patience and flexibilty

Patience and flexibility... that is what Peace Corps told me I would need as I moved to site and attempted to integrate into my community. Well, everything has been going wonderfully here. Of course there have been moments where this new found well of patience was tapped near dry, whether it was because of language barrier, hearing the same misconceptions of America over and over or just simple misunderstandings/miscommunications. This doesn´t happen so much anymore. "Spera um bocadinho" (wait a moment... more appropriately translated as "wait a week or so, you know, until I´m ready") has become a part of every day life.

Brittany and I finally got a light put in our kitchen. Yes, that’s right, a little over 6 months living in this lovely concrete block that we call home, and we can finally cook after the sun goes down without running into the hall to look at everything. There is basically no one on the island that is a trained electrician. This one little guy told us in the beginning that he would install a light for us, we just needed to get the fixture and whatnot. We promptly did so (I’m pretty sure we had it all ready and waiting by our third week here) and have been waiting ever since. He supposedly stopped by a bunch of times when we weren’t here, and also conveniently managed to never show up when we scheduled times. After 2 months, we got used to it and kind of forgot about it, but then we began running into him in the strangest places. Whenever we went into the city to hang out, or, recently, we went to a zone further up the crater, he would somehow magically appear. He would smile and say hello and let us know that he hadn’t forgotten and that he has our number saved in his phone as “americanas” (I saw it for myself one time), but then he would just as quickly disappear.

Anyway, he has been working for this guy up the street and the other day Brittany and I were bringing in water when he zipped by on his little scooter. When he saw us he turned around and greeted us and asked if we still had the fixture. Of course the obvious answer is yes, after all, we had been waiting for him for six months. Sarcasm aside, he came in, did some crazy little leprechaun hop up onto our bedong (barrel in our kitchen that we fill with water), played with some wires, made much more of a mess than I would have thought possible, then hopped down 5 minutes later and we had light in our kitchen. A handshake and grateful smile later, 6 months of waiting, cooking, cleaning and washing dishes in the dark was over in just moments. He let out a little toot as he took off on his scooter and one more piece of the puzzle fell into place.


We are now working on doors... (don´t hold your breath)