Reason #1: Moussa and I had been sleeping outside since hot season started. It was just miserable in my room, so every night we would set up our mosquito nets, our mats, and everything else, and every morning we would take it all down again. We got a really good system going and we were able to do it pretty quickly (and without talking in the morning!). My brother Salif left a week before I did to spend the week with his parents. (He’s my aunt’s younger brother). He lives with us because his town doesn’t have school past 6th grade, and Mountougoula’s school was on Easter Break for a week (yes it’s called that, despite the fact that it’s not Easter and they’re Muslim). After Salif left, I decided I wanted to bring my actual bed mattress out every night, as I was sore from sleeping on my little air mattress night after night. I figured as long as I wasn’t using it, I’d let Moussa use my air mattress, along with the travel pillow and blanket that a certain air line so graciously loaned me for 2 years. So every night we pulled out two sets of my bedding and we’d joke about Moussa being a toubab. In turn, I said I’m African because I can walk the paths at night without a flashlight. Moussa protested that Africans can run at night, so I ran a few steps before he stopped me so I wouldn’t trip. :)
Anyway, back to hot season! So Moussa and I slept outside every night and most nights I would fan myself to sleep but put my wool blanket on in the middle of the night and wake up comfortable. One night Moussa woke me up at 3am because he needed my flashlight. Apparently he was sleeping near a bunch of ants and they were biting him so he wanted to bring the bench over to sleep on that. And he didn’t want to scare me by grabbing the flashlight and waking me up, so he woke me up ahead of time. A perfectly legitimate reason, but I still gave him a hard time in the morning! Anyway, when he woke me, it was so hot still at 3am!! I couldn’t believe it! Usually by that time it’s cooled down enough to sleep comfortably. I had to fan myself back to sleep again, and I didn’t use my blanket at all that night.
Reason #2: I’ve mentioned that Malians don’t use toilet paper, but instead carry into the ɲεgεn a plastic teapot-style container called a salidaga to use for cleaning. We have salidagas at school for various purposes, including for washing hands. They sit out in the sun all day, and if you use one to wash your hands in the afternoon you have to be careful – the water feels like you’ve turned a tap on hot as high as it will go! Seriously, there have been times when I feel like the water is burning my hands. And that’s in a plastic container!
Reason #3: This is the best one. I have a travel alarm clock that my dad bought me back in high school. It’s pretty awesome. It runs off of Double A batteries and says the time in regular or military time, the date including day, month, date, and year, the temperature in F or C, and it has a push light. I’ve taken it on all kinds of trips and it’s what I use here. I had been wondering 3 things: 1) if it was working properly because my room always seemed to be at a pretty standard 93-95 degrees, 2) if it had the ability to go into triple digits, and 3) what the temperature was outside in the heat of the day. So one day we were out at the CSCOM with all 22 of the health PCTs building a soak pit – a giant hole filled with rocks with pipes leading from the ɲεgεn and wash area to catch the waste water from showering and washing clothes and dishes so it doesn’t become standing water (aka a mosquito breeding ground). We didn’t have to do the super hard work, like digging the 8 foot deep hole, but we did move rocks, shovel sand, help spread concrete, and in general stand around a lot in the sun, taking turns resting in the shade. I brought my clock out and set it in the direct sun and left it there for about 15 minutes. When I came back, the entire bottom half of the clock had turned solid black, obliterating the date and temperature! I was so mad! I love that clock! I moped for a few minutes and then picked it up to look again, and the black had disappeared! And the temperature read…127° F. That’s right. 127°. Now granted, it had been sitting in direct sun, baking, so I can’t defend that it’s an accurate reading. But still…that’s really hot!! To get a more accurate reading, I brought the clock into the shade with me while we were eating lunch. It settled on 106°.
That’s still pretty hot if you ask me. Now you’ll understand why I use a wool blanket when I sleep outside at night, and why I’m shivering when I wake up and it’s 66°, which happened a few mornings my last week of homestay!
For all these reasons, my first package from home arrived while I was in school, and I was going to be a good student and let it sit until I finished class…until I remembered the battery-powered, mister fan that was awaiting inside. After that, I tore into the box as fast as I possibly could, and continued to carry the fan everywhere with me for the rest of homestay!
Photos of Building a Soak Pit
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