Daily Life in Africa

In some ways, daily life in Africa is the same as the good ole US of A. I get up every morning, head to work, eat out for lunch, and look at Facebook everyday. But a lot of things are taking some getting used to. For example, I will forevermore be infinitely more grateful for washing machines. To wash clothes here you must:

1. Get 5 buckets of water



2. Fill 4 with soap



3. Put whites in 1 and colors in another



4. Scrub every inch of an article of clothing



5. Rinse and Ring



6. Put it in the next bucket of soapy water and Repeat steps 4-5



7. Put it in a bucket with no soap and repeat steps 4-5



8. Hang to dry



9. Iron when dry

Something else I'm not yet used to is not having power. Rainy season started last week and we only get a couple of hours of power a day. There is no air conditioning, but no power means no fans, no water, no refrigerator, no lights, no internet. In short, if you have a flashlight you can read or play games (we play a lot of cards!) I didn't take a shower for 3 days simply because we didn't have water. Last night, I FINALLY got a cold shower! If you want a hot shower, you have to ask the man at the compound to turn on the hot water, but he had already left when the power came back on last night. With the power shortage, it is also becoming more difficult to find things to eat. I'm weary to eat meat if it has not been refigerated properly so I'm quickly becoming a vegetarian. It sounds terrible, but everyone here is so used to it, it doesn't seem like a problem at all. I'm worried about when the rains REALLY come and we can't sit outside anymore and we can't keep the windows open for the breeze. Everyone spends so much time outside here, I think it will be really oppressive. We'll see!

Another thing that I'm still getting used to is depending on public transport to get everywhere. I've never depended so heavily on strangers to get me to where I need to be and always needing cash to get around. There are 3 types of taxis here. Green taxis are tourist taxis and charge about 400D ($16), yellow and green taxis are town taxis that take you by yourself anywhere you want for 25-100D ($1-$4) and yellow and green taxis with a taxi sign on top are taxis with little routes and carry lots of people at a time for 7D (28 cents). If you take those taxis you may have to take several to get where you want. But I can take one to work. Its taken me a long time to tell the diffence between a town taxi and a taxi for 7D, but now I think I got it down.

In other news, I got a kitten this weekend that is absolutely wonderful! The ticket guy at the soccer game let me hold her and then told me to keep her. So I did! She looks about 1 month old and is still drinking milk, but she is very playful and sweet. Everyone loves her!

Work has gotten much better. I have lots of projects to keep me busy. Most of them are research studies and I probably cannot leave the office for liability reasons. So I'm just looking at a lot of data all day. Its not exactly what I had in mind, but I may look for other volunteer opportunities to do when I'm not working.

I'm trying to upload pictures everyday to Facebook. Feel free to check it out! Thats all. Have a wonderful day and enjoy your electricity!!