You are suddenly awoken at what seems to be an untimely hour. Groggy and disoriented, you try to regain your bearings and remember what continent you are on. Africa, I think it’s Africa. You find yourself indoors inside a tent with a snoring teammate beside you and a seemingly circadian rhythm-less rooster crowing outside your window. In the dark, you rustle around to find your ipod that has somehow found its way beneath your ever so comfortable sleeping mat. Checking the time, you realize it’s only 4:30, so you pop an ear bud back in and scroll to find your favorite sleepy time playlist. Then like an over-worked, high strung middle aged executive, you are gently lulled to sleep by the sound of ocean waves crashing off the coast of Fiji. You doze for a few more hours before being awoken for breakfast. Getting up, you contemplate changing clothing for the day, but then remember that you’ve been wearing the same outfit for 4 days and really what’s a fifth. So, you wander out to breakfast, make yourself a PB&J and grab an egg and a banana. You enjoy your surprisingly American breakfast and top it off with a cup of tea. Soon it is time to walk around and meet people in the community. And as much as you don’t want to lug your purse around with you, you grab it anyway because you have developed an obsessive need to have water, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer with you at all times. Soon you are off to go out and chat it up with the locals. As you and the giant pack of white people you call your teammates make your way down the less than even dirt road, small children yell “bye mzungu, bye mzunguâ€� and wave excitedly. Feeling slightly like a celebrity, you smile and wave back. The pack of white people then breaks into smaller groups and scatters throughout the community. You first stop and talk with a woman who is frying samosas over a charcoal stove in a small wooden shack. (Samosas are beans inside of a fried dough crust. Basically, they are African hot pockets). You start up a casual conversation with her and she tells you she has a staggering 10 children. You are shocked. You then tell her there are a mere 2 children in your family. She is shocked. You then conquer your mutual shock of offspring numbers and go on to have a lovely conversation. Upon your departure you promise to come back to learn how to make samosas. After all, you do love hot pockets. You carry on down the dirt road. Next stop: a woman sitting outside of her home with her small children. You begin talking with her and learning about her life. Suddenly her toddler seems to be making abundantly clear that he is a bit on the famished side and would like that to change. You are then visibly reminded that children less than or equal to one year of age are fed a little more freely here than they are in other parts of the world, specifically the part of the world that you happen to be from. As you stand in mixed company, you question how well you are hiding your awkwardness as you feel your pale white face turn bright red. You are relieved when the conversation ends and look forward to speaking with someone of the male persuasion. Pressing on, you stop and talk with a gentleman sitting on a motorcycle. Before you know it, his posse is surrounding him and you are pretty sure that you are now talking with a Ugandan motorcycle gang. They are surprisingly interested in your life and ask all sorts of questions about life in the US and whether or not your clans get along. You give a brief overview of your life and try to explain American culture to the best of your ability. You’ve foolishly included the fact that you are a nurse. Will you never learn. Someone then invariably asks about a bizarre tropical illness you’ve never heard of, while another tells you about the “buzzy feelingâ€� they have in their head and asks what it is and what to do about it. At this point you have two options. Number 1–apologize profusely for having not paid better attention during the “buzzy feelingâ€� lecture in your pathophysiology class. Or number 2–Ask more questions and try your darnedest to figure out what the person is attempting to describe. You take the non-sarcastic high road and select option 2. After a good 5-10 minute convo about said buzzy feeling, you throw out a laundry list of options of what it could be and recommend seeing a doctor. With your civic duty as a medical professional completed for the day, you go on to have a series of shorter, less amusing conversations. And just like that, it’s time for lunch. You return to your house for a scrumptious lunch. Today lunch includes noodles, potatoes, and fruit. You are legitimately pleased that your customary all carb diet has continued in Africa, and even decide to pass on the hot sauce that is placed on the table. Because why even eat potatoes and noodles if they cannot be enjoyed in their natural, bland state. After lunch you have a little free time, so you decide to read. By this time on the race, you’ve read all of the books you brought with you and all of the books you teammates brought with them, so you are left to whatever you picked up from the free table at the last debrief. I am currently reading Tina Fey’s pseudo-autobiography. My description of it would be… random and witty with equal parts humor and awkwardness. After reading two pages, you promptly fall asleep. Sooner than would be ideal, it is time for some more active afternoon activities. You walk with your team/white wolf pack to a nearby park. You’ve invited everyone you talked to during the morning hours to come this afternoon for some games and community bonding time. Amazingly enough, people seem to come in droves. There are a fair number of adults and a ton of children. The kids naturally break into groups of older and younger and you decide to hang out with the littlest of littles. Once the group is established, you rack your brain for some entertaining and age appropriate games and songs. This task is a bit challenging being that it has been 2 full decades since you were a preschool menace and you don’t quite remember a lot of preschool outside of the office. Thankfully Father Abraham and Jesus Loves the Little Children come back to you, so you belt them out with the amazing singing voice you have been blessed with. You are then invited over to join the older kids. As you wander over, you notice a two year old toddling behind the group. You walk over to him and stretch out your hand to his. He looks up at you and then happily grasps two of your fingers. He doesn’t seem to suffer from that toddler stranger anxiety nonsense. He’s far too mature for that. You sit down with the other kids and your new little compatriot plops himself down in your lap. He doesn’t appear to have any siblings or parents around nor does he utter a word to you in English or any of the other numerous language options that exist. You realize you have no idea what his name is and no way of figuring it out. You decide he is way too cool to just be “that kid who sat on your lap,â€� so you begin to think of a suitable name for your new awesome little friend. As you select a name from the plethora running through your head, you hand him a stick to play with. Yup, you just handed a sharp, pointy, splinter-plenty stick to a two-year old. Smooth move. You then nominate yourself for future mother-of-the-year. But surprisingly, Prescott Montgomery VIII seems to have finger dexterity far beyond his years as he effortlessly peels the stick into small pieces. You enjoy an excellent story and portrayal of Jesus walking on water. After a few more songs the afternoon comes to a close. You wave good bye to little Prescott and hope to see him the next afternoon.
Upon your arrival at home, you find that dinner is already being prepared outside on a charcoal stove. You sit on a small wooden stool and begin to converse with the kind women who are cooking up a tasty dinner for you and your teammates. You discuss what foods you have had thus far in Africa and what traditional American food you enjoy consuming. You know like chili cheese fries and Little Debbie snack cakes. They then ask you what foods you prepare in your kitchen at home. Your response is eggs, noodles, and anything that you can poke vent holes in and place on high for 2 minutes. Next comes a short explanation of American culture and the term convenience food. After the pain-staking dinner creation process has been completed, you sit down to enjoy a delicious dinner of beans, spaghetti noodles, vegetables, and chapatti. As you eat you are in a state of awe that food this good can be prepared outside on one tiny open flame stove/charcoal camp fire. Also while eating, you have a lovely conversation with your teammates about how the toilet seat-less toilet that the 7 of you share is plugged… again. When you finish eating, you decide to go on mission unplug toilet. So, you grab your headlamp and go outside to find an appropriately sized stick/African roto rooter. As you walk, you don’t watch where you are walking as closely as you should and you feel your bare foot squish down into a mystery substance. You look down. It’s goat poop. You just stepped barefoot into goat poop. Well done. Undeterred from mission unplug toilet, you find a patch of wet grass to wipe your foot on. You’re not really sure why the grass is wet, but nonetheless it does the job and at least most of the goat poop is now off of your foot. You pick up a nearby stick and head to the bathroom. As you begin your attempt to unplug the toilet using the stick, you begin to formulate a hypothesis about who the toilet plugging culprit might be. This is pretty easy to do because you know of your teammates who has pooped 10 times in the last hour and who hasn’t pooped for the last 10 days. After you think you have sufficiently unplugged the toilet, you try to flush. No water comes. Argh. So you go back outside to turn the water on, this time watching carefully where you step. Alright, water is on. You return to the bathroom to attempt flush number 2. This time water does in fact flow into the toilet bowl, but sadly that which was in the toilet remains there post-flush. Then comes more stick roto rooting. You try to flush again. Happily, third time’s a charm. You go back out to the living room to tell your teammates the story of how you successfully unplugged the toilet. They neglect the fact that you have succeeded in unplugging the toilet, but instead get hung up on the fact that you stepped in goat poop and didn’t actually clean your foot off very well. They convince you to use one of your precious baby wipes to clean the remainder of the goat poop from the bottom of your foot. You wipe down your foot. Now that you are in cleaning mode, you remember that you haven’t cleaned your Nalgene for month, maybe a month and a half. So, you pour some boiling water into it and shake it around a little. You then use yet another priceless baby wipe to clean off the mouth piece. Looking at the baby wipe that has just sanitized that which you drink from, you realize it looks strikingly similar the baby wipe that you used to clean the goat poop off of your foot. You throw up a little bit in your mouth. Now it’s time for some team bonding time. You are going to play the nouns game, in which you write down nouns on scraps of paper and then describe and act them out. This evening diarrhea has made it into the pot twice, as well as pepto bismol and lice. Hmm, wonder what people have been experiencing lately. After this rousing and ridiculous game, you are exhausted and it is finally time for bed. You return to the bedroom that you share with 2 of your teammates and decide it’s time. It’s been 5 days, you should really shower. You then pillage through your belongings to find all of the necessary shower items. It takes a while because you haven’t used them in so long and they are therefore buried. Happily both the water and the power are currently functioning which makes this shower possible. You next turn on the water. Getting into the shower is much like getting into the ocean. You put a toe in and then maybe splash a little water on your arms. You will get used to it. You will get used to it. You need to shower, but it is frigid. You then bravely submerge your head under the water. The water that is coming out of the shower head is clear. The water coming off of your head is brown and murky. You are disgusted, but not surprised. You shower quickly and throw some jammies on. And by jammies I mean the clothing that you will be wearing for the next 3-5 days. You audibly hear your sleeping mat calling your name. After a quick tooth brushing, using water from your freshly cleaned water bottle, you climb into your tent and curl up on your sleeping mat. You find your ipod, pop an ear bud in, and begin to doze off. Suddenly you realize that showering has thrown off your night time routine and you’ve forgotten to take your anti-malaria medication. Argh. Being that you are finally in a country where malaria is a big issue, you decide you better try to find it before you fall asleep. Using the light of your ipod, you unzip your tent and rummage through your things to find your aptly labeled ziplock of “boxed medications.� You gulp down the malarone and then move your toothbrush and tooth paste from daily use toiletries to boxed medications, so that this gross inconvenience does not occur again the following night. Finally, your day is complete. You zip yourself back into your tent, rest your head down on your pillow, and pull your sheet that has not been washed in… who even cares anymore, over the top of you. You look around and feel thankful that you are inside a tent, so that the mosquitos and cockroaches don’t attack you during the night. You once again find yourself next to a snoring teammate, pop an ear bud in, and gently drift off to the sound of waves crashing off the coast of the Fijian islands. It has been a superb day and you better get some sleep because who knows what could be in store for tomorrow. Yup, this is my life and there is no place I would rather be.
