What’d you do today?
Whenever I talk to my mother she of course asks, “What’d you do today?” So I decided to show in detail what a typical weekend day is like in Dassa-Zoumé.
10:00ish am I wake up to the Italian staring at me then pointing out that he had been awake for an hour. I always tease him about how much he sleeps, which is a lot more than I do.
10:30ish am We head downstairs for breakfast. We had something similar to corn pops with Soy milk. By the way I HATE soy milk, so after trying to eat cereal with milk, I decided to just eat mine dry.
11:00ish am We grab our laundry, soap, buckets, and clothespins and head outside to do our remaining laundry. It was a cool morning so doing the laundry wasn’t as bad as it usually is.
12:30ish pm After hanging all of our clothes on the clothesline, we head back in and start the weekly cleaning of the room. I turned on some music, a Kanye West playlist and I did my part. I swept the floor while dancing to “Run This Town” with the Italian making a video. After I swept he washed the floors and I was stuck on the bed, because if I left any footprints, he would be pissed.
1:30ish pm Lunchtime!! Today for lunch we made a packaged risotto. I had Zucca, which I was told was pumpkin but was actually squash (ever existing language barriers) and he had a seafood meadly.
2:30ish pm After lunch we both showered then watched Season 2 episode 3 of Mad Men.
3:30ish pm We got dressed and headed out in an attempt to find the top up (credit) that we need for our dial up internet to work. We also wanted to try to check out the voodoo festivals since it was a national holiday for voodoo. We walked outside of our…compound…and found a zim immediately. We did the usual negotiation. The driver wanted more than we were willing to pay. I just smiled, said our final price and climbed on. He smiled and drove us. We had to get off early because a parade was blocking the street. The driver pointed out the festival to our right which was packed with people and dancing men on stilts. In the parade were women with paint on their chests playing gourds that were decorated with cowrie shells.
We walked past the hoopla to the place where we were to buy the top up and of course they were closed. We stopped in a number of places and were unable to find the card. You see the value of the card we need is 20000CFA which is more than half the pay of one of our employees and he is considered to have a good job, needless to say, its not everyday that people are walking around looking for a card of this value. So after walking around for about an hour we end up at a store that should have it tomorrow…so they say.
5:00ish pm We head back home and lay down and do some reading. Apparently I fell asleep. The Italian stayed awake reading the Help. A book everyone should read. And my book, the Wisdom of Whores, watched me while I slept.
6:45ish pm I woke up. The Italian was still reading. I read a few more pages then opted for games on my iPhone. While in Cotonou I downloaded some new games, Angry Birds and Phase 10. It was probably a bad idea. Especially Phase 10 considering that I now yell at the people (computer) playing against me.
7:45ish pm Immaculate, the Nigerian nun, yelled up to our window that our dinner was ready. Starving, we threw on some clothes and headed downstairs. Dinner was rice with a tomato and onion sauce, aloko (fried plantains) and chicken that was cooked entirely too long. The Italian fought that chicken and after ten minutes he finally came out on top.
8:15ish pm We returned to our room and the Italian returned to the Help. I read a bit of my french book and we decided to watch another episode of Mad Men. He couldn’t put the book down and I dozed off around 9ish. He apparently stayed up for a few more hours reading.
And that is what we did, and this was one of our more eventful days, imagine that.
