Scorpions, Christmas, and Rapists... Oh My!

So, this past week has had a higher number of firsts than usual for me.

I got bedbugs, which SUCKS. I had like 20 bites across the back of my calf, and another 10 or so on my foot, and bedbug bites start small, then swell up like little tumors, then turn weird and purple, and itch like hell the whole week or so they last. I DOOMed the hell out of my bed and blankets and sheets etc. and killed the motherfudgers.

Then when I was at language lessons I was standing on the stoop to my teachers house, and the thatch roof overhangs a bit, and I bumped my head against it a couple times for no particular reason, then stepped off the stoop and felt something fall into my boot (the boot goes about 1/2way up my calf) and I thought it was thatch so I reach and and holyshitmotherfuckerbitchasshoebag my finger hurt!!! so I took off my shoe and a scorpion fell out! it hurt SO BAD> the tip of my finger was stabbing, and there were shooting pains going down the rest of my hand. it got better like half an hour later after I took advil. but the rest of the day the whole finger felt like pins and needles when I touched it. (I was poking my finger a lot and giggling about the funny feeling). This happened Christmas eve. We played a game called smackDOWN in Sesotho class, which was meant to be a friendly competition with the trainees from the next village but quickly devolved into all the language trainers screaming and arguing and yelling smackDOWN! smackDOWN! over and over in a hilarious basotho accent. we trainees had no fun whatsoever though. it was so stressful and stupid. so afterwards we had breakfast for brunch, I made banana pancakes, mad made AWESOME cinnamon rolls and we also had this potato onion egg cheese bake thing and hung out and had a great time.

Then it was Christmas! I made “peach cobbler” a.k.a. peach goo, that looked funny, especially after i dropped it, but my ninja skills (i've been honing them) allowed me to catch the pot right before it hit the ground. but teh sideways flight caused all the topping to get mixed into teh runny (no cornstarch) peaches. but it still tasted good. everyone made amazing food and we all got together in one of the classrooms of the primary school and ate and drank and it was so much fun. and my presents I made for everyone were a HUGE hit. I made these “peace corps trading cards” one for each person, with a cartoon of them on the front, and something I associate with them in the background, and I gave everyone an element (earth air fire water) that made up the border of the pic. Then on the back they had “stats” there were attack and defense stats, and also stats appropriate to the person and different on each card like “inappropriate question asking ability” or “bullshit production” “underwearlessness” etc. etc. The whole group loves them and wants copies of everyone elses and stuff. I’m really glad, because I had these visions in my head of everyone being like “…so… what do I do with this?” but that didn’t happen. I also got a lot of semi-surprised "so you're like, a real artist... i always thought you just doodled" which i'm not sure what that means, because i do just doodle. i don't "do art" or whatever...

oh and I have a Christmas story: so a week or so ago when I was hanging out with village friends and the song white Christmas came on the radio (they are super into Christmas carols here. ugh.) the two girls giggled and looked at me funny, so I was like “hay you whats yer prob,” and they were like, “well, that song… about white people” and giggled again, and then I was confused. then lightbulb, they thought white Christmas meant white people Christmas. because Here Christmas comes in the summer. there is no snow. so I had to explain about winter time and wishing for snow. I’m not sure they fully believed me, about the song or about the fact that in America Christmas is in wintertime, like they didn't understand how teh same day, at the same time, it's summer here and winter there. I was not in the mood to try to explain these concepts, so i left them in their ignorance (woo! i'm a born teacher.)

So then Christmas night I went to sleep all snug in my bedat around 10 pm (which is super late and crazy here, for me at least). a while later, I was woken up by a bang, and I looked up and my window was open, and I was all groggy and like “wha? must be the wind” so I got up to close it. (the window was held shut only by a crappy little bent nail that you rotated, so I wasn’t surprised it opened on its own) and then I went back to bed. (p.s. here in Lesotho, the nighttime is DARK. like solid pitch black no light whatsoever) and as I was turning over onto my side, a hand came out of nowhere and pinned my wrist down, and I screamed. Then the hands closed over my throat and cut off my scream and choked me, and I tried to push him away, but I don’t know how hard, because I couldn’t breathe for so long, and I don’t even know if my vision was going black because it was all the same black if I closed my eyes or opened them. and I know the man’s face was inches from mine, I could feel his breath, but I couldn’t see him, just solid blackness. and I couldn’t thrash, my neck was so well pinned down, so I punched him in the side of the head over and over, finally I got both feet together with my knees and hips bent and pushed him off me with both feet. and I tried to scream and only a rattle came out. and I kicked him again and got a breath and screamed. but the noise that came out of me was not a sound i've ever heard, or could really describe. it was, I don’t know, this hoarse pterodactyl howl, this unreal noise. He got freaked out ( don’t think he was expecting me to fight so much) and opened the door and ran out and I kept howling as I locked the door and checked the window and found my flashlight so I could see, and got a big chopping knife and sat on the bed attempting to do deep breaths. after some time, I have no idea if it was 30 seconds or 10 minutes, a knock came at my door and I just howled again. then a minute or so later another knock came and it was my ‘M’e and my brother, I just screamed, and then I opened the door for them and I lost my deep breathing and hyperventilated a little, trying to mime what happened because neither of them speak any English. and they kept saying (in Sesotho) there is no man here, we don’t see a man. your window is closed a man could not have gotten in. And I couldn’t handle trying to reason with them or convince them, I just kept repeating my broken ass Sesotho version of what happened. Then my ‘me brought in a blanket and slept on my floor for the rest of the night (this all happened around midnight). But every time she heard me sniffle, she yelled at me to go to sleep. All I wanted was to turn on my flashlight and make the darkness stop, and to cry and cry. I couldn’t sleep. I laid in bed clutching my flashlight and trying desperately to see through the darkness, and trying to cry silently until it got light at about 4am and I finally fell asleep. She got up and left at about 5. I got up, drank a nalgene full of water, then puked it all up. Then I sat and waited for someone to come find me, and tried to keep deep breaths, so I wouldn’t fall out of control. Thank god Madeline thought we had language at 8:30 so she came to get me for class, and I told her what happened and she ran to the language trainers house. The trainer had “heard about it” I guess. My ‘me had gone over there that morning and told her I had a nightmare. then the chain of whatever was set into play, and the country director (big head boss of Lesotho peace corps) came and got me and took me to the capital to stay in the volunteer transit house. I got to take Madeline with me for moral support.

I’ve been staying in the T-house since. I got my voice back by the end of teh next day, and could eat again (at first it hurt my throat to swallow food.) I can’t sleep, I can’t lay down in a dark room. disembodied hands keep coming out to strangle me, and the crazy hoarse howling noise I made keeps echoing in my mind. They gave me unidentified pills to help me sleep, but I still can’t get it out of my head when I’m awake. They’ve filed reports with the chief of the village, the police, the pc director for central/south Africa, pc headquarters in wash. dc, and aren’t using that village anymore for training. There’s no way to catch him, I couldn’t see anything, except when he was silhouetted in the doorway running away I saw his head was shaved. which doesn’t help at all really, because 80% of basotho men keeps their heads shaved. I don’t really know what to do with all of this. my co trainees have been very supportive, but they kind of look at me like they aren't sure what to do around me or say to me. On teh morning after christmas when i was being taken to the capital they found out and some cried i guess and it was a big thing, and i've gotten a few cards and notes of encouratement, etc. but I keep thinking about what if I ran away back home to portland. I’ve been wondering why I’m here since I got here. Before I left, I had a few excuses for when other people asked why I was doing peace corps, but really I never had a good reason for myself. I just did it. I don’t want to leave yet, because that would be giving up. I want to be stronger than that. I haven’t even seen my actual site yet (which will have burglar bars on the windows and door). I want to see what it’s really like living in Lesotho, not just during training. At least for now I have 3 floor to ceiling bookcases full of SO MANY BOOKS, it’s super awesome, and there’s an incredible movie library at the t-house (transit house), too. I’ve been averaging about 3 movies a day, because I can’t sleep, but I’m too tired to concentrate on reading anything except old celeb gossip magazines from august that other volunteers have gotten in the mail. There’s a big ‘end of community based training’ feast tomorrow. they’re going to slaughter a cow and have traditional dancing and everything, and I’d like to see it in theory, but I can’t bear to go back. Every man with a shaved head will freak me out, and also the whole village has heard my story so they’ll all be staring at me (even more than usual). and I don’t think I would be able to go through it and not cry. So I’m going to sit around the t-house and wait for all the other trainees to come back to maseru (the capital, where I am) in the afternoon, and have them tell me about it.
If I want to talk to a therapist or anything, I have to do it by phone with some random person in Washington d.c. which I really don’t want to do. I hate talking on the phone forever, and I don’t like therapists as a rule, anyway. But I’m not sure how to deal with this, or how to make the repeating flashbacks of the night stop. Just time I guess.

Once more, and forever more, i love you all so so much, and miss you now more than ever.