Day 23

There’s was quite the buzz in town today. I was going to leave work when I see about half the town’s residents standing outside the hospital gates looking up. An electrical tower was being installed! There was a crane holding up the top metal piece trying to fit it into the bottom metal piece. Basically it was the shape football goal posts, cut in half horizontally. To make matters even more interesting there was a man hanging onto the top metal piece being moved by the crane. No harness of course, just hanging on like an acrobat. Well this is about as much entertainment as you can get, so I stood with my townspeople for an hour watching. The tiny, intricate movements to make the pieces fit together transfixed all of us. When it was complete and the man successfully touched the ground again, there was mild applause. I think he deserved more but it was a tough crowd. Then I started thinking, do these people know down-power-line safety? Baby steps in development. The best part was the buses trying to navigate through the crowd. We have one main road that I will call Main Street, even though it has no name that I’m aware of. Main Street runs through town and essentially dead ends for all intensive purposes in front of the hospital. Not many cars travel Main Street. A ton of bicycles with seats on the back like bicycle taxis and motos, a few minibuses and the occasional taxicab but for the most part we all just walk right down the middle of the road. Imagine the bus’ surprise when it comes upon the whole town standing in the middle of the road watching the crane. The best pop culture reference I could relate this to is the town from Gilmore Girls. We are definitely quirky, everyone knows everyone’s business, we are entertained by bizarre town happenings and we definitely have our share of characters.

I believe I failed to mention that from the time I first set eyes on my site during site visit until I moved in permanently four weeks later, my town became construction central. There is scaffolding EVERYWHERE. I don’t quite understand, unless they are changing things because of the electricity but I think we are funding a whole construction company. There is also new hope that my house really will get electricity, because I was told by Claudia that I live on the rich side of town. I’m keeping the dream alive!