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7 February – Kossouka, 8:31pm

It's been getting hard to force myself out the door some days. I don't mind going to the CSPS if I can hide in the vaccination room and work on French or Moore, but facing people just seems more than I can take right now. I know I'm not doing myself any favors, but I just feel like I need more language before I can even begin to approach anyone who doesn't speak decent French, and without a tutor I'm just not making any progress whatsoever. I need to set goals for myself, things to do. Small is good to start, but there has to be something.

Things I could do now: track down the adjoint priest, track down the family with the screened windows, go to the library, go sit with the CoGES president, talk with the woman from Terre des Hommes, talk with people in the marche, visit the mayor and prefet, go on bike rides through the village, buy cloth and get local clothing made.

Things I can do with help: visit the chief and chief de terre, go on vaccination sorties, take tours of other villages, take tours of our village, talk to CoGES about the PACA tools and enlist their help in implementing them, find out what community groups work in Kossouka, ask what the Agents de Sante do in each village, meet the inspecteur and take tours of all of the schools.

Things I can do when I have a little more Moore: talk with the women in the maternity, read Moore books, talk with kids and teens, start developing sensibilization materials, get a better idea of what people see as health problems here and what I can do to help.

Steps I need to take to do these: get out of my house, ask my CSPS staff for protocol surrounding surprise visits to people and greetings as I bike by (do I stop? Do I just wave?), ask for help finding a tutor

Huh. Now that I've written it all out, I guess there's a lot of little steps I can take now without waiting for my Moore to improve. Cool. Sunyata was right, sometimes you need a list, but sometimes you have to understand that you won't get it all done, that sometimes each thing takes an infinite number of steps. That said, I can't allow myself to become as passive as I've been. It's going to happen with time, but if I don't try at all I'll never get anywhere. I've been complaining that my Moore isn't improving, and it isn't, but now it's time to do something about it. I've been complaining that I don't have many friends and I'm not well integrated, but now it's time to leave my house and do something about it. As we said – a house is built brick by brick, but one cannot build up those bricks into a solid house if one doesn't get off one's behind to form the bricks in the first place.