10 Days Left..

We were warned that at about the 2-3 week mark, we would start to get homesick. I don’t know if homesick is the right term for what I feel, but there are a couple of things I will not miss about being in a rural part of a 3^rd world country. With all the wonderful things that come with a life experience like this, admittedly it is not all rosy. Of course I miss my family and friends the most, but outside of that, I miss certain material things that I guess make me a ‘spoiled’ American.

 Like a functional toilet for example. Here you are allowed approximately 1 flush an hour (on a good day), so you better make it good, if you know what I mean. And now it’s even worse because we haven’t had water in almost 24 hours (which is apparently very common here) so there are 3 extra containers of stored water in our bathroom for us to use to fill the toilet tank, shower, etc. Unfortunately we are already down to the last of that too.  Yesterday afternoon when the water first started to dwindle, I was in the shower. I had to quickly re-prioritize my order of events. I know my feet need soap and water but should I skip my legs…there wasn’t much time to decide. I opted for the most essential parts and finished in the nick of time. Sorry, calves. You are still unscrubbed.

We still have plenty of bottled water to drink, but we’ll have to ask Aziz to get us more tank water. My American side makes me want to go check in to a hotel, but I am hopeful it will come back later today. We’ll see. Sounds pretentious I know, but you have no idea how much you NEED water for things other than drinking until you don’t have it anymore! Especially since you really need to wash your hands several times a day, just to be sort of clean. 

The other toilet in our house doesn’t even have a flush- it has a string coming out of the tank which drips with…something. Suffice it to say we are really using our hand sanitizer to the fullest.  We’ve gotten to the point where we seriously consider a drink of water or not…how desperately do you want to be hydrated…if you don’t drink, maybe you’ll pee less… If you pee less, that’s one less time to deal with the toilet situation… Sigh. It’s a vicious cycle. And TOTALLY the wrong day to start having GE. Too bad our home bathroom is the cleanest one in town. The lesson here:  kiss your toilet bowls, you folks at home. You owe them one!

I also will not miss bugs. Thanks to Jonathan and Bertina, the Bug Brigade, I am safe. Every day before I go into the bathroom, Jonathan does a formal inspection known as a CC or ‘creature check,’ ensuring that it’s safe for me to enter. And Bertina is pretty gutsy. Not much bothers her (except for one particularly large spider-- thank God I never met him).  And we spray ourselves down several times daily with DEET and other various insect repellents. I feel pretty decent about that part. But they are still icky. The creatures, not the Bug Brigade.

And cheese. I miss cheese.

I'm guessing Jonathan won't miss his mosquito net. It falls down every single night.