Me, an African? Yup.

I’m sitting in my little tukel (a thatch roofed house – one little room all to myself!), and thinking that I have really turned into an African in certain respects:

1. It’s about 24C in my room (according to my hand-dandy MEC thermometer which happens to give info about wind chills on the back side of it – something I haven’t had to use here yet!). So even though it’s a warm summer day at home, I’m FREEZING! I didn’t realize it would be so cold here, so I’m not really prepared for it. Thus, I am wearing my pajama bottoms and a t-shirt underneath my tie-dyed mumu. Between the pink t-shirt, the polkadot trousers, the blue and brown tie-dye… I fit right in with the local population! When it gets cold, you basically just put on everything you have, whether it seems to match in our own Western aesthetic or not! I plan to wear this ensemble to bed, when I snuggle into my MEC Equatorial sleeping bag, which is rated to 15C, I think. I might get to try out it’s rating tonight and see if it keeps me warm enough!
2. I handwashed my underwear tonight with way too much soap, and enough bubbling lather to wash a horse. I have noticed that whether people here are washing themselves, their clothes, their cars… they use SO much soap. They think the more bubbles, the cleaner things get. I guess there is some truth to it… but somehow, the amount of bubbles they use is a bit over the top. But here I am, scrubbing out my undies with an incredible amount of while bubbly goodness! Of course, I won’t even think about hanging my undies out on the line for anyone to see – I will discreetly hang them somewhere in my hut. But it doesn’t matter if anyone sees them when they are on me, if I happen to have ill fitting clothes or bend over the wrong way.
3. Speaking of bending over, I am starting to bend at the waist like an African, rather than squatting down to do things on the ground, like a Canadian. Here, squatting is reserved for things like birthin’ babies or, well, squatting in the bush, or in the outhouse. More and more, I find myself bending over to get things from a box on the ground, or to sweep or to pick things up etc. Perhaps this tradition is due to the fact that women generally wear skirts/dresses here. Delicately squatting in a ladylike fashion without showing one’s aforementioned undies is difficult! So bending seems to be a much preferable posture.
4. I take two baths a day, whether I need one or not. The evening bath is a ritual akin to our own morning bath. Granted, in other places in this country, I have two (or sometimes even three!) showers or bucket baths each day because I just get so sweaty and dusty and hot and gross. But here, where it’s COLD, they heat water in a big metal diesel barrel over a wood fire, and everyone, and I mean everyone, takes a bucket bath sometime between the hours of 5:30 and 7pm. And then we will all have a little splash in the water again in the morning when we wake up – but that’s not the main bathing of the day, that’s just a little wake up splish-splash. (Bucket bath = bring your big plastic basin to the barrel, fill it up with water, bring it back to the concrete bathing room, along with a little dipper and splash the water over your body).
5. I eat dinner and then I just want to go to sleep. Dinner happens right before bed. The bath happens. Then dinner happens a few hours later. Then sleep happens. But I must admit, I have to have a bit of a snack of some bananas or a piece of bread or something before the main dinner event (usually before the bathing event) because I just can’t make it from lunch time (1pm) to dinner time (8 or 9pm) without a tasty morsel to satisfy my belly.