Step 1- Stock up on cookies, chocolate bars and pringles while in town on your off day. They come in mighty handy when your tummys a rumbling cause you didn’t get full from your daily dose of beans and rice.
Step 2- Spades… the card game not the shovel. Although, a shovel or even a rake would be really handy when you’re at the farm pushing weeds into piles with a stick… and then your stick breaks so you look for another one and 15 minutes later you still haven’t found a good replacement so you opt for using your hands.
Step 3- Invest in a basin. It’s useful for showering, washing your feet, putting your dirty clothes in and going pee in the middle of the night when you don’t want to walk outside to the squatty because the wind sounds like it’s gonna blow your hut right out of Africa let alone you, the thunder is so loud you think you’ll be deaf by morning, the lightning so bright you’re afraid you’ll be blinded and the rain is pouring so hard that you won’t need to bathe for the next week!
Step 4- An Ipod so when you can’t sleep at night you can drown out the noise of babies crying, girls screaming, shouting and laughing, chickens on the roof of your hut, wild dogs and the cow who stomps around outside your hut and breathes under the door.
Step 5- Laugh. Even if it means you repeat the same inside joke 10 times in one day for the next month and it eventually annoys the crap out of everyone, including yourself. Even if it means making jokes so dumb that you have to laugh just because it was the dumbest joke ever. Even if it means singing the same line of a song over and over still not being able to remember the rest of the words. Even if it means everyone else thinks your a freak. Even if something isn’t even funny but you just need to laugh, then laugh. Laugh because sometimes it’s better to laugh than cry.
Step 6- Make sure all bowel movements and food cravings get disscussed daily and thouroughly.
Step 7- Avoid all plants, insects and reptiles. You never know what might get you. If you hear someone scream or jump up follow suit because whatever it is that made them do that might be coming to get you. When you’re in the bush you can never be too catious.
Step 8- Get on your knees and pray.
Step 9- Have a really great group of friends to encourage and uplift you.
Step 10- Do whatever it takes to survive.
