A Day in the Life of .... Part 2

Hi again,

I'm getting so spoiled being in Bobo... internet all the time!! Good food, TV, etc.... it almost feels normal..

Newsflash about calling me on my cell phone: Desiree told me that it may be helpful to include the area code, and ya know.. that's not such a bad idea...
SO.... when you call, dial (011 226) 76 43 94 44

So the same girl who busted an arm from the donkey run-in sent a funny email with her version of A Day in the Life Of... and I thought it captured our days VERY well, so I am sharing that, too.. I'm just going to keep taking other people's funny emails and pasting them as my own words - it's SO much easier !!

"sooo, average day. well, its summer break now so i get to sit around for about 4 more months until school starts in october. in village. without electricity. without running water. where i dont understand what people are saying. no restaurants, no movies, no car, no internet, no shopping (except for vinegar and macaroni and soap). and now, with a broken arm. so heres what i do:

5.30 get woken up by barnyard animal noises. roosters, pigs, guinea fowl, cows, sheep, goats, and my favorite, the donkey. i realize that very few of you have ever heard an actual, real live donkey. go out to a farm and check it out. in fact, just so you know my pain, try to find a farmer with lots of animals running around, especially donkeys, and ask if you can camp out there for a night. in the middle of the pasture, right in the thick of it. let me know what you think.

7.00 finally get out of bed, which is a hard cot i sleep on outside under a mosquito net. they do have foam mattresses here, ive just got to get myself to a big enough city where i can buy one.

7.15-8.00 do some pilates on a flat woven plastic mat on my concrete floor, inside my house, because i cant be seen outside in shorts. nothing but long long skirts. if i am feeling REALLY daring, i may wear long pants out of the house. i almost have enough room to roll the mat out all the way on my kitchen floor. so my house is 2 rooms: the kitchen and the everything else room. the kitchen is 9 X 6 feet, and the other, more spacious room is 9 X 9 feet. the kitchen contains a table for the stove and a bookshelf. the other room has a bed (ill tell you more about it later) and a table for a desk. there isnt a college kid in america who has the right to complain about their dorm room.

8.15 take my shower...well, dump cupfuls of cold water on me. so i go outside, get about 5 liters of water in a bucket, 7 if i am going to wash my hair. i take that into my shower, a concrete slab with walls around it, right next to my latrine. the latrine is a hole in the middle of a concrete slab. only the finest!

9.00 sit in a hard chair and start reading. the chairs are outside and made of twigs lashed together with strips of goat or sheep skin. a little hard, but more comfortable than you would think.

11.30 start thinking about lunch. seeing how there are no vegetables, i have been eating pasta for every meal. pasta with the sauce packets you guys were nice enough to send. i would truly be starving if it were not for those.

12.30 start making lunch on my gas cooking stove

1.30-2.00 read a bit more. ive been averaging 5 books a week.

2.00-4.00 nap. i take my nap inside, on my bed. the bed, like the chairs, is made of twigs lashed together. the skin they used to hold the twigs together still has black fur attached to it. yes, i am living in a vegetarians nightmare.

not the most comfortable. listen to the bats in the ceiling chatter amongst themselves.

4.00-4.30 go and visit people 'downtown.' i found a shop owner with a gas-powered fridge. if i put water in the freezer compartment one day, it will be cool by the next. sit and visit. politely chat until i get my first marriage proposal from some old muslim guy who already has 2 wives, then make an exit.

5.00 put on mosquito repellant and go over to a neighbors house and chat. so these people are my adopted family. its an old woman who is hell-bent on me learning the local language in 3 weeks and her son and his wife. but she also taught me how to make peanut oil, which may come in handy one day. i ususlly sit around and shell peanuts with her and get gulmacheme lessons and speak with her son, who is tutoring me with my french. theres lots of talk about the weather. this should be the rainy season, when everyone is cultivating. well, it rained a couple times about a month ago and everyone planted, but it hasnt rained since. if the crops fail, these people literally will have nothing to eat next year. they grow all of their food...theres no super wal mart here.

6.30 its getting pretty dark. time to go home and make dinner. whats it gonna be? yes, you guessed it! pasta!

7.30 look at my watch and realize i have to manage to stay awake for 2 more hours. start playing solitaire under the fumes and poor light of a kerosene lamp while sitting on my hard bed. remember the no electricity thing?

8.00 listen to the bats in the ceiling and pray that one doesnt get into my room.

the girl who lived here before me told me not to worry because if one falls out of the ceiling, it means that its pretty sick and will die soon anyway. so that means that only the REALLY rabid bats are the ones that will get in my room. but dont worry...ive gotten the rabies vaccinations...if i get bit, i have 2 days to get to the medical center to get the post-exposure shots.

8.04 let the cats in the house so they can find the bat that fell out of the ceiling at 8.03

8.23 just deal with the bat myself and chase it outside...the cats are still full from sharing my dinner and are pretty useless right now. i have two cats actually. their names are winky and francis. they belonged to the volunteer before me. everyone thinks that 'winky' is the english word for 'cat' in matiakoali.

8.30 resume solitaire

9.00 hear the church service start. i live in the same courtyard as an elderly assemblies of god minister. which means i live right next to a church. they do some really neat drumming and singing. i rather enjoy listening. i lied and told them im catholic, though, so i dont have to go to church 4 nights a week and listen to hellfire and brimstone in local language.

9.15 start setting up cot and mosqito net. i fave a concrete slab with a straw roof over it and i use dental floss and paper clips to hang the net from the roof.

9.30 fall asleep to the sound of the barnyard animals. ahhhhh.

so thats my life. a little update on my arm. im going back to village tomorrow, i think. so the doctor in senegal looked at my x rays and didnt see a fracture. maybe thats because he didnt actually SEE the x rays, just a digital picture of the x rays that was sent to him by email. huh, could there be anything wrong with this method? nah, im sure that our penny-pinching government has my best interests at heart in this matter. really. its not a bad thing to be sent out into a tiny african village with an uncasted broken arm all alone. besides, its a whopping $10 a day to keep me here in ouaga. it really is a strain on the taxpayers. ill bet they spent more on a pen for some guy sitting at his desk in washington."


I should be leaving Bobo tomorrow or Friday.

Additional things I thought of for pkgs (if you still care), because I could always think of stuff:

Vaseline
Oatmeal
St Ives apricot scrub face wash
have I said cheese yet?
Tide powder detergent.. I miss that smell.. I mean the smell of actual CLEAN!!

Thanks, and I'll be back in Bobo soon.. probably for the 4th of July.