| My Daily Life... |
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| Waking up in Sololo was like clockwork. Either the donkeys braying, roosters crowing, or flies buzzing around the mosquito net would generally do the trick. However, some days, it would be the heat of the morning sun, gently passing through the cracks in the door and windows, blasting through my eyelids, beckoning me to greet another gloriously hot day in Africa. |
| View from my front door. |
| The majority of my day was geared towards my basic living needs...Generally, I would make the morning trip to the community well, where I would fill up a 5 gallon drum (like the one on the young girls head, below) and lug it back to my hut for my morning bucket bath. The bath consisted of me, stark naked, squatting on a cement slab, outside, behind a semi-private bamboo fence and pouring cups of water over my body, scrubbing fast and furious, before any unannounced morning visitors decided to stop by. The remaining water in the drum would be emptied into my jibinda (a clay jug used for storing drinking H2O). |
| Bucket-bath slab |
| Jibinda |
| Depending on the day...namely how hot it was, I would change my daily schedule, and decide how productive I would or wouldn't be. Mornings and evenings were the optimum times to get out and plant, paint or visit with friends. During mid-day, when the sun was the hottest, I was either in my hut, fanning myself...under a Mango tree, fanning myself...or in the Gambian River, up to my nose hairs, trying to keep cool. |
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| Kamo (latrine) |
| The remainder of the day consisted of me either eating dinner with my host family, or preparing something myself...which generally consisted of noodles or cookies. And finally, my favorite time of the day...NIGHT. Again, depending on the weather, and mosquitoes, I would lie on my hammock behind my hut, and stare up into the vast African night. Nowhere else have I been able to see the Milky Way so bright, pick out countless constellations or watch numerous bats flying to and from my roof, in search of food. Night-time in Africa made the heat somehow bearable. |
| A candle light dinner |
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| Bat living in my roof |
| Cooling off in the River |