Many people see my Instagram or my snapchat and think that I’m having the time of my life staying in luxurious places and living the dream. Yeah I’m having the time of my life but it isn’t as easy as it looks on social media, lets talk about just a few on the things that don’t always get posted that aren’t so glamorous on the world race.
Bucket Showers
I’ve had to do 3 months worth of bucket showers so I’d say I’m a pro at them, if you’re not so sure what a bucket shower is like let me enlighten you. Picture this your standing butt naked in a tub or if in Asia you’re standing in the middle of the bathroom and you just filled up your bucket with ice cold water. You take your little cup and wince as you pour it over your head, oh don’t worry you get to do this a few more times because one small cup can’t possibly get your whole head wet enough to wash. Finally after a few scoops of water you can finally scrub your hair and get it all fresh and clean, oh but wait now you get to dump even more freezing cold water over your head to get all the shampoo out. Ha you probably think that amazing water pressure is strong enough to get all the shampoo out but trust me its not. If your lucky enough to be in Asia you will notice that most bathrooms have a little bidet next to the toilet. You know where I’m going with this, in desperate times you pick that little sucker up and you spray your hair as fast as you can trying not to think of all the butts this little magical sprayer has sprayed. Don’t forget to condition your hair and then move onto the body wash. If you’re like me you brought bars of soap to use on the race because you get plenty of washes out of them and they are easier to pack then bottles. Yeah they’re nice until you have to use them in a bucket shower. The soap literally just sticks to you and trust me its very hard to scrub it off with your hand while dumping a cup of cold water on yourself. Ahhh don’t worry by this time your fresh and clean and are ready to take on whatever challenge the Lord has next for you. Oh did I mention you have to do this all by the small flickering light of your iphone flashlight because there’s no power?
Power Outages
Before the race when someone would say oh the powers out, I would simply assume there was a thunderstorm and that the power would be back on within 24 hours. Nope not in Africa. During my month in Zimbabwe we had power during the day for maybe 3 or 4 hours and then out it went, sometimes we just wouldn’t have it at all. If it did come on it was mostly during the night so that’s when the towns people would wake up and do their laundry and cooking. If you wanted to charge your phone or flashlight you best remember to plug it in before you go to sleep or your SOL my friend. That also meant we didn’t have running water so if you wanted water youd have to wake up in the early early morning to fill up buckets that you could use throughout the day for flushing the toilet or taking your bucket shower. Be careful buying groceries because that block of cheese and meat you bought for taco night, ha good luck keepin that fresh in your mini fridge. After all that you think hey cmon now it cant get worse than that and then you cross the boarder in Zambia. The city did power cuts for about 19 hours a day, in record breaking heat, in a house made of cement, with 17 girls living in it. You get pretty creative figuring out how to cook for that many people without power. You put all your food in the freezer in preparation for the outage and then you cook on one little propane tank, just one, you don’t make very elaborate meals when that’s your cooking method. You also go to bed super early because there’s literally nothing for you to do except sit in the dark hot as ballz. Also I did three months of hand washing my clothes and that is not fun. Its so hard and nobody teaches you how to do it, they just give you a bucket and say get the water from the lake. I’m not sure if my clothes ever were truly clean.
WIFI
Ha good one, there’s no wifi in Africa
Squatty Potties
These suckers terrify me. Sure everyone says it’s so good for you and everything just “flows right out” but no, just no, these are not for me. First of all, you never know what way your supposed to face and you always somehow end up spraying your feet. Honestly I couldn’t tell you what it’s like to go #2 in these because my body refuses to even acknowledge that that is even an option, I’d like to keep it that way. Also flushing it? I truly don’t know. Some squatties are really nice and clean and some have came straight out of a horror movie and you cry thinking about going to the bathroom in one, (sometimes you sneak away and pee behind a bush). Sometimes you can have a real toilet but even those might explode with poop like mine did in Cambodia.
Travel Days
Normal Person: Oh South Africa to Zimbabwe that’ll be a nice 3.5 hour flight ??
World Race: WRONG, 26 hour bus ride here you come.
If we aren’t switching continents then we aren’t flying, we take buses everywhere. Sometimes you get the nice double decker bus with a bathroom and sometimes you get the bus with no AC and 12 chickens sitting in the row behind you. Travel days are the worst days, you have to carry your pack (mines 50 pounds) your day pack, purse, and pillow if your boujee like me and trust me its not fun. You get to a busy bus station and everyone is yelling at you trying to either sell you something, get you a taxi, or taking pictures of you. All while you’re tired, thirsty, hungry, and probably have to pee. Oh and don’t forget to carry some local currency on you if want to be able to pay the nice lady to use the super clean squatty potty without any toilet paper. The best part is when you get to the boarder crossings and have to fill out the little forms at 3:00 am and then BOOM the power goes out and nobody knows what’s going on and you end up there for hours. Ahhh all that just to get back on the bus for another 10 hour ride, hope you brought snacks.
The Bugs
Before coming on the race I would hesitate to kill a daddy long leg and now those are the equivalent of stepping on an ant. The wall spiders in Africa are fricken tarantulas. They come out at nights and just crawl around the walls and those buggers are so dang fast and all the locals aren’t phased by them and tell you not to kill them because they eat the mosquitos, trust me if I had the courage to kill those suckers they’d be all gone. But don’t worry after the lizards showed up in our room the spiders moved out. I thought the spiders were the worst of my problems until I moved into cockroach city. Please tell me why God decided to create those little enemies. You walk into your outdoor bathroom and the entire wall is covered in them and in the toilet so you slowly back out and decide it’s much safer to pee behind a tree even with the risk of strangers seeing you. Then you move to Asia where you learn those little roaches can fricken fly and you have to sleep in a tent indoors just so you don’t wake up with them crawling on you. Don’t even get me started on the mosquitos, they’re just lucky I wasn’t one of the poor souls to get malaria. Also, I love trying new foods and all that but the crickets just really aren’t on my food palate and I don’t think I’ll be trying them anytime soon.
Let’s Play A Game Of What Made Me Sick This Week
Now I’ve been really lucky and haven’t been one of the people that have gotten sick a lot but it has happened a few times. Your sitting in your room thinking why the heck am I so bloated? Hm Bran maybe because you’ve eaten rice twice a day for three weeks straight. Or when you get to Asia and finally find a McDonalds and eat fast food for the first time in months, oh what a treat! WRONG, instant diarrhea. You get some time off and go swimming with your friends and then BOOM ear infection. Right after it heals you go swimming again and BOOM, now you have a double ear infection. One month later you go swimming again and surprise surprise you get yet another ear infection. You go swimming everyday for a month in Lake Malawi and 6 weeks later take the strongly recommended parasite pill and BOOM you’re bed ridden for two days as your body tries to kill the little demon inside you. Like I said I’ve only dabbled with the art of getting sick on the race but some of my squad mates haven’t been so lucky with their diagnosis’s. Malaria, bacterial infections, thrush, mono, skin rashes, flu, and some more bacterial infections.
Missing Home
Alright I’d have to say this one might be the worst of them all. Missing home sucks so much and even though you have social media to keep up with everyone and you can facetime friends and family doesn’t mean you don’t get homesick. I missed two of my brothers and one of my best friends getting engaged while I’ve been gone and I’ve cried each time with being so overly happy for them and at the same time sad that I wasn’t home to experience those moments with them. Its hard to keep everyone updated with what your doing because what your doing is so crazy and different that it’s hard to explain what you’re even going through. I get jealous of things people at home are doing and then I have to snap back to reality to remember that what I’m doing is so dang cool too. So often as I’m still fundraising for the race I tell myself that if I don’t get fully funded and they do kick me off the race that I wouldn’t even care because then I’d get to go home early and see everyone. Then I realize that I wouldn’t wanna go home early and want to stay to experience everything the world has to offer me and that I will be home soon and get to see everyone and we’ll all get to share the crazy stories that have happened in our lives this past year.
Reading this blog I don’t want you to think I’m complaining or being a baby about all of these things but just the opposite. These are the things I laugh about and that I wouldn’t wanna change because they have taught me so much and I wouldn’t change my experiences and crazy stories for anything.
Much Love,
Brieanne
