There's Been a Terrible Misunderstanding

Today I came home only to find the walls of my brand new hangar covered with cow poop. I almost cried.

Backing up a bit, I recently decided to have my hangar rebuilt and expanded so that it could comfortably accommodate more people since I do most of my socializing there. Plus, now that its hot, I've started sleeping outside and with the additional space, now its a little more private. My old hangar was not particularly attractive so I decided that since I was the one doing the buying, to make the new more uniform in color and size, etc. There are two types of materials that are typically used to make a hangar; one is essentially a bunch of dark sticks and the other is a bunch of dried corn or millet shafts. I decided to go with the millet shafts because I prefered the lighter coloring. Unfortunately, no one told me that the goats prefer to eat these as well. I quickly realized that I would have to do something, and fast, before my investment was chewed up to pieces so I asked around for suggestions. The most common method is to mix cow poop and water and splatter it all over the husks. I told my neighbor, respectfully, thanks but no thanks. The other option would be to smear motor oil on the walls. A friend said that he would buy the oil and come by that night and we could paint it on. “That would be great,” I said, “because there's no way I'm putting cow poop on my walls.” Unfortunately, my neighbor thought that by asking to see his hangar that meant that I wanted the same thing done to mine, despite the fact that I said, no thanks. Now my only hope is to hope that once it dries, it (1) looks a little better and (2) that the awful smell goes away. If not, I may looking into a third hangar.

Thinking back to my last update, I would consider these past three weeks to be a “character building” month. Nothing really dire just a collective sum of not so great things. As if the cow poop wasn't enough. To start things off, there was one night that I was one my way home after being out with friends, when I passed a donkey cart carrying a person into the hospital when a young girl ran up to me saying, “that's John Doe” on the cart. Just three hours before, he and I had been sitting at my house talking and he was completely fine. Now he lay there completely out of it and listless. When he came to he was combative and was having hallucinations. With the weather being so hot, I thought it could be something as simple as dehydration but one never knows. The doctors ended up running some tests and later diagnosed him with malaria. While I am by no means a medical worker, I had my doubts because malaria is always the first thing that comes to mind. Its not at all unusual for someone to say, “I'm feeling a little sick today; I think it's my malaria acting up.” People –malaria doesn't “act up”. That said, after two days in the hospital, the medicine starting kicking in and when I visited him on the second day he was awake and was smiling a little. 48 hours after that we were sitting at my house again and he was telling me that he was heading out of town the next day for work. No rest for the weary.

And then there were the eggs. I noticed these random white, half-circle shaped things that seemed to pop up periodically on my walls and at first I didn't pay any attention them. I asked a friend and he said that he heard that they bugs lived in them. Great. So I did what any normal person would do and hammered it as hard as I possibly could with my flip flop. When nothing happened I felt good, accomplished even. Take that Africa! That was until a couple of weeks later some other friends were over and I asked them if they knew what these white circles were about. My friend Kary said, “oh yeah, those are lizard eggs.” WHAT IS IT WITH ME AND LIZARDS???? Again, I did what any normal, level-headed person would do; I had my friend go about the task of removing the lizard eggs. Everything was going just fine until he emerged from the kitchen and showed me a half-developed lizard embryo that had developed inside of one of them. I almost vomited. Thanks, Jeremy but I didn't need to see that. Fortunately, I think that the word is out because I haven't come across any more eggs.
During this same visit with the other volunteers, I got pink eye. My friend got it a few days earlier and decided against his better judgement, and my constant nagging, to just tough it out. If this wasn't the same friend that had just saved me from the lizard eggs I might have killed him. With the aid of some eye drops, I was fine 3 days later. It could have been worse.

On the bright side of things, in five days I leave for a 10 day vacation in Ghana!! From what I hear its absolutely beautiful there and is most importantly a lot more temperate weather wise than it is hear at the moment. Not really sure how, but I allowed myself to be talked into taking a 24 hour bus ride down instead of taking a 2 hr flight. I'm sure that I will live to regret that decision but at least I'll have some entertaining stories to share afterwards. I made no promises about the return portion of the trip. There may be only six people versus seven people on that bus if I decide to fly back.

Wish me luck!