Toughing it Out

Today was rough.

The power has been out in our house since last night at about 8:00. It was so hard to sleep last night, because of the heat and lack of fan, so that probably contributed pretty significantly to my difficulties dealing with the morning’s challenges. The power was still out, and our water stopped flowing. This was not too concerning, because we have two polytanks (big black plastic reservoirs for water) and a concrete underground reservoir. Unfortunately, these appeared to be empty when we tried to use them this morning, so I washed my face with a drinking water sachet and got dressed.

Then there was a cockroach.

It wasn’t as huge and terrifying as some that I have seen. Actually, I’ve only ever seen one other, and it was in a train station in Malaysia when I was nine. It was about as big as my foot, which I know because it ran towards me and almost under my foot as I went to step. I’m pretty sure I screamed when I saw that one. I handled this one a little better; I just stood there and cursed at it. Soon after that, I realized that it was already dead, which was nice. Probably this was a result of the liberal application of raid that we’ve been practicing around all the baseboards in our house. Holly demonstrated her unflappability and resolve as she swept it up and threw it outside for me. She was my hero for the morning.

Shortly after that was taken care of, I dropped a still sealed water sachet and it exploded all over my room, which was fun. It got my clothes that I’d just brought in off the line (and had to shake a host of moths and ants off of) all nice and wet again, so that made me really happy. But I think the most personally upsetting part of my morning happened when we stopped to get egg sandwiches on the way to school. I was sitting there eating, minding my own business, and I saw that one of the girls next to me had a mosquito bite on her leg that she had scratched open a bit so it was bleeding. It was not a very large cut, nor very deep, so it should not have been a big deal.

What was upsetting about it was that there were flies in it.

Apparently flies here really really like open wounds, so there were a few of them, that she didn’t seem to notice, packed together and not really moving in a little triangle of horror on top of the cut. At first I actually thought they were biting her, but when she brushed them away, it was clear that they were just hanging out on top of a cut that already existed. I helped her chase them off (they were quite stubborn) and gave her some polysporin because flies carry all kinds of nastiness here. Luckily, the flies didn’t seem to like the polysporin very much, so they kept away after that. Still, it wasn’t too upsetting.

What was upsetting was realizing that I had the same thing on three different mosquito bites an hour later, and not knowing how long they had been there. When I discovered this I freaked out a little bit and liberally applied polysporin to every mosquito bite and cut I could locate.

School at least was good today. It was very engaging and I enjoyed it. I haven’t done much this afternoon, but to put a great end to that wonderful morning I had jollof at a chop bar that had questionable crunchy bits in it, and I found out that the other girl who was interested in TAWODEP, the NGO I wanted to do my placement with, has already contacted them and arranged her placement, and although we’re technically allowed to have up to two students at an NGO, they’re a small organization and I don’t think it’s likely that they’ll have enough work for the both of us. So it looks like I’m going to have to keep looking, which is not awesome because the deadline to choose an NGO is coming up quickly. Hopefully things will turn around tomorrow. Today just hasn’t been a good one.

I know that sometimes it’s the hardest parts of adventures like this that will end up being the most rewarding, and that will teach me the most when this is all over. I try to remind myself of this, because right now it just feels hard. I’m so aware of how uncomfortable or unsafe or inconvenient just about everything is here, and it’s hard to feel like it’s worth it when I’m afraid I’ll end up at a placement that I don’t enjoy or care about. Still, I’m sure there are other NGOs that I’ll find interesting, and I’m sure I’ll have better days.

To quote an excellent animated film (that I recently found out features the creative genius of Joss Whedon and the voice talents of Leonard Nimoy), “When you’ve hit rock bottom, the only place left to go is up.” While I know I’m still not really at rock bottom, I still have a lot to be appreciative of, it’s nice to think that things will probably turn up soon.

I’ll just have to grit my teeth and tough it out until then. I’ll keep you posted!