simple enough, no? Well, it would be, but an unexpectedly significant amount of time is required just to get all the materials to the site. If there were a Home Depot and they delivered directly to my lil’ patch o’ dirt, we could probably build the house in a week or two. But there isn’t, and they don’t.

Last Wednesday, Florentino and I went out to cut down the trees which would make up the structural integrity of the house at each of the four corners. I felt a strange combination of manly and unmanly. Manly because, well, putting an axe to lumber is damn manly. And unmanly because of how much better and faster Florentino was than I, and how quickly my, dare I say delicate, hands developed blisters. Axing is a very precise art. You have to chop at opposing angles to create a ‘v,’ forcing the central wedge out. If instead you hit the center perpendicularly, it hurts. A lot. I played baseball for many years growing up, and played it poorly for almost as many (I think I peaked in 4^th grade), so I distinctly remember the emasculating sting of less-than-solid contact. After cutting them down, it was another five days before we could borrow a mule to carry them up to the future house.

The next day, we went to collect the bamboo we had cut down a few days earlier. After cutting it into fifteen and eleven foot lengths, the dimensions of my probable house, we had to haul it up from the river to the main path where a mule would be able to carry it the rest of the way to the road. From there, we’d need to solict the services of a passing truck to carry it the rest of the way up the hill, but that’s for another day. From the river up to the main path was only about two hundred yards, but it was straight up a steep, muddy, narrow path. It's much worse than the picture below looks. The English language can be so restricting sometimes. I simply ran out of swear words. There are only four or five that give me the satisfaction and expression necessary when I slip yet again carrying a 75 pound, fifteen foot long bamboo stalk on each shoulder. The fact that Florentino could carry three didn’t make me feel any better either. But finally we got those up, and yesterday, Carlos and his mule hauled them the rest of the way to the main road.

I’d like to be able to start building the walls when I get back from Thanksgiving, but before we can do that we have to put the tree trunks in the ground and cut the bamboo length-wise, so we’ll see.

In two days, I’ll be in Cerro Punta to celebrate Thanksgiving with a bunch of other Peace Corps people. Should be fun. Wherever you are this Thanksgiving bored reader, I hope you are around loved ones.

Poco a poco

First of all, I need to extend an apology to all those who might have been offended by my last entry. I got a little carried away on a philosophical tangent and the conclusion could have been interpreted as a declaration of the meaninglessness of every relationship I've had. Whoops. That was not my intention. I love all of you. Unique, and contingent on coincidence are not mutually exclusive, nor does a relationship have to be a beautiful, singular snowflake to be 'good' or 'special.' Coincidence is not a bad word; it is only through a seemingly miraculous chain of coincidences that any one of us is here. Coincidence is a fact of life, one I'm still trying to wrap my head around.
Today is Day #12 (728 to go), and I'm sitting at the one computer in town in the one building in town with electricity. That building is the cooperative with which I'm supposed to be working while I'm here. So far, not a lot of work has taken place, but that's okay. Our first months on the job are supposed to be spent observing, planning, and talking with people. Right now I live about 25 minutes down the hill from the cooperative and my typical day unfolds like this: I wake up at 6:30, shower, brush teeth, and eat breakfast with the host family, then I head up the hill and go to the land where we are building my house and work until it rains, then I hang out at the cooperative, talking to people, having a soda, doing some reading, maybe helping my counterpart Florentino do something, then at five or so walk down the hill for dinner. I guess that sounds pretty boring, but the truth is that there aren't really any 'typical' days, just some that seem more like others. Last week was their big independence day celebration, replete with a parade and a gratuidous amount of drumming. Today I hiked to Oma, a community about an hour away. Things are going pretty well, and I can't say I feel too bored or anxious, which is a bit of a surprise. It wasn't always this easy my friends, no. In fact, the first day was pretty rough. Here's what I wrote:

I can't believe I called the States last night. I am so weak. Nothing but answering machines. Poetic justice. Have I reached the end of what I thought was an infinite reserve of adaptibility and self-reliance? Maybe so. Everywhere I've traveled, every change I've made, I've been able to adjust and make the environment my own. Why am I failing now?
And yet, sitting here watching my counterpart collect money for the recently slaughtered cow, I realize berating myself is getting me nowhere. What is this thing I'm feeling? Overwhelmed? Yeah. Isolated? Definitely. But it's more than that; I'm drowning. Pinned under the weight of the next two years, which might as well be twenty. I tred to write out a schedule for the week, but that only further emphasized the point that I am here forever. And I didn't know what to write, what to do. Did I learn anything in training? Thanks a lot Mark Samples (trainer). My counterpart isn't exactly helping the situation either. He's said about seven words to me as I site here, being slowly hit by a twenty-four month-long train. Thanks a lot Florentino.
No, this is no one else's fault, no one else's problem. Pull yourself together Adam.
Maybe I should go visit Jessica, she's only twenty minutes away. No, be strong. Or at least, less weak.
Hmm, feeling strangly better, but I'm not sure why. Maybe things are going to be okay. Wait. Vibration in my pocket! Text message from a friend!

Wow, pretty pathetic. But there you have it. I'm here in David celebrating a friend's birthday, out of my site for the first time in two weeks. Next week, we start on the construction of my house. In fact, I'm kind of excited to go back.