The Bush Rat

Apparently this story has already circulated a bit but I figured I should tell it anyway.  So one afternoon I came home after being away for the weekend.  I noticed that the rock covering my latrine was moved over but I really didn’t think anything of it.  Later that evening around dusk, I used my headlamp to go to the latrine.  I peered down in there and what did I see, two beady eyes staring back at me.  This wasn’t just a cute little rat but a huge bush rat about the size of a small cat.  I could not bring myself to expose my bare ass to this rat for fear he would bite it or something.  Since it was late and I really didn’t know what else to do, I peed in a bucket.  I spent the entire night agonizing over how I was going to get rid of this terrifying rodent.  By the next morning I had Plan A:  smoke it out.  So I gather some brush, cardboard, and a box of matches.  Since it was light out I cannot actually see the rat anymore but just in case he is in there I wanted to make sure he was well motivated to leave.  I wasn’t sure if he could climb the walls or not but I have seen mice climb straight up a cement wall so I figured it was worth a try.  I light up a couple of the cardboard and toss them down the hole.  Meanwhile, I scurry behind the wall to hide because at this point I am fairly certain that this rat is going to practically fly out of the hole and land on my face.  I keep lighting up a couple of pieces at a time and toss them down there hoping to create a fire.  There was a steady stream of smoke but the rat never jumped out and it was time for me to go to work.  You would think I had to pee in a bucket a couple of times that day but it’s pretty easy to stay dehydrated in Africa.  Anyway, later that evening around dusk again, I call some children in my courtyard, hand them a flash light and point to the latrine.  When they see it they start laughing, pointing, and knocking each other’s head out of the way because there are over ten (children that is) of them now.  After a couple of minutes of me hiding in the corner looking confused, a couple of boys show up with a long spear.  NBD, right, just a javelin spear.  Within seconds they have this thing skewered up and ask me if I want to eat it.  I laugh thinking this is a joke.  Nope.  I tell them, “Je ne veux pas manger quelque chose qui mange mon caca!” One of the girls replies, “Mais la viande, c’est trés bon!”  They were more than happy to relieve me of my dinner.  

Living in Africa

So when they said be prepared to live in a mud hut without electricity, without running water, without internet, without reliable phone service, without a refrigerator, without a microwave, without an oven, without cheese, without a shower, in temperatures upwards of 100 degrees, without restaurants, without snack food, without fly swatters, and with a number of uninvited house/hut guests in the form of crab spiders, wolf spiders, toads, lizards, ants, and centipedes, they weren’t kidding.  So how do I deal with all of this?  How do I cope?  Well let me break it down for you:  

·         Electricity. 

o   For small items like my iPod and Nook, I use my solar charger.  About every three days I collect enough solar energy to fully charge my iPod.  It’s a little battery about the size of my palm (it folds open to 2 palms for greater surface area) and has a USB port to charge smaller electronics. 

o   For my computer I have an extended life battery that allows me to watch 2 movies, or 3 episodes of Breaking Bad, or 4 hours of photo organizing, or about 8 hours of word processing.  I tend to go for the biggest bang for my buck…3 episodes.  I charge this when I am in a city (bigger village) with electricity.  I can usually charge up about every two weeks. 

o   For my phone I go to my neighbor’s house.  The wealthier Burkinabé, in all their brilliant resourcefulness, use car batteries to power lights, T.V., stereo, and my cell phone.

·         Running Water.  The majority of villageiose get their water from traditional wells.  While wells are everywhere and easily accessible, the water is cloudy and swimming with toads and other less visible creatures.  Drinking water should at least come from a pump.  The water is pumped from a deeper and cleaner water table.  This water is clear and has significantly less chance of being contaminated.  However, most people in my village have very limited access to pumps and half of them are broken.  We are also in the midst of dry and will not have rain until around the end of May or first of June.  Some women from my satellite villages were complaining to me that their pumps and wells are already dry and they now have to travel to find water.  I am lucky.  I have access to my neighbor’s robiné (spigot) and usually collect one or two bidoens (5ish gallon jugs) per day.  This water is extremely clean by Africa standards; however, I still boil or filter any water that I actually drink.  I keep all of my water in a giant trash can and scoop it out with a calabash when I use it. 

·         Internet.  I can get spotty internet when I travel to my closest city.  However, anything beyond 2 or 3 clicks usually results in a dropped signal making it impossible to check email or creep in Facebook and the whole point of internet obsolete.  At the far away bigger cities I have decent access. 

·         Phone service.  For the most part, everyone here has a cell phone.   Even the illiterate people have cells phones which sometimes makes me chuckle.  Just like in America, certain providers have better réso (signal) than others.  The provider used by Peace Corps enables us to use a “family share plan” and call each other for free.  Unfortunately, the réso in my hut is hit or miss. 

·         Refrigerator.  I consider the spoilage of food be more on a continuum than necessarily good or bad.  I have constructed a dessert fridge which is a basin with water in the bottom in which I place my containers of food.  I then draped thin wet cloth over the food.  Because the perimeter of the cloth is sitting in water, the cloth stays wet even as water evaporates.  The evaporation causes the air around the food to drop a couple degrees (same concept as sweat).  This helps keep my vegetables from molding and rotting too quickly and sometimes I even keep leftovers from dinner for breakfast the next day.  

·         Microwave.  Yep, haven’t figured that one out yet.  Have to make it work with the gas stove.

·         Oven.  To make a Dutch oven, you buy a medium sized marmite (caldron/pot), fill the bottom with sand, heat on your gas stove, and voila, you have an oven.  It just happens to heat the house at the same time. 

·         Cheese.  You can buy real cheese in super market in Ouagadougou but it’s really expensive and difficult to keep.  The best option, however, is Laughing Cow Cheese, or Vache Qui Ri which is pretty widely available.

·         Shower.  If you have never taken a bucket bath I highly recommend it.  I use about 2-3 inches of water in bucket with a cup.  Having some sort of loofah and foot pumas helps because I get so dirty.  I am wondering if this is a habit I will bring back to the U.S. because it is so much more efficient with water and I don’t even mind that the water is cold.  

·         Hot.  Well this part just kind of sucks but I can always sleep outside when it’s really bad.  I have a mosquito net tent thing so I just set that up outside.  Another trick I learned was to wrap myself in a wet pagne, especially if I have a fever. 

·         Lack of Restaurant.  When I am in village, I cook every meal.  Anywhere else though there are restaurants and even some pretty good ones on Ouagadougou.  If I really want, I have one of the kids in my courtyard kill, deplume, and gut one of my chickens, but I only do that when I have guests. 

·         Snack food.  I think snack foods like pretzels and pita chips are what I miss the most.  I can make popcorn on the stove top so sometimes that has to do as a substitute.   

·         Bugs.  I have surprised myself by how much I have adapted to the ubiquity of bugs.  I kill most bugs I find in my house and go a little crazy with the spray can of insecticide.  The thing about a mud hut is that the bugs pretty much live in the walls.  The spiders were really scary at first but I think they have moved out (or been killed off).  I found two centipedes the other night which really freaked me out so I am hoping that was just a rare coincidence.  I have gotten to the point where I can grab a toad (with my bare hands) and toss it outside.  Sometimes I still make kids kill things for me but I must say I have gotten pretty good at it.