Pooping in a Rain Jacket

I pooped in a rain jacket this morning. And by that I mean that I wore a rain jacket while pooping, not that I actually pooped into a rain jacket. That would just be weird.

There are some things in America that are nice, comfortable. Like indoor toilets. But sometimes, the alternatives can be fun.

I even have a song I made up for the occasion. Not to rip off “Sitting on a toilet”, I sing “Pooping in a rain jacket.”

It’s probably not something you’ve ever done before. Unless of course you raced home after a long coffee break on a rainy day just so you wouldn’t have to use a public Starbucks restroom. But it was probably more along the lines of

“I’m pooping and I just happen to still be wearing my rain jacket.”

As opposed to

“I put my rain jacket on solely for the purpose of the pooping.”

Please note the difference.

In fact, your thoughts about bathroom activities and weather probably don’t often intersect. Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who are scared shitless of the thunder (literally). Or maybe there’s a window by your toilet that you opt to stare out of instead of reading the paper, and, in the process, you mentally note the weather.

I, on the other hand, and my bowels, bladder, and showering habits (not to be forgotten) do think of the weather quite often.

When the weather is cold, as it is right now, and raining, as it is right now, it makes trip outside….unpleasant sometimes. And then add in that you’ve got to expose a large part of your body to the elements. Well, it just a horse ride in the snow (seemingly fun, but a little uncomfortable for the backside, wet and cold.)

So, let’s make it a game! A puzzle! Can you anticipate how much TP you’ll need? Or should you just bring the whole roll? How do you transport it, keeping it easily accessible without getting it too wet? (Personally, I tuck it under my chin with my hood up)Then, how can you minimize time and things that will get wet? For that, I sometimes (and don’t think me strange, all the African kids are doing it) strip my bottom half and run bare-ass naked all the way to my latrine.

And at this point you’re just having fun. How often have you wanted to run and jump and dance in the rain half-naked? It’s a personal daily goal for me. And I get to do it twice! Before and after pooping!

Also, pooping while water is running down your back and inevitably into your nether regions makes it feel a whole lot cleaner. A free beday, if you will. So fresh and so clean, clean, clean.

So that’s my African moment for the day:

Me: hopping, skipping, and jumping through my garden to my latrine, wearing only my oversized blue rain jacket singing “pooping in a rain jacket”.

P.S. My lyrics to that song is a bit limited. Any suggestions? Feel free to let me know. I’d love to add more stanzas to keep me busy longer. I can’t really bring the Time there with me now can I. 

Rules of Motodriving

     1)   Always wear the most amount of clothes possible. Protect yourself from the elements as much as your wardrobe allows. If the biggest jacket you have is a neon green ski jacket from 1976, wear that. It don’t matter if it’s the middle of hot season and 100 degrees out; put that sucker on.            

  

  2)   If you happen to come across a puddle in the road, don’t worry, if you go through it fast enough, you’ll probably make it through to the other side. Don’t worry about how deep it is, it’s all about speed. If you or your passenger happens to get wet, well, at least you made it through, right? Or wait, you didn’t? You’re moto got stuck in the mud in the unseen 3 foot depth of a puddle? Don’t worry, just scooter it on out of there, and by that I mean using your two feet to walk the moto out while still sitting on it; much like a two year old on a pedal-less tricycle.

   

  3)   If you see a bend coming up and you can’t see what at the end of the bend, don’t worry about slowing down, just beep to let anyone coming towards you know that you’re around the bend. They’ll probably hear and make room for you, even if you do insist on taking the bend in the middle of the road.

   

   4)   Be polite, wave at your friends that you pass by with both hands! 

   

   5)   If you’re listening to Cameroonian music playing from your cell phone while driving, make sure you’ve got the speaker up all the way so your passenger and everyone you pass can hear that you’ve got major (distorted) sound. Everyone wants to hear it. Share the wealth dude.

    

   6)   When taking a road that is partially washed out, make sure to drive as close to the washed out gully as possible. That is, by far, the most secure part of the road.

    

    7)   If your back tire starts fishtailing, it’s not because you’re going too fast or the road is a bit wet; it’s because you’re passenger is too heavy. Be sure to remark how fat they are before continuing on your journey.

    

    8)   The object of the game is to get there as fast as possible. Therefore, for any stretch of road that you can accelerate, do so. It doesn’t matter if it’s only for 5 feet and then you have to slow down, resulting in a stop and go, vomit-worthy ride. It’s all about getting there in the least amount of time possible.

    

    9)   A long moto ride is a great time to convert your passenger. They can’t escape and they run out of excuses pretty quickly. So have your Koran or bible ready!

     

    10)                  Sunglasses are for pussies! In fact, all eye protection is! I don’t care if you’re going an average of 30 mph with flies getting into your eyes or raindrops skewering your face, don’t be a pussy!

    

    11)                  Play chicken with the rocks in the road. Chances are, they’ll get up and move before you hit them. But don’t worry if they don’t. Just make sure to tie your cargo down really well before you go. Oh, you have a passenger? Well, either they go flying or they don’t: Darwinian selection, non? 

Seasons

Growing up in the Florida Keys, seasons meant very little to me. In fact, there were barely seasons at all, at least not the ones they taught in schools: Winter, spring, summer, fall. There was soccer season and softball season. There was hurricane season. There was summer and there was the school year. Other than that, except for the few cold fronts that blew in every once in a while, “season” was a useless term.

I experienced the changing of seasons for the first time when I lived in Germany. I watched leaves change and fall, get covered up by snow and give way to green sprouts. But still, what was a season to me? Most importantly, it was a change in wardrobe. In Boston, I started wearing a second pair of pants in October and wouldn’t go back to a single pair until March or April. I got out my huge, calf-length black coat and my massive, waterproof boots. The sandals went away until the weather was warm enough again. But other than that, what really changed? I went to school if there was school, worked if I had work. My diet was almost completely unaffected. Sure the landscape would change from colorful to brown to white to green, but it was still the same old landscape, same old city.

Here, seasons have a whole new meaning. When I arrived in Mogode, I thought I lived in the desert. Everything was brown. What little that was green was surely dead by May. In the distance, I could see sparse trees and rolling brown hills covered in what felt like cat-litter. Not exactly the sands of the Sahara, but still lifeless. People spent their time sitting underneath trees on piles of peanut shells, trying to escape the sun, cracking peanuts for hours. The only breaks in their day were changing from one chore of cooking to another of sweeping.

But with the rain, all that changed. Overnight, my town changed. I went for a bike ride the other day and got completely lost because everything looks so different. Plants and crops have sprouted up everywhere. There is hardly a space that isn’t covered in green. I don’t live in a desert anymore. Up until last week, when I walked into my latrine, I walked into a rainforest! There was grass higher than my waist and random plants growing up everywhere. (I cleaned it all out, afraid of snakes, but it was cool while it lasted).

People are so busy. They go to their fields at 6 am and stay until 6 pm. They work hard and eat well for the first time that I’ve ever seen. Walking through town in the middle of the day is like walking through a ghost town. The restaurants are all abandoned, the stores all closed up. Even the hospital is slow. They operate with a skeleton staff and take turns going out and caring for their fields. There are hardly any patients.

Our diet has changed. I’ve been able to find fresh vegetables like spinach, cucumbers, eggplant! It’s amazing. It’s a completely different country with the arrival of just a little rain.

Also, there’s less electricity. Hard rains wash away the power lines, leaving us in darkness for days or weeks at a time. As I write this, I’m using a battery powered by a solar panel and sitting in a room filled with candlelight.

There’s water again. Months ago, people went weeks without bathing or washing their clothes, simply because they didn’t have water. Now all they have to do is stick a bucket out in the afternoon and they’re set for a day or two. People are cleaner and mostly healthier. Dry canyons became overflowing rivers, ripping through the trees and plants that dared to grow in the dry river beds.

But with the rain come mosquitoes and health misconceptions that threaten these people’s health. Children wake up having scratched mosquito bites to infection in the night. Malaria is starting to affect this region. Women, who believe you can’t drink water and work, suffer from dehydration headaches. The colder weather brought colds and flues.

As for me, my work is different. Everyone that I normally work with is out “au champs” working their butts off to put food on the table. So, I’ve changed up my routine too. When I’m not preparing things for the school year, I work my own little field. My neighbors planted corn, okra, and peanuts there, which I tend. I also planted my own huge garden. I’ve got squash and pumpkins, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, leeks, beans, lima beans, carrots, and herbs all peaking up out of the ground. My hands are covered in little blisters, but it’s amazingly satisfying. I’m growing food that will feed me and maybe my neighbors in the next few months. I’ve never done that before. When I was little, I remember growing tomatoes once, and lima beans for a science project in first grade. Once in college I had a parsley plant; but I ate it too quickly and it died because it didn’t have enough leaves to keep growing: whoops. I never knew if I had a green thumb or not. I guess I still don’t, we’ll see. But this is such an amazing experience. Fun and satisfying.

But bottom line is, this rainy season didn’t just bring on a rain jacket. It brought on a whole new terrain, new work, new sickness, new people, new food. This is the power of the rain! How crazy is that. It gives me a new appreciation for old mythology. The elements proscribe so much of their world. A bad harvest could mean dead children. I can understand praying to an unknown rain god to make sure that doesn’t happen. While on the other side of the world, our cushy grocery stores import food from all over the world. You can get peaches in the dead of winter. Seasons don’t mean a thing. It’s eye-opening; I understand how much of our world can be dictated by nature, and how far western culture has come from that.

A Day in the Life

One of the questions I get asked most often is: What is your day-to-day life like? In short, it’s different every day. But, more often than not, there are 2 different kinds of days, frameworks if you will. Keep in mind, this is for right now, when there’s no school and everyone is in their fields all day.

Option 1: Vaccination Day

5:15 am: first alarm goes off, snooze for 10 mins
5:25: actually get out of bed, try, fail, and close my eyes again
5:30: stand up, and actually leave my bedroom,
    Breakfast/Morning Routine/Large glass of Caffeine of the day
6:00: Dieudonne bangs at my gate
Down as much caffeine as possible, stumble to the door, putting on shoes, grabbing my helmet and locking the door on the way
6:30: arrive at village and ride around on the moto playing Jingle bells, letting all the     mothers know we’ve arrived and it’s vaccination day.
7:00: after we set up, we wait around for mothers to show up. Then it’s baby-weighing time for me. Dieudonne takes care of the vaccinations
10:00: head back to the hospital
11:00: chat with the nurses and subject myself to the mind-numbing, presumptive and derogatory narrative of the doctor for the day.
12:00: go home for lunch, where I either whip something up or heat up leftovers
1:00 pm: chores that I didn’t do before I left: sweeping, washing dishes
2:00: free-time to either work or play at home, probably on my computer. Maybe prepare for a presentation coming up or just watch a TV show.
3:00 work out
4:00 bucket bath
5:00 visit neighbors time! I stroll around town, talking to my favorite people, hearing about their lives and their days, maybe help them cook dinner, maybe just sit around. It’s my integration time.
7:00 head back home, lock my gates, turn on some music and make some dinner
8:00 entertainment time! If there’s no power, I’ll often go and sit in my hammock and read. If there is, I’ll watch a movie or TV show.
10:30: bed-time!

Option 2: No Vaccination Day

8:30: stir from my coma and Frankenstein into the kitchen for coffee.
9:30: morning chores and/or prep for the day
10:30: go to the hospital, talk to the staff and or patients. Maybe do some work there. Mostly just talk about differences between America and Cameroon
12:00: Lunch time
1:00 work or me-time.
3:00 work out
4:00 bucket back
5:00 visit neighbors
and so on and so forth. I guess the only thing that really changes are my mornings.

I spend a lot of time not doing a whole lot right now. It’s Ramadan, so if people aren’t in their fields, they’re sleeping underneath trees, waiting to eat. It rains almost every day, so I spend more time inside than in dry season. But I have also planted my own little field too. I’ve got potatoes and tomatoes sprouting and this weekend, I planted squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, mesculin, leeks, more tomatoes, peas, beans, lima beans, basil, parley, oregano, chives, and some other things. We’ll see how green my thumb is. I’m pretty excited though. Although, I did make a rookie mistake and forgot sunscreen on the lower part of my back while spending all day leaning over, planting and hoeing. So I am currently nursing a very sunburned back. That’ll teach me! So yeah, my life in Africa!