Rainbolt Travel Diary

We have now reached the point in our big adventure where it becomes time for the whine blog. Those of you who wish to maintain the illusion that we are living in a tropical paradise are encourage to re-read previous entries or check back later in the week.

Whine number 1. Living on the compound is constant noise. Last night our Islamic neighbors were using the powers of a 15 million gigiwatt PA system to pray at 7 pm, 10 pm, 12:30 am, 3:30 am and 5:30 am. It is like living next door to the world’s largest alarm clock with a defective snooze button. What I really want to know is who wakes up at 3:30 in the morning and then prays for 40 minutes? I also want to know how come their generator is better than ours, because they always have power! For no apparent reason, the fire alarm in the flats has started going off, and then it will stop, then it will start and this went on for 15 minutes on Wednesday night. The air conditioner in our bedroom senses the break between prayers and emits a high pitch whine. The back of our flat overlooks the soccer field, which means that on Saturday morning the joyous shouts of kindergarten soccer players will wake us up. That fits in well with the joyous shouts of marines stationed at the consulate that wake us up occasionally during the week. We also have the beeping that accompanies the regular power outages and roar of the generators that follows the power outages. We have a large beautiful tree right outside or window that hosts a very loud squawking bird on most mornings. It is a nice accompaniment to the barking dog. An early morning serenade that usually is played well before the alarm clock.

I am sure that eventually all of these things will become background noise, but now they are loud and annoying. We have been here seven weeks and I can count the full nights of sleep on one hand.

Whine number 2. “Oh this is really unusual, the rainy season always ends the first week in September.” It is now well past the middle of October and we are still having the rainy season. This is not gray misting rain. It is cow peeing on a flat rock rain. It is seep through the walls and windows and make puddles on the flat floor rain. This is a walk 15 yards to my classroom and be dripping wet rain. Sure it is warm, bordering on hot, but it is still gray, overcast, no sun kind of rainy weather. If I stand in front of the AC and just look out the window I can see February in Tacoma. Part of the appeal, at least for me, was the chance of regular exposure to sunshine and I’m not getting it. We didn’t pack raincoats or umbrellas. Why would you need things like that when you are living south of the Sahara Desert? So enough of the rain, bring on the tropics, and the sweltering heat and the blistering sun. I want movie Africa!

Whine number 3. How hard is it to create a mail system in a country? Give people an address, take some of your oil money and buy some trucks, put your own picture on the stamp and make it possible to mail something! With NO mail system we have to drive around and find a guy to buy minutes for the cell phone; we buy minutes for the TV cable. Smart cards all over the place but you can’t mail a letter or package home? The Slater’s steward showed up at their flat on weekend because he needed help. His son is in boarding school in Ghana and had run out of food money. The dorm mother drove from Ghana to Lagos to help him out. No phone because if you don’t have a mail system you can’t bill for service, no mail system so you can’t send a letter. The only choice was to drive. Things would be so much easier if you could have a bill arrive at your home. Did you ever imagine someone would say that?