daily life

Ok. Here is an attempt at an entry about my day to day life.

First of all, it’s REALLY hot here. I just woke up from a nap; it must be about 6 or 7 PM. I’m drenched in sweat even though I slept on the floor (its cooler). But I’m used to being drenched in sweat, it’s my situation for about 20 hours each day, haha. I’m serious when I say I’m used to it.

I’m staying with Sylla’s family in a neighborhood called Conteya. It’s a little removed from the city center which is a good thing, from what I can tell. His house has a huge metal door, the kind that can open out enough for a car to enter. The door gives way to the outside cement patio, which has a part that is an area for storing water and cooking utensils, and a tiled part in front of the entrance to the house. There patio is walled in and there are lines up for hanging clothes. There is a grate that runs the length of the patio which covers a channel that runs out of the house. The house itself is a rectangle. The door to the house opens to the living area which has a hallway coming off of it to the right where there are two bedrooms and a bathroom. There is another entrance at the patio to a separate bedroom and bathroom but this bathroom doesn’t have a drain for a shower. Normally the people who live here are “Ma,” Sylla’s mom; Philip, Sylla’s 4 year old son; LaBel, Sylla’s sister; Nourdin, a 20ish year old girl who came to live with them when she was younger; Moussa, her 2 year old son; and a 16 year old girl, Aisha.

A day in the life of Nourdin (she has the most routine day, but its like an example day in the life of someone living at the house) goes something like this. I don’t know how much it’s changed since we came here, but this is what I’ve gathered.

Wake up whenever you wake up, but usually around 7 or 8. Go out and buy bread and maybe some papaya for breakfast. Come back, set up breakfast for everyone at the house. Boil water for coffee. After everyone eats, eat breakfast. Wash breakfast dishes. If necessary, go out and buy things for lunch. Start preparing lunch. This means, cutting and peeling vegetables, preparing spicy sauce, preparing the vegetables/fish, then preparing the rice. This usually takes up until 12 or 1. Eat lunch. Wash lunch dishes. Possible nap. Wash dirty clothes. Wash dirty 2 and 4 year olds. Start making dinner. Go get water. Eat dinner. Wash dinner dishes. Shower. Sleep.

(thats a pic of Nourdine when we went out dancing one night. that´s my arm next to her)

It’s nonstop. The kitchen is one metal “stove” which is like a tin cylinder with a tin plate on top of it. You put charcoal in the plate and the pan on top of the charcoal. So the kitchen has a capacity of cooking one pan of something at a time. Preparing food takes a long time. All the washing (including the boys but minus the shower) takes place outside on the patio, it’s obviously all by hand. It involves a lot of scrubbing; I’ve never seen a machine get things clean like people get them clean here. Since there is no running water, there is a bucket system. To wash dishes, you have a bucket of soapy water. You wash the dishes, then in a bucket of clean water rinse them once, and then in another bucket of clean water, rinse again. Clothes go the same way. For your feet, you get a scrubbing brush. The streets here are mostly dirt and its red, so you have to scrub off a few layers to see what color your feet actually are at the end of the day. Nourdin scrubbed my blue Old Navy flip flops after my first day here and got down to a color I’d actually never seen before.

For water, we walk up the street the house is on, to the main street that runs by. There is a house there that belongs to some government entity so they have running water and there´s a hose that comes out of the wall to the street where everyone fills up their buckets. During the day, if we start to run out of water, someone will make a few trips with the buckets or those huge plastic gas containers. You can’t bring too much water in the afternoon, it’s just too hot. So at night, the women go and sit by the hose and wait to fill up their buckets, then carry them back (on their heads) and fill up all the water storage spaces they have at their houses. I’ve done it a few times with Nourdin; last time I even carried it on my head! I would say it takes about 15 to 20 trips to fill up the water at the house; I can’t guess the capacity of the buckets but they’re probably 1.5 to 2 times that metal bucket dad uses (or used to use) to wash his car. There are also a few huge round basins that go on your head. I only carried the smaller buckets and it was really heavy; I can’t imagine how much the basin weighs! The girls are experts of course.

The electricity situation is basically that it comes on for a few hours each night. I don’t think we’ve had electricity during the day yet. Usually it comes on between 8 and 10 PM and is off by the time I wake up. Some people have generators (we are one of those people) which make a lot of noise and I can’t figure out how necessary they are since usually there’s nothing left to do once its dark. You use the generator to eat dinner and then watch the tube ,if you have one, haha. But it is helpful for things like going to the bathroom. People who have street stands use candles, which is actually really beautiful at night when you walk down the street. We have a fridge as well which is always cold because when its on its on the freezing setting, which means you have to defrost anything you want to eat or drink when you want it. It’s mostly full of water.

Most of the time we are all outside; it’s cooler and that’s where the action is. I try to help Nourdin and Aisha as much as possible; I spent an entire afternoon helping Nourdin and was exhausted afterwards. These women are amazing. My daily life usually consists of helping out doing all the aforementioned tasks if I’m here, but often I’m out and about with Sylla and sometimes when I’m at the house I’m practicing balafon or writing blog entries or horsing around with the kids.

Ok, I just wanted to get that general info out of the way. I have the comp on my lap and we’re both overheating so I’ll have to write more later. Toodles!

Moussa and "Feli"