Funny every-day realities of living here that would totally fall under “Conditions of Hardship” but really just make me laugh

HoKay so. Here’s the earth, chillin…. Get ready for a series of blogs in the coming weeks, pending a working computer. Right now I am actually sitting by candlelight typing this because the power has gone out. It goes out about once a day here. Sometimes for a few hours, usually for a whole night. AAAaaanyway, ruling out my computer completely crapping out on me, I am going to try to make sense of my last few weeks and present it to you in amazing literary Technicolor. I say completely crapping out on me because my screen light seems to be no longer working. My computer is fine, but the only way you can see my screen is by shining a flashlight directly at it where you can barely discern the graphics there. Yep, I’m sitting here with a fully charged computer typing by headamp because the back-light-main-light, whatever has gone out on my screen. Love Africa. I’m actually really stoked by the headlamp/flashlight discovery though because now it means I can sync my ipod and write to you, however labourously.. So please forgive any typos or lack of clarity/continuity. I can’t see clearly enough to edit, just to get a word document open…. Yeeeeaaah, love Africa.  At least now I can be grateful to that awful dean’s office job that taught me to type with my eyes closed?

So lets see, since I have already spent a paragraph dedicated to my dying computer, how about we theme this blog “Funny every-day realities of living here that would totally fall under “Conditions of Hardship” but really just make me laugh.”  At the top of this dubious list would be my stove top. Ovens here are very expensive and very rare, so everyone just buys a gas stove-top, the kind you would take camping. The stove came with a meter-long plastic tube that connects the stovetop to the huge gas take I’ve placed under my sink. UNFORTUNATELY, my plastic tub for some reason likes to catch fire at the joint between the stove and the tube. I know, I know, You’re totally freaking out at this point thinking I’m gonna blow myself up, which is probably true. But when it caught fire last night all I could do is quickly turn off the gas, swat at the burning tube til the little flame went out, and laugh really hard. Why? Because Dis Is Africa, Man! DIA. You have to laugh or you’d freak out, and it’s exhausting to freak out all the time.  Don’t worry though, I’ve stopped using the burner that is next to the tube and will be buying a metal, non-flammable tube at market tomorrow.

Next on the list would be my house. Yup, the WHOLE house. It’s actually an apartment that’s connected to another apartment duplex-style. It’s in a nice little fenced-in compound with the owners just across the way, and a paved courtyard that cuts down on the dust (dust will be next on the list). It’s very pretty until you go inside. It’s quite small which of course isn’t a problem but there is not a single straight line in the entire house. Seriously. Someone was VERY drunk when they made this house. My room is a trapezoid, there is not a single area of level floor (I looked, doing yoga on a slant is HARD) and the walls and doorframes bulge and receded in extreme willy-wanka fashion. It’s amazing. Everything is also covered in spider webs, empty silver-fish eggs, and dust. I’ve gotten rid of most of the cobwebs and eggs in my room and kitchen but there’s nothing to be done about the dust and grime. The average paint here is not oil-based. It’s basically the tempera paint you used in elementary school so I can’t wipe anything off without ALSO wiping off paint. So I’m repainting everything with nice, shiny, EXPENSIVE oil-based paint! I’ve currently painted most of my room (which THRILLED the landlord, I just doubled his property value) and hope to start on the living room in a couple of weeks. It’s a good project for now, but I’m REALLY looking forward to when my house starts feeling like home. Which will be a while since I have to commission a custom bed frame to fit in my tiny trapezoid bedroom. Right now I’m sleeping on a mattress in my small sitting room, well away from the walls and spider webs. Love Africa.

Next would be the dust and roads. APPARENTLY I’m in the beginning of the dry season right now and the dust is actually livable right now. That makes me VERY nervous for the future! So I live in Kumbo, a GORGEOUS town in the hills of the Northwest. Seriously, it’s impossible to walk out your front door without incredible, heart-soiaring vistas. I love it. It actually looks a lot like Tuscuny. But insteady of red-slated roofs, you have tin roofs that happen to be red because they are covered in red DUST. See, there are only about five paved roads in Kumbo, a town of 200,000 that experiences heavy traffic. The result is that during the dry season, when there is no rain to tamp everything down, there are huge billowing clouds of red dust that are kicked up by every passing motorcycle, car, and massive cargo trucks. It’s BAD. It’s a very lush area but all the vegetation near the road is covered in the  film of dust so thick, you actually can’t see any green. A WHOLE bush of big green leaves and all you see is red. It’s amazing. Unfortunately, this dust drifts over the whole city and gets in your mouth, hair, clothes, eyes, everything. It’ works it’s way under door seems and coats your floors, it coats everything in your kitchen requiring to keep dishes and food always covered. It’s EVERYWHERE. LUCKILY, the dust is ROUGHLY the same color of my hair, which means I still don’t have to wash it everyday, despite house ratted and matted it gets from the dust. But I STILL have to wash the thick film of dust from my body everyday, which brings me to my last item on the list: COLD.

So Cameroon is F-ing HOT. Averaging 120 in the north and 98 in the center and south. So I, thinking I was quite clever requested the hills of the North-west region where it is about 75 every day and in the 50’s at night. Smart huh? WRONG. It may be 50 at night, but I don’t have any way to heat my house (I don’t even have a WINDOW in one room, just bars, and there’s a good half-inch of space under my front door). So most nights I’m huddled under the two blankets I can afford right now in my wool shirt and wool hat I brought to hike Mount Cameroon. That is seriously the exent of warm clothes that I brought to central Africa. F-my-life. Of course this is TOTALLY livable (I’m quickly adjusting back to the cold after the heat of bafia and think I will be quite happy here) if not for the baths. I have a shower which is AWESOME, but it supplies FREEZING cold water that I must use to wash the thick film of dust off of me before I get into the bed that I am valiantly trying to keep clean-ish. Thus I avoid washing my hair every day because really, there is only so much cold a girl can take! Not to worry though, After I pay for my trapezoid bed and new windows that actually close tight with my next two paychecks, I will definitely be investigating the feasibility of a hot water heater. Until then, try hard to hear the squeal of a gal jumping into a freezing cold shower all the way in Africa.