A Day In The Life

Life is settling in to a predictable groove at this point here in Gambia and I’m getting used to the way life is lived here. At this point I don’t even heat water anymore for my bucket showers. Bucket showers are how we bathe most of the time. Water is not always on and even when it is the pressure is not very good. The water will come out of the faucet but doesn’t have the power to travel the rest of the way up the one-meter tube to come out the showerhead. You can hear it struggling to climb up to glory but it falls short usually with me saying something like, “come on baby, come on…give me some, gimmie some!” However, when pressure is good I love to take cold dripping showers, it comes so close to reminding me of home, and then doesn’t.

I often get up when Carolyn rises to heat some water for her morning bucket and to make her lunch for the day while she is getting ready for work. Then I see her off and will take my shower or perhaps go back to bed for a while. I usually can’t sleep after I get up in the morning so I will often read in bed or simply start my day writing, which I try to do a few hours a day or more. Sometimes I slack off. [hold for laugh]

Once I have bathed and eaten I usually attend to the water necessities of the day. That is the boiling of the drinking water and the filling of the buckets, as well as any dishes that might need cleaning from the night before or breakfast. The water, when on, will only last for the morning so I really need to make sure I get everything squared away before the water is finished. We have three buckets, the largest being just over knee high and stays in the shower room for use there. All showering, hand washing and teeth brushing is done from that bucket when the water is off. The only non-boiled water I put near my mouth is from that bucket when I brush my teeth, but I never swallow. It is a bit off-putting to brush my teeth from the same bucket that I shower from. Every once in a while I will notice soap dripping into it when I scoop the next cup out of it. And I’m sure water whisks off me and back into the bucket when I’m bathing every so often. The next bucket is about half the size of the shower one and rests in the kitchen for use in all water related kitchen activity. I get the water for boiling, cooking and washing dishes from it. It’s the one we keep the cleanest, always washing it out and filling it when it’s completely empty so as to avoid the settling of particles at the bottom, which we have noticed before. Personally I want to get a bigger one for the kitchen and then use this one as a separate, hand and mouth only, bathroom sink bucket. That would make this OCD sufferer a little happier. The last of our buckets is situated in the water closet (toilet only room separate from the shower and sink room). It is the exact size to refill an empty toilet when we have flushed, when the water is off, and find ourselves needing to flush again before the water comes back on. There is a joy of filling a toilet at three in the morning just so I can flush it again and it's something one really needs to experience for their self. Needless to say we are a ‘if it’s yellow let it mellow’ family here in The Gambia, which everyone should be in this crazy world of over population and wasted resources. I’ve never been less wasteful in my life than I am now living in Africa with the world-class poverty everywhere around us.

So now I’m clean, the water is boiling and our buckets are full. Carolyn has long since left for school and I find myself alone until about 3:30. This is usually when I will do my writing, as well as late at night. Sometimes I go outside. Hey, I’m in Africa so I better get out and do stuff or else I might as well be back in America sitting around all day. I love to go to the beach, which is a 14-minute walk from our apartment. Or I might walk to the pool and swim laps. (I am exercising a lot now) Often there is some shopping or errands to run as well during the day, like today when I went, early in the morning, to a photo lab to get pictures for my residency card and then to the police station to apply for a driver’s license. And then to the other police station where all the applications are taken, every task here takes more than one trip or phone call, or location diverted to. It took six trips over three days to the phone company to figure out our internet bill, pay it, and then have it reconnected after we found out we never paid a different, separately billed, fee for over a year.

By the time I’ve done my errands for the day it’s usually near 3:30. I try and make sure I’m home when Carolyn gets off work because we love each other very much and want to smooch and hold each other. After this we might have made previous plans to go to the pool/gym or we might have some shopping to do. Or we might just hang around home, watch movies on the laptop, and do what needs to be done here. Dinner is a particularly special time for us because we love to cook together and have been making some unbelievable food lately. But that is another story.

BBB