Well this is a great opportunity to write! I'm on my 1.5th hour waiting at the car park while my gele gele van to Kulari fills up with enough passengers. On my way to the garage (mind you I still have no idea where it is), Ceedee's mom saw me and led me there thank God. That woman's Grade A awesome and if you just meet her you'd want to be around her, too. We stopped by a fabric shop and they told me two meters was 100D. Bullcrap. I still don't believe it so I'm holding off on buying any since I need to buy a lot... NOT at a bad price. I went online and got a bunch of dress ideas so I'll have fun drawing them out the next couple of days. I hope the tailor that my family knows is a good one. I'm not sure if my moms like it that I want to make dresses, haha, but I saw other girls do it! Serehule's are really conservative, remember, but I'm thinking of making a shorter dress that I can wear by itself in Kombo and in village I can wear that + a wrap skirt underneath so I'm all covered. Speaking of which I really want some wrap skirts but the prices I've gotten are outrageous. I'll hold off until a PCV who has connections take me under their wing.
So, Fatou (Ceedee's mom) and I walked to the car park and the first thing I hear is "CHINA CHINA CHINA" haha. Some weirdo who was really dirty, tank top/jeans wearing, has the balls to approach us (and he's chanting this in a pretty loud tone, too) and Fatou goes, "Her name's Mariama" in Serehule. I think she's a very dignified woman that won't take shit but also won't start shit. I think he may have some mental issues but I'm not sure. When we went to the Kulari car, she dropped me off and went off on her way - I think she was visiting someone - and I tried sitting near the shops/small food hole in the wall places but the flies were disgusting and omnipresent. Mad guys were there and that weird bold guy from before approaches me yet again but I think I scared him off with a very pronounced, agitated, sharp "WHAT?" and sometimes I think that's what I need to do to get people off my back. I can understand with little kids since they don't have a good sense of, well, anything, but when adults do it, it definitely grates on my nerves. He didn't come back to annoy me after that. I told the guys waiting at the Kulari car that the guy was crazy and I think they told me not to mind him because he was (crazy - there's no PG term for mentally disabled people - even professionals straight up call them "dumb"). I chatted with them for a bit, texted my friends, got obnoxiously toubab'd by kids - all in a normal day's work. As I'm waiting for three more people to fill the gele, a banana seller with a really cute fabric pattern for her skirt and the nicest ass is standing next to me mostly talking about me to the driver but she doesn't speak Serehule - just Pulaar. Earlier today at Kumba's, a food stand situated close to the transit house that everyone frequents, the woman who runs the place (Kumba) taught me a few words in Pulaar and I was excited to use them!
Oh yeah - that's something worth writing - one of my favorite foods here which is ONLY sold during the morning (but I can eat them at any time of day, all day, every day) is called the bean sandwich. At first, I don't know what the hell kind of phenomenon those were because EVERYONE was raving about them. But after I took my first bites... Essentially it's a long piece of white bread with cooked beans (like the type you'd get for camping) and you add either one or two fried eggs in them or they're topped with this oil sauce with onions and pepper which is just spicy enough to give it a kick but not overwhelming. If it's just beans and sauce it should cost anywhere from 10-25 D for a full. If you add eggs to the beans mix, it makes it 35D for a half, 50 for full.
---
OKAY so it took me a long two hours in total for the gele to fill up with enough people to leave. Note to self I have plenty of time to get to the car park by 1-1:30 PM next time. It was so hot and I was awfully thirsty and I think the combination lulled me to sleep on the bump ride home. By the time I got up, we already arrived in Kulari and the car dropped me off closer to my house than expected! I greeted all the people my there, and one of my uncles (who I call dad) were there! He's very sweet and knows English but speaks to me in Serehule. I made the off hand comment that my bag was heavy and he went off to get his bike, hoisted my backpack onto it, and walked me home. I was so happy and instantly felt happier being home. Along the way, he said I was his child and I assumed his message was that of course he'd help me. We got to my house and everyone was there. Apparently all the peanut picking ended yesterday so maybe it was lucky I stayed in Basse instead of being pressured to go out in the bush again, haha. My dad biked my backpack to my door while I ran and hugged my moms and grandma. I ran back to put my stuff in, grabbed the groceries, and took it all outside to give to the fam. I also gave my dad two packets/boxes of attaya, I have no idea how many that brews but whatever it was a road gift. My older mom gave me lunch and helped me fetch water which was so thoughtful. At first glance it didn't seem like my house needed a lot of cleaning but I was so naive as to what was to come...
I went outside to transfer water that my mom fetched for me into my bath bucket. It's on a raised platform so I moved it a little but like 15 of those gross, big burnt yellow big ants (sometimes flecked with brown or black) came out from the bottom as soon as I lifted them up. They're like 1 cm- 1.5 cm long which is a hell of a lot bigger than any of the ants back home. AND GROSS COLORED. Anyways, I completely removed the bucket from the platform and there's a small hill of UNHATCHED, WHITE, LARGE RICE LOOKING EGGS and three dozen of those ants tumbling around. I dashed back inside to grab bug spray and by the three seconds that past between dashing inside and back, the ants were crawling everywhere in my shower/bathroom area. I had no choice but to spray the entirety of my shower area to get them all. Now, my shower floor has a hole connected to the pit latrine for the water from my bucket baths to drain into. I guess some of the bug spray residue got into the hole and out comes HUNDREDS of those gross ants again! It looked like a scene in Lord of The Rings when all the orcs were marching out of fucking Mordor and Frodo and Sam where like shit, shit, shit. Of course the ants were writhing and crawling out haphazardly but it was just SO gross seeing all of them on my shower area, like a mass diaspora, and they're all types of dirty having just crawled OUT OF MY PIT LATRINE.
OK so the massive graveyard of ants that my shower area just transformed into was pretty easy to clean. I basically used water to flush the corpses back from the portal to hell from which they came. So now that I ran out of water, I go fetch more and explain to my family what happened and resumed cleaning my house. As I'm cleaning, of course, a super fast black thing darted underneath my gas tank so obviously it must be a spider. I grabbed my handy dandy bug spray again and sprayed into the bottom of it - where it's raised and has some openings, no, not the actual gas tank part - and OF COURSE TO MY HORROR AGAIN five dozen of those gross ants come stumbling out. I continue spraying but they continue evacuating/dying/writhing so I move my gas stove a little and legitimately see a MOUNTAIN of eggs. Ugh. After the second massacre, and I cannot even imagine if all of those eggs hatched (I learn now that I have to move my gas tank frequently), I swept and felt utterly creeped out. I did some exercise, went to shower, ate dinner, but I saw more of those fast, big, flat spiders than usual. I was not above asking my mom to kill it so I did, haha. I also was able to give her my rent and she still remembered that I wanted to cook breakfast for myself! Yay. And that I wanted lunch + dinner cooked for me. I was able to communicate everything on the spot without my book and sat out with my family for an hour without my book and got to just talk/joke with them. My moms understand me and for that I am so ever grateful. I'm also truly grateful I didn't forget as much Serehule as I thought in my short hiatus away from site.
When I turned in for the night, of course, there was another huge spider inside and it crawled so fast too! I had to battle it out and feel like I emptied an entire can on its ass to kill it. I thought it was going to crawl into my mattress at one point but it just went back on the wall... unless that was another spider fml. I didn't have such a problem before I left, maybe this is just what happens when my hut's unoccupied? I want a table stat so I can get my chests off the ground and I'll need to move my gas tank around more. Have to figure out my bed situation when that finishes, too, bah. I just want my house finished now!
No comments:
Post a Comment