I think there are fleas in my bed. I'm laying here under a mosquito net with a headlamp on reading. Every now and then I can feel something jump off me. We're in the village still, the rainy season is running at full steam, sometimes it comes down so hard I get nervous the roof may cave in. Earlier this week there was a lightning strike so close that I sprinted out the back door into the rain. It sounded like a bomb went off. Shooting is plugging along, I think I've shot around 35 hours now. There's been a couple bloody accidents on the soccer field during games, some big arguments between teams and the ref, and it looks like the drama can only escalate as the season enters its final weeks.
I've done three or four more interviews with people surrounding the team and some of them have dropped some heavy dope about life here. One of the most interesting things I've noticed is how well some people understand the predicaments they're in. The assistant coach/team doctor is a subsistence farmer with no farming equipment or pack animals, but he has a clinical understanding of the economic forces at play in his life. It doesn't make common sense to sit with a guy in his mud brick house with a grass roof who can talk like Jeffrey Sachs.
A couple weeks ago I noticed a little bump on my back that itched. It didn't look like much so I let it go, but it kept getting bigger and itchier. One of the local guys took a look at it and it turned out to be a botsi fly. They lay their eggs in damp clothing. I must have put a shirt on before it was completely dry and the eggs got into my skin. One on my chest and two on my back. Issac is one of the soccer players from the team, guy has fingers like pliers. He squeezed out three little maggots, nasty but harmless. I could feel the biggest one working on me, moving around in there so it was a relief to get them out.
Tomorrow we'll make the long drive out of the valley to town, I'm excited to eat meat and drink a fanta. This next cycle of shooting I hope to get further in with a few of the women I'm following, one is HIV positive and taking ARVs. To talk to her you think her life is easy, but she's got six kids no husband and farms for survival. The ARVs are a pretty new thing here, 18 months ago when I visited they weren't available, so its a profound development.