Hot Season, Part 2

How I know Hot Season is (still) here:

*I have to wear a bandanna around my neck while writing in my journal. Otherwise the sweat collects under my chin and drips onto the pages. Seriously.

*I have to have not 1 but 2, and sometimes 3 “sweat rags,” one of which I carry around with me at all times wherever I go. The reason I have several is because I have to let them dry out every now and then, as they become quite soaked.

*I wake up at 3 in the morning with my pillow soaked all the way through, and it’s still 95 degrees.

*Cheaper jewelry that I never had a problem with before turns my skin green from all the sweat pouring out. The nicer jewelry is all turning black. The only other time it ever did that was after a nice long soak in the sulfur hot springs of Rotorua, New Zealand.

*After a particularly fierce dust storm, I have lines of dust imbedded into my shirt across my stomach, where I previously had lines of sweat from sitting and the shirt-cloth folding.

*I come home in the middle of the day, walk into my house, and think “Ah! Much cooler!” It’s 95 degrees in my house.

*The best one: One day after leaving Bamako, post-Swear In, my nighttime mouthpiece melted in the sun at the San stage house. That’s right. I hadn’t even made it to site yet. Two weeks into site, I had to go back to Bamako to go to the dentist and get the mouthpiece fixed. Which meant another 8 hour bus ride, no air conditioning, one stop. And since I was alone this time, I didn’t feel comfortable being out of the bus and leaving my things any longer than necessary, so even during our stop I was sitting in the stationary bus in 120 degree heat. Argggh.

Speaking of Bamako, that was a great break from the frustrations of adjusting to site! My room had air conditioning, I could sit inside all day and watch movies and TV, and soft serve ice cream was only a 5-minute walk around the corner. Paradise.

Bamako is an interesting place, I’m starting to realize the more time I spend there. You really have two very different worlds coming together. For instance, my first night there some friends took me out to a legit Italian restaurant, where I ate real pizza and drank real wine and finished it all off with real chocolate mousse. I’m drooling just thinking about it. The meal cost me $22 American dollars. The next night I went to the lady selling rice and sauce on the street just around the corner from the PC house and had a meal, just as filling, for 40 American cents. I went to the American Club one night to play Pub Trivia with other PCVs and ex-pats. It was perhaps the best trivia experience I’ve ever had – for once I was useful!! I’m looking forward to spending more time in Bamako and seeing what other kinds of surprises are out there. I hear there’s a salsa club…

Back to hot season. I’m starting to wonder if coming to Mali was a bad choice for the effects it will have on the rest of my life, temperature-wise. I decided long ago that I’m cold-blooded – anything under 78 and I’m cold! I always liked mid-80s the best. When I have my initial Peace Corps interview (in November of 2009!) I strongly “hinted” that I wanted to be placed in sub-Saharan Africa, but I did say that I would go anywhere in the world – as long as it wasn’t cold! Five years of living in Boston had killed my appreciation for winter and I came to dread the approaching 6 months of being continuously cold. So I was thrilled to learn Mali was my placement, especially when I read Mali’s climate is most comparable to Arizona – my favorite place in the US.

And then I moved to Mali. Hot season definitely takes some adjustment, and I’m glad we worked our way into it slowly. But now that I’ve been living in it for awhile, I’d say I’ve definitely adjusted. Sure, it’s still ungodly hot, and all those points I made above can be unbearable at times. But overall, I much prefer this to 6 months of cold in Boston! And I think my tolerance for cold has decreased even more. Take, for instance, sleeping. My first night in Mali is was 75° and I was happy. My second night in Mali it was 85° and I could barely sleep. After living here for 4 months, I now think anything 95° or hotter is pretty awful to sleep in. 90°-95° is tolerable. 85°-90° is great. Below 85° is cold, or at least chilly enough for me to use my light blanket. I woke up half an hour early one morning last week after a rain storm and it was 80° and I couldn’t get back to sleep because it was too chilly. Even the other PCVs think I’m nuts. So now I’m wondering…what on earth am I going to do when I go back home and 10 months out of the year are guaranteed below 80°?!?