Ampihoarana: Day 4

Day four, the countdown has commenced. Sunday morning is spent watching two chickens get killed for lunch and sitting through two hours of church conducted entirely in Malagasy. It bothers me that I can convey four hours of time in one sentence. 70 hours remaining in Ampihoarana… not that I’m counting or anything.

70 hours = 3 nights (9 hours of sleep/night)

70 – 27 = 43 hours of waking time

43 hours = 7 seated meals (1 hour/meal)

43 – 7 = 36 hours

1.5 hours to go see Roland for the meeting in the middle of the stay

1 hour for a shower

2.5 hours to complete homework

6 hours of siesta-ing (or lying awake because I can’t sleep when all I do is sit and eat)

= 12 hours of occupied time

36 – 12 = 24 hours of total downtime a.k.a. staring at walls and chickens

OH MY GOD

I start to catalogue my belongings to kill time. I’ll spare you the list because it’s unnecessary. But the children come into my “room” and are watching me catalogue my belongings, which feels wrong because they have nothing, so I stop.

The children passive aggressively get me to go on a walk because they sit in my room and stare at me. We take the soccer ball and walk to a basketball court. Everyone in the village gathers. A couple of the older kids try to shoot the soccer ball into the basket.

Oh dear Lord.

I feel an obligation to try to teach them how to play basketball, which might sound really funny given my basketball skills, or lack there of, but I’m not sure that they’ve ever had a ball to play with before. There is like zero hand-eye coordination which is really interesting.

I feel kind of proud of myself after simply showing them how not to shoot with two hands and how to shoot with arch rather than chucking the ball in a straight line at the hoop and they actually start making shots. It was cute. I imagined my brother being in heaven, having the opportunity to teach a whole village how to play basketball because that’s kind of his thing, not so much mine. I eventually have to leave because I’m getting very sunburnt.

Later that afternoon…

OMG PLEASE. STOP. WATCHING. ME. I’m not doing anything. I’m sitting and staring at a wall. And they, not the children this time, but fully grown adults are sitting and watching me. That is the afternoon.

CABIN FEVER.

I’m cranky and all I can hear is the buzzing of flies. Ah!

Vasha vasha vasha vasha

I would trade a dozen stink bugs per fly. I would also take spiders. They mind their own business, for the most part.