corn flakes and shaving cream

Greetings, from Ouahigouya!

So my breakfast options at site in Koupela are pretty limited. I can choose from:

- oatmeal (good, but plain)

- omelet sandwich (don’t get excited, it’s literally just a fried egg and bread)

- bread and butter (well not butter, but blue band, some strange sort of vaguely butter-like margarine that doesn’t melt completely in the heat)

- pb&j (jelly doesn’t actually go bad very quickly)

I could have corn flakes and milk (they are available for purchase in Koupela), but it would be powered milk mixed with warm water. Yuck. I could buy real milk… but I don’t have a fridge at home so it would go bad instantly. Which sucks.

But I’m not at site now. I’m in Ouahigouya hanging out with the new stage of volunteers. All the trainees have host families, but trainers don’t get families (we did that once already, thank you very much). So the Peace Corps hooks us up with a communal-type house to live in during our stay in Ouahigouya. And in an uncharacteristically generous manner, Peace Corps decided to equip said house with a fridge. Yay for fridge!!!

Yes there’s a fridge at the volunteer transit house in Ouaga, but typically I’m not there for very long to enjoy it, because I’m only in Ouaga for a few days at a time, taking care of business at the Peace Corps office. But I’m in Ouahigouya for almost three weeks. Which means I get access to a fridge for the entire time. Which means I can have corn flakes and milk for breakfast every day. THIS IS A BIG DEAL. I mean, I’m excited about the new volunteers. But I’m also excited about my new breakfast plan here.

Corn flakes with milk (fridge not pictured)

And of course we also have a sink with running water and a mirror at the house here, like in Ouaga. I’ve tried shaving at site with a bucket of water and a little hand-held mirror at site. It sucks. I always make sure to shave when I go into Ouaga.

I wanted to take advantage of the sink and mirror here. So I decided to shave my ugly beard. But something important to understand about West Africa is that everything you purchase here is of the absolute lowest conceivable quality. Things you didn’t even know could be low-quality are low-quality. Like clothes pins. Seriously. They snap in half after being used twice. And shaving cream. Or shaving cream bottles, I should say.

So I got out my shaving cream, purchased in West Africa, and squirted some into my hand. And then set it down. But the aerosol can kept oozing shaving cream. I shook it, hit it, banged it against the sink (which might have actually made things worse). It continued oozing out shaving cream. It oozed and oozed and oozed shaving cream for a good twenty minutes. I ended up with an entire sinkful of shaving cream, and an empty bottle of shaving cream. Because aerosol cans, like everything, are of very low quality here.

endlessly oozing shaving cream

But I got a really good shave.

But seriously, I've really enjoyed working with the new volunteers (er, trainees), teaching them this and that about living and teaching in West Africa. But alas, my time with them is almost up. Next week is a whole new adventure: Mom gets to Africa. And I'm sure that will be an adventure neither of us will forget.