down in the valley

Cunen is in a valley ringed by mountains. It has its distinct advantages, one of which is a marked temperature difference from the higher mountain towns where it is only warm in the middle of the day when the sun is out. For the last two weeks it has been like living in a bowl of clouds. The sun has been out three days in the last two weeks and only one of those days did it stay out for long. The clouds drift in and sit, making it impossible to see past the lower mountains surrounding us.
I have always felt the effects of a lack of sunlight pretty quickly; after a few days with no sunshine it is much harder to get out of bed in the morning and I have very little energy throughout the day. The cold that has accompanied this rainy spell makes it that much harder to get out and do things. The only time I am warm is if I am hiking around, or in bed with lots of wool blankets. I haven't felt sad during this stretch of clouds and rain but it does sometimes feel like living in a dream world that is somewhere between waking and sleeping.
To cheer myself up and try to still accomplish things I make lots of hot tea, read online news to remind myself that the world outside of the cloud bowl still exists, and listen to Stevie Wonder-- I think it's literally impossible to listen to Stevie and not feel at least a little bit happier. I've also been reading a lot, as always, but because the rain has caused a lot of landslides that keep me from leaving home I have had an usually large amount of free time. I recently read The Feast of the Goat, about the Trujillo era in the Dominican Republic. It was a nicely layered story with good characters and lots of real Dominican history. I also read The Help, Year of Wonders, The 40 Rules of Love, The Hunger Games and am currently reading The Last Novel. Those are just the books I've read in the last two weeks. It has been rather nice, but I am hoping that the rain holds off and I can get back to work soon.
My sitemates have been doing mostly the same, we all share books and when we get tired of solitary activities we get together and cook. Melissa and Nicole both really like baking, so I have been eating more than my fair share of cinnamon rolls, cookies and scones. We were on Standfast for about a week, which means we cannot leave our community, and Melissa changed it to StandFEAST which describes pretty accurately what we've been doing. I get tired of sweet stuff after a while and crave salt and veggies so I've made sure we eat at least one regular meal a day with vegetables in it.

There have been a few days where the rain held off for long enough to safely get to the communities where I work. I have been pleasantly surprised by the commitment of the health promoters I am training. The groups have shrunk with time, but the people who are still attending the health talks are genuinely interested in helping their communities. Volunteerism is not as big here as in the states, so convincing people to sign up for a program where they will be doing health education for free was rather difficult. Now, after almost a year of working with the different groups I have three health promoter groups in three different communities. One only has three members, but they are really involved and have already given several health talks independently, even on days where I had to be somewhere else working. Another group has about six or seven promoters that show up regularly to meetings and they have been invaluable in doing all the house visits necessary before completing the SPA application. It has also been a great bonding experience to hike all over the mountains together visiting houses and joking and sharing our snacks. We even joke and laugh together, which I wasn't really expecting since they are from a very small, reserved community that is not hostile but definitely not warm to outsiders. In another community there is a group of eight to ten people that come to the trainings but its been a while since we had one. They live in one of the harder to get to communities and the road gets washed out when the rain is bad.
I was able to skype my friend Peter, who is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon, earlier today. It has been a really interesting experience staying in touch and comparing experiences. It's a great support to have someone that understands many of the frustrations of PC life (there are a lot of shared experiences, but also many differences) and its a reminder of how different each posting is. Signing up for Peace Corps, you don't really know where they're going to send you and my experience would be drastically different if I were living somewhere else. I am happy that I am where I am.