Salone Squared: Not a Real Blog Post, part 7

Post by Lara and Kevin

12 March 2013 –19 April 2013

Here come some more short but sweet thoughts on life in Salone:

Favorite question asked by a student this term: “What is Judaism?” [To which I responded, “Ever heard of a man named Jesus?”]
Our friend Anne pointed out to us recently that if she ever had any desire to be famous, moving to Africa has cured her of it. We agree. Quite frequently, I think we’re the most exciting thing some people see all day. It’s not uncommon for us to look up from washing dishes or sweeping our yard to see a line of children calling, “Pumoi! Pumoi!” [“White person! White person!”] and waving.
We’ve been excited ever since we arrived here last June for the start of mango season, which is just now upon us. What we were told was that there are so many mangoes, people can’t eat them all and eventually leave them where they’ve fallen to rot. The implication of this that we’ve only recently realized is that mangoes fall from the skies for over a month. Big, heavy mangoes. Even the small ones have started to come down with a crash onto our tin roof, so we’re a little bit afraid of the danger of concussion-by-mango.
Lara was just pondering that this is the longest period of her life where she’s had to wear “shower shoes” to go to the bathroom or shower—she was lucky enough to have private bathrooms all through college. The last time she wore shoes while showering on a regular basis was 2007 when she worked at Glen Helen for a summer. Here, our “shower” is 50 feet from our back door and has a concrete floor and is mildly open to the elements. Shower shoes are certainly preferable.
A while ago we spent an hour picking up trash from our compound and putting it in our 3-foot-deep rubbish hole. The highlight of this activity came when the theme from “Captain Planet” started playing on Kevin’s iPod. Thank you, Pat McCoy, for helping us always remember that the power is ours!
We’ve decided to create a new hashtag: #1stWorldCitizens3rdWorldProblems. The first of these shall be: tonight’s dinner menu was almost entirely decided by our cat. We haven’t fed her much protein this week and we felt bad, so we chose a chicken entrée so we could feed our obligate-carnivore cat something acceptable.