Flies + Real Housewives

So this is just a short post but when I was applying for the Peace Corps I always wondered what some of the hardest challenges were going to be when you actually become a volunteer. Now that I’ve been one for about seven months I think it’s safe for me to draw my own conclusions. This may sound ridiculous and I never thought this would be my biggest challenge but if it was one thing I would have to say it’s the flies. I can handle the food, the culture, the walking, everything but the worst thing (in my opinion) about this country are the flies. Unfortunately I can only describe them and I have a picture below but unless you experience them for yourself you really can’t imagine what it’s like. I just remember being in America and even if there’s a single fly inside a restaurant it makes a lot of people unhappy – here there are scores of them buzzing around you constantly landing on your food or your body. Occasionally there are some that land on your nose, eyelashes or lips just for a split second just to really make you loathe them. Also if you have an open wound (even just a scratch) they are all over that, like white on rice, or flies on rice because it’s pretty much the same thing.

In America there are a lot of TV shows about house wives and following their daily lives, if anyone of them had to walk in the shoes of an Ambae mama for just a day I’m sure they wouldn’t be able to cope. These women or “mama’s” as they’re called work harder than anyone I’ve seen. Because this is a male dominated society it’s the women who has to do most of the work such as cleaning the house, taking care of the children and cooking all of the food for just some examples. They work quite hard and I just am amazed a little by coming from a country where men and women are equals and coming here it’s like taking a step back in time. Hopefully one day soon women will be treated with more respect by most of the men here, oh well that’s all for now, ta.