Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Dark times and tractor inventions

Tuesday was definitely a day of new experiences. On my first trip to sparsley populated Inner Troms on my first day of my Redd Barna volunteer career, I became an expert on Angola, realized that children make the funniest remarks and ask the hardest questions, discovered that chicken cooked in peanut butter tastes quite...good actually (!), and got my first experience of what the dark months will actually feel like. Ok, I’ll take it step by step..

I got up at 5.40 (Zzzzzzz) this morning, after hitting the snooze button only once. The mission: to go to Bardu with Rachel (my roommate, classmate and fellow Redd Barna volunteer) and Bjørn-Richard (Redd Barna boss) to teach the children in schools there about how children in Kosovo and Angola live. This was mine and Rachel’s first of hopefully many fun and interesting school visits. The kids were so cute, and asked so many interesting, but also hard questions. Where were tractors invented? Uhm, sorry.. don’t know.. But the kids also made us chicken cooked in peanut butter, apparantly an Angolan speciality, which – believe it or not – was really, really good. Also, I had another new experience: learning by doing is probably the (scariest but) best way to learn. I never tought I would admit... So, all in all, I guess – mission: successful.

On the way home, I realized what I have feared for some time now. The Dark Months are sneaking up on me faster than I care to think of. And it’s DARK! Darker then I could imagine. We were driving, I was tired, and it got darker and darker outside the car. Finally, it was like driving into a big, black bag. Naturally, I thought – it’s getting late. So imagine my shock when I looked at the time: 3.20 PM!!! And it will only get darker from here.. ah.. that’ll be interesting.

Where tractors were invented I could probably find out somewhere. But why one kid thought that clay huts with grass roof might work in Bergen but not in Bardu, I guess I will never quite figure out.

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