It's getting hot in here...
on Tales from a Mud Hut (Cameroon), 02/Jun/2009 07:55, 34 days ago
[Author's note: I should have published this blog ages ago but unfortunately the Hot Season (see long, miserable rant below) has sapped all my creative energy. It's literally taken me two months to write this entry!]The Hot Season arrived later than promised, but it’s here and is showing no sign of leaving. The heat is claustrophobic: imagine being trapped in a sauna when someone outside accidentally locks the door. Everywhere you go, the same force presses down on you from all sides. You can’t eat, sleep, work, think. All you can do is sweat. You take five showers a day but the water in the pipes is heated by the sun and comes out scalding. Even your electric fan provides no relief as it can only regurgitate the hot air that surrounds it. You begin to fantasise about grey skies, to hate that fiery yellow ball in the sky that beats down on yourelentlessly, showing absolutely no mercy.About a month of my life went by in this sorry condition. Finally, even the sky could stand it no more, and one day we looked up to see clouds. The rain, which came the next day, was greeted by hysterical VSO volunteers who ran out into their compounds screaming and dancing. I myself stayed outside in the storm until it was no longer possible to remain standing, and then I watched the rain from the safety of my front door. Never in my life have I felt such ecstasy. I think Sarah summed it up perfectly in the text she sent me that afternoon, as the first drops started to fall:“wooooohooooooo”.Yet the rain, if anything, only exacerbated our problems. Now it was no longer just hot, but humid too. What’s more, the return of the rain reignited a cycle that normally only exists during the wet season: cool(ish), hot, hotter, hottest, thunderstorm, cool(ish)… Like heroin addicts, we have found ourselves gagging at every moment for our next fix of rain.The lowest point came in the first week of May. I had been feeling rather peaky for a few days but, putting it down to a dodgy tomato, I didn’t bother going to see the doctor. One night, I was edging off to sleep when my fan, which hitherto had made a valiant attempt at ventilating my sauna – sorry, bedroom – spluttered, ceased to hum and slowly drifted to a halt. The electricity was gone. Temporary malfunctions are normal, butwhen it still wasn’t on the next day I began to worry. I would later learn that a power cable had been blown down near Garoua and that it would take a week for the electricity (and thus the water, as they come as a package) to return.By this time I was really sick. My health had deteriorated rapidly overnight, and I found that I could barely stand. Furious at myself for not getting treated sooner, I feebly called Abdoulaye and asked if he could take me to the hospital. We arrived to find that, as there was no generator, the doctors were literally powerless to help me. I couldn’t be admitted or tested. A nurse listened patiently to my symptoms, decided I had amoebic dysentery again, gave me some antibiotics and sent me home.Thus began the very worst twenty-four hours of my life. I lay in a stupor on my bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, drenched in sweat, summoning the strength to sit up only so that I could down another gulp of some vile solution that was meant to restore my energy but only made me feel more lethargic. I awoke in the middle of the night to find that it was so dark, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. My eyes didn’t pick up the faintest trace of light, not even the outline of my bedroom window. It was at this point that my body remembered that it had amoebic dysentery and decided to resume the activity for which this disease is so famous. A superhuman effort got me to the bathroom, where after a long and laborious battle with death and despair I realised that I couldn’t flush the toilet. No water. Remember that my house is very small and that the bedroom is squeezed up next to the bathroom. Desperate for water, I crawled into the kitchen and opened the fridge, realising to my horror that I hadn’t cleaned the bloody thing out since the power cut began 36 hours earlier. So there I was, trapped in a pitch black, baking hot, overbearingly smelly concrete block, sicker than I’ve been in my life, feeling ridiculously, pathetically sorry for myself.Since then, my health has yo-yoed but I haven’t fully recovered. This seemingly never-ending bout of sickness and hot weather has coincided with the heaviest period of work in my contract: organising and facilitating a three-day workshop, writing a report of our data-collection efforts over the past six months and using that report to drafta five-year action plan. I’ve decided to see it as a challenge and have come up with several strategies to beat the heat and thus survive the last few weeks. Here are some of my more successful efforts:Soaking my pyjamas and sheets in water, then lying (in pyjamas, on sheets) in front of the fan. Pros: hot air from fan is still cooling on wet skin. Cons: sheets/pyjamas dry within minutes, and whole process has to be repeated; inevitably wake up the next morning with a cold.Renting the salle de conférence at the Baptist Mission, which has air conditioning, in order to actually get some work done. Pros: with a bit of fiddling, air conditioner can be encouraged to produce arctic conditions. Cons: costs a small fortune; having to return to the sauna after experiencing relief from suffering isalmost unbearable.Spending every conceivable moment at the swimming pool. Pros: only viable way of getting total relief from the heat. Cons: can’t spend all my time in the pool (only open from 10am to 7pm, skin goes wrinkly if I spend too long in the water); haven’t yet figured out a way to write my report and swim at the same time.Treating myself to goodies (ice cream at expat restaurant, weeny£4 tub of Nutella, real milk/cheese/butter) whenever I feel really down. Pros: makes me feel better instantly. Cons: I always feel down and therefore always try to justify purchase of goodies, meaning that I’m running out of money at a rather alarming rate.A combination of these efforts and all-in-the-same-boat solidarity with the other volunteers has got me through the last few weeks, but I’d be lying if I said I was still relishing my experience in Cameroon. It seems that Africa has had enough of me and wants me to leave as soon as possible, and increasingly the feeling is mutual. I just hope and pray that the rains will come soon so that I don’t finish my year on a bad note.