A day in the life

I don’t think I will lose weight this summer because I am eating like a king. For breakfast, my mom serves me a fried egg baguette sandwich. I use coffee from your French press to wash it down. All of us go out to restaurants for our lunch break. So far I have tried rice with a tomato sauce, rice with a peanut sauce, spaghetti with the same tomato sauce, cuscus with the same peanut sauce, and an sandwich avocet. Of all people you should know that I am a happy man if I can fill my stomach for less than a dollar. My mom cooks me a good dinner, consisting of mostly the same dishes, but I get a sliced mango for dessert.

As I said before, the vast majority of food here is starches and oils. I take pride in my stomach strength, but even I feel the effects of the drastic change. It’s actually not the drastic if you consider I have been eating dc food and cheesy double beef burritos from taco bell the last four years of my life. To get off the subject of my bowel movements, it has been the topic of most of the conversations here since many people are having troubles in this area. For the time being, I am not.

So let me describe my room as if to put you here right beside me. I am sitting on the edge of my bed with my mosquito net brushing against my back. The fabric of the net is much closer to plastic than to cloth. I may look into buying a nicer one once I move to site. My computer is resting atop a chair over which is draped that blue and white thin cotton button up that I wore on my wengatzy days back at Taylor. I am stripped down to me skivvies with my fan cranked targeted at the center of my body. I am still sweating. My watch currently reads 96 degrees and its 9 pm at night. Today in the afternoon my watch read 105 degrees in the shade. There are several volunteers that are breaking out due to constantly sweating.

Also on the chair in front of me is draped a town that I use to do tidbits of P90 workouts on my motivated mornings. I didn’t do one this morning as I was already in a full sweat when I woke up. I am so thankful for my fan. Others do not have one, and I couldn’t imagine bearing this heat in dead still air. Behind the chair is my water filtration system that the Peace Corps divided. It is basically a two gallon bucket resting atop a five gallon bucket. A two part filter connects the two so I dump water into the top bucket and it filters into the bottom bucket. The whole contraption rests on a footstool so that my water bottles can easily fit under the bottom bucket. Resting next to my water filter is another bucket I use to fetch water from the main living room. Above me and to my right is a clothes line that stretches the length of the room (~10 ft) and is about a foot from the left wall (the left wall as you walk in from the door – I am facing the door now, the water filter would be immediately to your right if you were to walk in). Resting on the clothes line are the clothes I wore today. Do laundry in a bucket is a bitch, will talk about that later, so I let used clothes dry out so they can be used again. I even flip my underwear so I can use them two days in a row. The is one small window to my left covered with an orange and yellow flowery drape. To the left of the window hangs a board with hooks on it that I use to hang up all my shirts and pants. I am also very thankful for this as most of the other trainees will be living out of a suitcase for three months. In the corner in front of my and to my left is a small table. The table is too small to do work on so resting on it is my shampoo, toilette paper, a picture of my family, and a picture of Margee. Also there are two random sacks of peanuts as my brother gives them to me every other day even though I insist that I don’t really like them and can never finish them fast enough. Last thing, immediately to my right is a green metal chest in which is the stock pile of my supplies (My med kit, deodorant, q-tips, shampoo, lotion, etc). This probably goes without being said, but I sleep directly on my mattress. My pillow is rock hard and the bed is too short. I make it sound worse than it is as I have had no trouble sleeping. It’s all a mental game.