Crisp morning in Africa

I wrote this a while ago but never got around to posting it. I travel across Burkina Faso tomorrow to visit my permanent site. It is a small village very close to the border with the Ivory Coast. I officially will have no electricity.

Here is what I wrote a few weeks ago...

My watch in my room, resting in front of the fan, read a chilly 92 degrees at 6 AM this morning. There were a few brown outs last night, and during those times, I can’t comprehend how others are able to get by without a fan. The coolest moments are when the electricity kicks back on as the moving air cooled the pools of sweat on my body that were able to accumulate in the stagnant air. These super cool moments last about 5 minutes. I’m trying to decide if these extra cool moments are worth the incredibly hot stretches of still air. I’ll let you know if I ever make up my mind.

Let me tell you about the laundry. Sunday is laundry and cleaning day. To start, I still have scabs on the tops of my fingers below my finger nails from all of the scrubbing I did last Sunday. Two weeks’ worth of I laundry were build up last Sunday, so desormais, it should not be as bad. Here is how the story. I told my younger sister to show me how to do the laundry. She said first I need to go buy soap. She took me across the street to these two kids who were selling nothing but soap. A small bag of powdered detergent and a big bar of soap cost 350 CFA. (Pronounced SAYFUH). 500 CFA is one dollar, so the in total the two things of soap cost 70 cents. An avocado sandwich costs 300 CFA, a bowl of rice with sauce and a bowl of spaghetti both cost 500 CFA, a coke costs 450, and a beer costs 600. We are given 1500 per day during training. I am well under budget if I don’t get a drink and only eat the sandwich avocat.

However, a few times a week I go get a beer or two after class, buy 1000 CFA calling cards (which literally last less than 5 minutes if I call the states), go to the internet café which is 400 CFA per hour, and buy my host family treats. My 105 degree water just wasn’t doing the trick yesterday after class. I asked my sister and brother if they wanted a cold drink. Of course they agreed. The yaccompanied me to the Alimentation – the Burkina version of a 7-eleven. I bought two bags of water (deux sache d’eau) and three cans of coke, two for my siblings and one for my host mom. They didn’t know how to open the cans, so, at the very least, cold crisp coke is a rare treat for them. The bags of water are the cheapest way to get a cold drink. They are square bags that fit in your hand similar in size to a full sandwich sized plastic back. They are uniformly sealed on all sides so biting a corner is the ticket to a mouthful of cold water.