15.6.06

villages

We just got back from going on another village trip today. It was much more successful than the last time. About the only info we came away with our last trip was that that particular village does not like Western women. As a lot of the towns around here are, it is a tourist town, and about the only women who would smile, much less talk to me, were tourists from the now sweltering capital. But today we went to a larger town south of us, and had a much better time. We first ate lunch in a local open air cafe (wow...that makes it sound a lot nicer than they typically are. Let's just say, while sitting there, I saw two roaches crawling on the walls) Since there's usually only a few places to sit in there, a man came and sat at our table with us, and husband struck up a conversation with him. He sat and lunched with us, and we made plans to meet up with him at his home next week when we return. This man even paid our bill for us when he left. Almost immediately two other men joined our table, and turns out, one man is Priya's first cousin. So he gave us his business card, and we left so others could sit. We finished off our trip by money walking, and left much more encouraged. At the moment, the MTs are in the village we went to last week, and hopefully since no women are with them, they are having better luck.

Also, a random thing happened. We stopped in a pharmacy on our money walking, and I looked on the shelf and saw husband's cologne! What are the chances? In the states, this cologne was tres expensive, as normal there, but at this obscure pharmacy, it was only $6! Ha! What a country.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow what a lucky break on the cologne! i think it is so cool how you guys can start up converstations with random strangers in another country...i hope that if i were in your situation i would have the courage to as well. i guess if you think about it, none of the strangers are very random...your boss has a reason for each of them. keep up your great work. miss you!

Sarah said...

How lucky for your that now husband can smell nice!

Anonymous said...

Just curious, but do guys there wear cologne? Also, do folks generally consider you guys to be "well off"?

Emily said...

Some of the guys wear cologne. Also no matter if it's true or not, the automatically assume that of us just because we're white. They have no qualms about cheating us because they think we can afford it. We had to learn the phrase, "Just because we're white doesn't mean we're rich."

Anonymous said...

I hope you will chronicle all this into book form at some point.

This thing would sell like hotcakes!

This story is amazing from start to whenever the finish is.

It would really be a page-turner.