Not a Real Blog Post, part 2

Post by Lara & Kevin

12 July 2012

Another smattering of random thoughts for your perusal:

• If Kevin has his way, he’s going to spend all of our money buying coconat kek [coconut cakes, or more appropriately for our American friends, coconut cookies. They are homemade, about the size of your hand, and are sold mainly by kids and women on the street. They cost Le500, or about 7 cents]. Kevin bought and ate 3 coconut cakes in one afternoon at the market.
• Speaking of coconut, our favorite Salone alcohol so far is coconut liquor that we can buy in a 1-shot pouch for Le500. Yes, a pouch.  It’s delicious, especially poured into a cold bottle of orange Fanta.
• We’ve noticed a completely different etiquette surrounding car horns in this country than in the US.  Here in Salone, honking generally means either “There’s room in my taxi/van/behind me on my bike for you” or “I’m about to drive very close to you and while I’m not intending to hurt you, it’s basically your job to get out of my way”.  In case you don’t hear the horn, vehicles also flash their brights at us to communicate any of the above sentiments.  Our Sierra Leonean friends have assured us that none of these is meant to be rude in any way, but we’re having trouble forgetting the American meaning behind these gestures, all of which say in one way or another, “You are a terrible driver/pedestrian, you jerk.”
• Sometimes the highlight of your day is spending Le 1,000 (a little less than $0.25) on a single wrapped Twizzler at the supermarket. Other times the highlight is opening a package from your mom and finding a giant package of Twizzlers (thanks Mom!)
• Before we left, someone told me that there are no fireflies in Africa. I don’t remember who you are, but you are incorrect! Salone fireflies are beautiful. They flash quite a bit faster than the ones in Ohio.
• Another interesting thing about African nights: the sky has shifted! The crescent moon looks like a cup; the big dipper is vertical and so close to the horizon we generally can’t see the North Star; and Orion is standing on his head.
• “Kevin, I like your foot.  It shines!” ~Emma (our 5-year-old host sister) as she lays her head on my foot.
• It recently occurred to me that brushing my teeth in the dark has become the new normal. The thought of having a bright light on when brushing seems so unnecessary. [Addendum: the other evening our family decided to run their generator, so we had a bright light in our bathroom for tooth-brushing and bucket baths. It was weird, and we realized our bathroom was quite dirty.]
• We mentioned in an earlier post that the malaria prophylaxis we take can cause “vivid dreams” as a side effect. So far some of the weirdest of them were, in no particular order: Lara dreamed that she was on her way to her father’s family finance meeting but worried because she didn’t have her net worth report prepared [note: the only thing that makes this dream weird is the lack of preparation. Lara always has her net worth report prepared prior to her dad’s annual meeting]; Kevin dreamed that he made another PCT, Nathan, his Power of Attorney and immediately began to fear the repercussions of that decision; Lara had a dream that she was in a 4-story candy store with an entire level devoted to every imaginable variety of caramel apples.  The thing to note about “vivid” dreams is that they tend to result in at least a few seconds of, “wait, did that happen or did I dream that?” which of course can lead to feeling utterly relieved or incredibly disappointed once we realize we were in fact dreaming.