Back from Tana (the capital)--Aug. '08

**whew** Corie's dad again after a long 'blackout' period. I FINALLY got into her blog after Google changed stuff and her password didn't work. So this is from back in August... lots has happened since then. Here goes: after this training she's back to Tana then back to her village. All is quiet as families have very little money. It's between the rice harvests so prices are up and the weather is bad...hard times. Corie is gaining some level of respect in her village. She is also looking for her OWN rice field and in the meantime, helping others plant using the double-yield method she was taught by PC. Some in the village think she's a witch because she does things differently than they have done for thousands of years. Her pet cat (unnamed as of yet) is not really happy at home. The rats in her hut are bigger than this kitten so its not much of a deterrent, and the kittie doesn't like it when Corie leaves for the day. Corie's legs were infected with the common microbes and pretty swollen, so she was forbidden to go into the rice fields and urged to keep her legs dry. she's taking antibiotics prescribed by the PC doctor, so they are finally starting to work.
She attended a friends 're-burial' ceremony. A big deal over there. On a five-year anniversary of a death the body is exhumed with a ritual and then the bones are cleaned and re-wrapped with much ceremony. The bones are then placed in a small cement box above ground. This ceremony took all day and it rained the entire time. The family brought huge buckets of cooked rice and large banana leaves for plates and spoons. After the ceremony, they fed hundreds of people this way.