Easter Egg Hunt

I know it has been a long time since I have used this blog, but here is another one of those Somehow-everything-always-works-out-even-if-in-unexpected-ways stories that are so common in Peace Corps.

When school let out on Thursday for the long weekend, my colleagues rushed to Rehoboth to spend the 4 days in town. Easter here merits two vacation days; the Friday preceding and the Monday following. I am fuzzy on the actual nomenclature of the Easter weekend; I know there is Good Friday, and Something Saturday, but I suspect Monday is not a holiday at all and rather just an excuse to have another four day week.

Since last week was the last week of the term, I spent it hunkered down in my classroom marking mountains of books and hunting children who, despite the 20 assignments I gave this quarter, had managed to be absent often enough to lack the requisite 4 assignments for my mark book (this happens every quarter and causes me such consternation that I dread the last week of the term more than any other week). So I elected to stay the weekend and regain my composure and hopefully make banana bread out of the mix my parents sent me.

In fact, the banana-bread-as-reward-for-dealing-with-moldy-brained-minors idea had so lodged in my head that on Thursday the first thing I did upon coming home from school was beeline for the kitchen and read the instructions on the box. The realization that the recipe called for eggs (which I do not have) almost motivated me to go to Rehoboth, until I realized that it was insane to travel 120 km for 3 eggs.

So somewhat ironically, my Easter weekend turned into a half-hearted search for eggs in Rietoog, which for a village with so many chickens certainly has an egg deficit.

On Sunday I hiked to the cell phone tower (which made me realize that climbing mountains has left me with a need for an OBJECTIVE, however silly). I did get fantastic reception the whole way though. I didn’t find any eggs, just some Dr. Seuss plants and a gecko which somehow hitched a ride back in my pack.

I tried a more traditional approach and went around asking people. At the bottle store, I met a couple who were building a lodge/rest camp inside Rietoog. The man is from Turkey, and showed off some of their desert camp innovations- a water tank equipped with magnifying lenses to heat water, another water tank that automatically refilled itself from a well when the water level dropped.

By this morning I had given up and was patiently waiting for my roommate to return from Rehoboth with my requested dozen eggs when the children with Easter baskets showed up. Turns out that last night when the Easter bunny came (strange, I know- here the Easter bunny is more like Santa Claus) a few of the eggs were labeled with my name. Now, chocolate eggs don’t have quite the egg-like properties required to make baked goods, but they do make a very satisfying breakfast. Maybe even as good as banana bread.

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