A Day in the Life

A lot of people think that Peace Corps is filled with world-changing activities like saving HIV+ babies or building schools every day, but my days are more or less the same, and, when it comes down to it, pretty boring. My friend Elaina in Benin (who is my 2012 application twin) wrote about a day in her life and so I thought I’d let everyone know what I do on a day to day basis.

6:30AM: My alarm goes off. I hit snooze.

7:00AM: Unwillingly get out of bed. I was never quite the morning person.

(Note: this is a non-school-day schedule. On days where I go to school to teach English, I’m out of bed by 6:30 at the latest and at school by 7:00. I’ve decided recently, though, that since my work at the health center is picking up and I’ve already made enough student contacts at the school, I’m just going to stop going to the school to teach and instead concentrate all of my mornings at the health center.)

7:30AM: By now I have washed, dressed, and put on mosquito spray. I hop on my bike and ride the 500 meters to the market to have breakfast. Breakfast in the village, 99% of the time, consists of bon chaiu, the omelet-but-not-an-omelet dish I described in one of the previous posts. After breakfast, I scavenge around the fried treats section of the market and usually end up buying some fried bananas or fried sweet potatoes to take to the health center with me.

7:50AM: I get to the health center, sweating through my shirt. I spend a few minutes standing outside in the shade trying to cool down and staring back at the people who are staring at me. Usually this is early enough that I have a few minutes to cool down before any of the nurses show up, but lately they’ve been earlier than usual so at this time someone is already there writing prescriptions.

7:53AM: “Stine, open medicine!” A direct translation, it means to fill prescriptions. My supervisor waves me into the (hot, windowless) medicine room and I begin to deal with the countless people waving their prescriptions in my face. Sometimes there are enough nurses there to fill this role without my help, but as of late there haven’t been since the prescription lady just had a baby. Before she had her baby, I sat in the ante-natal care room and helped with checkups.

9:30AM: Things usually start to slow down (unless it’s Monday, and there are prescriptions waving in my face until about 10:30). Sometimes there will be a cool event like a birth or two (I recently watched one where the woman’s vagina was too small for the baby’s head to pass through so they cut the perineum and then sewed her back up. Rough) or a minor surgery but most days it’s easy. A few patients trickle in from now until closing.

11:00AM: Bike home. Sweat. Sweat. Sweat. Sweat.

11:10AM: Cold bucket shower. Sweat.

11:30AM: Lunch. Sweat.

12:00N: English class with my little sister and cousins! They are all around 10 years old and god bless their hearts for trying, but they don’t really know much. I usually spend a week going over the same 5 vocabulary words.  This week it’s been to be verbs and which ones are used with which pronouns. On Sunday we play games, like Red Light Green Light, or Simon Says.

1:00PM: Hunger. Eat a mango off our tree. Cry because I picked the wrong one and it’s so sour. Check email. Browse blogs. Hang out and help with my grandma’s sugar-cane water stand out front. Sometimes do laundry. Chill in our hammock. Read magazines and books and contemplate ripping pages out and showing them to my tailor to make replicas for me.

4:00PM: Some days I go to the high school and meet with my after-school kids. Recently, we met to do the world map. Now that we finished, it’s back to our average English speaking practice sessions. On the days I don’t go to the high school, I work out: 15 minute jog, 20 minutes of sprints, 15 minute jog back, then strength exercises.

5:30PM: Shower. SWEAT. Hop back online to find things to teach my evening kids.

6:30PM: English/Health/Culture class with my evening kids. They’re between 12-14 years old, and their abilities range from really good English to not so good English. I rely on the really good kids to help with the not so good kids. So far we’ve covered a variety of fairy tales and Taylor Swift songs, and this week I’m retelling a jazzed up version of the ghost story Bloody Mary.

7:30PM: Dinner. Sweat.

8:00PM: Email. Facebook. Blogs. Gchat.

9:00PM: Electricity is out so I’m in bed under my mosquito net, listening to music or talking on the phone or watching an episode or two of The Big Bang Theory.

9:45PM: Asleep, sweating.

Repeat x 27 months. Peace Corps in a nutshell.