Feeling hot, hot, hot

(I've been requested to blog in English every now and then, for the benefit of my international audience. So here we go.)

The heat is still bothering me. According to my "Healthy Travel Africa" Lonely Planet book, it should take about one week to acclimatize. I beg to differ. To my Texan stepmother this might feel just like home. To my Norwegian self it certainly doesn't.

My friend Cecilie and I travelled in similar temperatures during our roadtrip in Georgia, USA, last summer. We would insist on taking the roof down on our chic, red convertible, keeping the aircondition on full blast. We'd last about two hours before having to admit defeat. No sich "emergency exits" here! You'll sleep on top of your sheets covered in as little as possible, still waking up soaked in sweat and praying for a breath of cool air. Then get up for a refreshing cold shower (30 seconds long - it's not nice to have long showers in a country where people walk for several hours to fetch water). The refreshed feeling lasts for approximately three minutes. That is how long it takes for you to put some clohes on and begin sweating again.

I read somewhere that "you know you are Norwegian when you feel guilty for not being outdoors on sunny days". I am quickly getting over that. Here, waking up to clouds makes my day! They sat it gets cooler during the rainy season, which is supposed to start soon. Of course, the rain makes it pretty much impossible to travel by road anywhere in this country. And it increases the spread of diseases. So the rainy season has its advantages and disadvantages.

Weekends here are slow. I spent Saturday sitting out on the screened porch of our house. Reading, writing, listening to the radio, chatting with my roommates. In the afternoon I went with Margaret to the market. She wanted to look for a dress. Small sheds crammed with one of everything. Brightly coloured, patterned, synthetic, often used clothing. This is where clothes donated to Fretex (the Salvation Army) resurface. I was half expecting to see one of my old mid-nineties skirts there. Not my shopping paradise, then, but still an interesting experience.

Mostly, people here will leave you alone. Kids, though, are often curious about white people. They stare, giggle, call out "morning!" regardless of the time of day, or say "khawaja" as you pass. Khawaja means 'westerner', and is spoken to attract your attention. This behaviour is not threatening or even harassing the way you might experience in, say, Egypt, and I am probably equally fascinated by them. However, I was unsure of how to react when at the market, a grown man started touching my arm repeatedly, smiling widely and apparently very excited to be near me. A pretty strange experience. I can just imagine what it must be like to go to a remote village never before visited by a 'khawaja'.

After finding a dress, we bought some tiny bananas ans a pineapple before stopping to get bread (10 rolls for 200 dinars). I wanted to det some tinned tomatoes for pasta, but it varies what the shops here have in stock. Instead, I found diet pepsi. Joy! The first diet soda I've had here. We also bought powdered milk, pineapple flavoured drink powder (like cool-aid) and tinned chicken sausages. We then returned to the house to cwait for the generator to switch on before cooking a bland spaghetti/onion/sausage dish for dinner. The trick here is to go to bed while the generator is still on: the ceiling fan cools the room just enough to make falling asleep possible. And so yet another day was over.