Author Archives: John Mark

Posting 06-Mar-2012   We had a fun weekend.  I never would have imagined that my stay in Africa would have included playing drums in a band at a bar!  One of my favorite hobbies is the drums, inspired heavily by my brother Dave.  He is one of my favorite drumming idols, and he would have … Continue reading »

It’s already getting to the end of  February.  To me, that means a few things.   First it means that we will have been in Africa for more than 5 months.   WOW.  It seems like just a month ago that we arrived here at our sites.  Time is really flying by fast, as we … Continue reading »

OK, so it’s Superbowl Sunday, about 1 hour before game time (Chicago time) and I’ve had some great plans to meet up with some ex-pat pilot friends of mine in the nearest city on Monday (tomorrow my time) night and watch a re-run of the Superbowl at their house.  An hour or so ago I got a … Continue reading »

Hello everyone!  Sorry I haven’t written for a while.  Partly just very busy and partly about settling into a bit more of a daily routine that doesn’t have quite as many new exciting adventures as our first 4 months in Africa.   Our whole PC group just got together for a week of training and for the most … Continue reading »

Last of the training and on to work:  We have officially ended our community assessment period and are now supposed to start our work as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV).  At the end of the two month assessment period the PC called us all back to review our assessments and agree on what projects we will … Continue reading »

A few people have asked me recently about what I have been up to lately and I realized I have not written a post for a while.  Life is going by quickly here, with the only thing  slowing it down a bit is the little contact I have with  friends and family back home.  As many know, we just installed … Continue reading »

School:  While it wasn’t great arriving at the school the last two weeks before the summer break, it is very nice to be here for the beginning of the year.  I was happy to see that most of the windows and doors had been fixed at the school.  A great deal of the trash and litter was … Continue reading »

 School officially starts tomorrow, but there were several teachers meetings last week.  Many good things happened in these meetings. Their education continues:  There was a teacher’s strike last year that closed down the schools for nearly two months and the teachers got almost no concession from the government.  They were very bitter and extremely demoralized at … Continue reading »

I was awakened this morning at 9:30 am (after already having been awakened the usual daily 10 times starting at 4:00 am by giant roosters 10 feet from our windows) by Carol screaming for help!  I jumped out of bed into ½ inch of water.  The only words I could heard her yell were flood, … Continue reading »

We have recently been free enough to start enjoying our evenings and we are noticing the remarkable way the day departs so kindly, gracefully into night.  It seems it is our reward for making it through the daytime baking sun. The sky turns all sorts of different colors,that are not often seen in America, every … Continue reading »