You know you’re in Africa when . . .
. . . you go to a village and they give you a live rooster as a gift.
. . . you get home and let the rooster run around your yard for a week because it’s not a woman’s job to kill it (hooray!!), and not too many guy friends have been stopping by lately.
. . . one day you can’t find the rooster, until someone goes to take the trash out to the outside trash can and opens the lid. Oops! He roosts right above it, and must have slipped and fell, turning over the lid and falling in. Makes for a good laugh!
. . . you get home from prayer time and ask your night guard (the guy you pay to spend the night on your front porch) to do the honors. You provide him with a knife, a bucket of hot water, and whatever else he asks for.
. . . the next night when he comes, now that you’ve enjoyed your chicken, you make sure to give him some as well. Let’s see, which pieces? I’ll be nice and give him 4 pieces – the head, two feet, and the liver. Tasty.
. . . you go out to your porch to give it to him and find him praying (he belongs to a different world religion). You know not to disturb him, so just put it down next to him.
. . . when he’s done praying, he thanks you a lot for the food. “May God pay you back.” (Hopefully He won’t pay us back with rooster heads and feet and livers, though!)
. . . you’ve opened up your computer and connected to the internet as you were heating up the food. Now you sit down to eat (enjoying the breast that you chose for yourself) and read a few e-mails. But the internet is super slow tonight, so at first it looks like they won’t come through. Hooray! I see 4 come through. But all I can see so far is the subject line and who they are from.
. . . you know you have an e-mail from your parents and want to read it, but dinner is now over and you’ve also written a post for your blog (which, since you work for an organization that is used to people with bad internet, you can do by just writing and sending an e-mail instead of going online). The e-mail still hasn’t come in. And none of the e-mails you wrote earlier today have sent. Maybe you’ll give up and try to read that e-mail tomorrow. And this post may be posted tomorrow, too. Who knows. (FYI – I’m writing this on Friday night, September 30th.)
. . . you decide to try one more thing. How about internet on your smart phone, since it’s with the other main provider. But your month of internet had run out a few days ago, and that phone and internet provider has been on strike since before then, so you can’t buy another month’s worth. You try to just get a few mbs, since you can get that for 25 cents. You try it. Nope, they don’t have internet today. You can still call, and a few days they had internet available, but it doesn’t look available today. Maybe tomorrow.
. . . your blog post is long and ready to send. Still can’t read that e-mail from your parents. You give up and decide you’ll try it again tomorrow.
Welcome to life in Africa.