As I promised, more Fote at the well kind of stories...

I now know what fear looks like. I was hanging out at the pump, waiting my turn to fill my container up with drinking water when a woman came in with her son. He was probably 1 year old. The moment he saw me, his eyes widened with fear. You would have thought that he happened upon a bloody, axe wielding murder with only half a face and an exposed brain. Honestly, I have never seen such pure fear. After he overcame the original shock and was able to move/breathe again he started crying and screaming at the top of his lungs and pulling his mom to get away from me. She took him out to calm him, but then came back in…and repeat scene. I think it is a pretty normal reaction to seeing your first white person. Apparently, they plan to torture him by telling him the Fote is coming to visit. Good. I am the Guinean Boogeyman.

Sunday morning I woke up at the crack of dawn thanks to roosters, some sheep, and the ever-present call to prayer. Waking up that early meant that I had many hours to pass before it was late enough that people in the US would be online and so my going to the internet café to skype would be worth anything. I decided to pass the morning by doing laundry. I did not have too much to do, but really wanted to wash my sheets. They are white so you can see the dirt outline of a body where I sleep. Our well was dry but my family had already filled their basin so they gave me buckets of water from that to do my wash. Just as I had finished the last bit, feeling really good about myself because I was not exhausted and was only bleeding from 2 fingers, I heard the sharp intake of a breath. My sister, in trying to make the line a little longer, had dropped all of my freshly washed laundry into the dirt. Damp laundry and dirt that has not been rained upon in months is the antithesis of oil and vinegar, whatever that is. All my clothes were now brown. My sheets were an absolute disaster. I would have to start all over. And our well was dry. We collected all of the buckets in the house and went down the road some ways to the next well. My mom decided that I would get water for my laundry and refill the basin at the same time. So we pulled up buckets and buckets of water. I was photographed on a cell phone and I carried the biggest buckets of water that I have thus far attempted, back to my hut on my head. After three trips and exhausted back muscles, I bent back over the board and went to work. Pockets of dirt had collected in the corners of my fitted sheet. Nothing would get it clean. Eventually we settled on hanging everything to dry and then beating the dirt out when it was dry. It worked. Not fabulously, but it worked. I am happy to say that not only did I not cry when I saw all my fresh clothes sitting in the dirt, I did not even want to cry. I had no tears welling in my eyes. Crying did not seem rational. I reacted the way any African woman would. Set backs are just a part of life. In the immortal words of Shakira, “You’re a good soldier, choosing you battles, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, get back in the saddle…When you fall get up oh oh, and if you fall get up eh eh, samina mina Zangalewa. Cuz this is Africa”. I just watched the last episode of Modern Family Season 2 and they say that all speeches should just be song lyrics put together so I am hoping the same applies to blogs.

P.S. I added pictures to the photos page but they are below the old photos