Waiting

I’m hot and sweaty. Granted, that is the state I am in most of the time. This time, I’m also sore. We’ve come to Lethem to pick up our grant (yay!) which we did on Wednesday and proceeded to spend the money on red ribbons, art supplies, candies, and other materials for our World AIDS Day project. Thursday we began looking for a ride and on Friday and today, we’ve been sitting outside by the road leading South. We start about 7:30am and sit around til about 3pm, I’ve just left at 4:30pm. We perch in front of a store where most vehicles stop before leaving town, to pick up a few beverages and snacks for the road, perhaps fix a few things under the hood, and head out. There are many villages south of Lethem, Aishalton is one of the furthest, so it is fairly difficult to get to. There aren’t many vehicles, and few vehicles make the trip south unless they have a darn good reason because the road is so terrible.

So far, we’ve waited about 3 days to find a ride once we really start looking. It just makes for long days: waking up early, cleaning up the apartment, downing some coffee and lugging our packs a mile to the store. There, we begin our campout, perching on a concrete wall, shifting uncomfortably from cheek to cheek all day. Today, I finished a book. Sometimes we walk around. But basically, it’s a day of sitting around, looking for a truck, Bedford, or tractor headed to Aishalton. All the other trucks, not headed to Aishalton, drive by all day, kicking up the red dust which lands all over us and our stuff.

Tomorrow we try again.