Today was a lazy day. Alyssa went to work in the clinic around 8am and I came to join her around 8:30/9:00ish. I hung around the clinic for a bit, then Tabby and Kim came and got me to go run some errands. We first went to the bank and afterwards walked down to the post office to check up on packages. Tabby got two decently sized packages. We then procdeded to go to Clerk’s quarters, a small walk down the hill from the post office. We found the bakery and bought some bread and I also got some sugar balls—which are as delicious as they sound! After catching a taxi back to the compound, I went back up to the room, dropped off the stuff, and decided to take a nap because by then I had acquired a headache and stomach ache.
After sleeping for almost 2 hours, Alyssa walked into the room, hissing at me. The reason why I bring up the hissing is because here, in Africa, various people will hiss and (usually men) will make kissing noises at us “white” ladies. I have come to accept the fact that I am considered a “white” person here, even though my skin tone is much closer to the natives here than any of the other white people here. I’m not being racist or anything, just stating the facts. Anyway, I digress, again. So, one of the habits Alyssa has picked up here is hissing at me to get my attention. It is very annoying and I feel almost like a dog, because whenever she hissssssssses, my ears perk up and I immediately turn my head in the direction of the hiss. She seems to enjoy the new trick because it works.
After I woke up, Alyssa, Sarah, Mary, Tabby, Kim, and I headed to go eat rice and beans at a restaurant known as The Strand. Once we received our food, we noticed that the beans had chunks of meat in it. We automatically thought that the beans would be “empty” (served with no meat); however, we were wrong. We asked the waiter if we could have “empty” beans, and he took our bowls and came back out very quickly with “empty” beans. What probably happened was that he picked out some of the meat chunks and threw it back into the crock pot. Hey, it’s Africa, what are you gonna do about it, eh? After eating the very spicy beans and rice, we headed back to the compound and got ready to go to market. Kim and I decided to take our fabric we bought in Limbe yesterday to a seamstress to make her a blouse and me some pants. We found a seamstress that was close by and after I explained and showed him via pictures what I wanted, he took my measurements. I didn’t look at the numbers because I didn’t want to see how much my waist had grown since I’ve been here. Kim decided to keep looking for a seamstress (specifically a female) because she had a bad experience before and wanted to find the “perfect” one. So we walked further down the hill and searched around some more. No luck. We decided to walk back up to where market was and see if we could find anything for her there. Along the way, we ran into Mary and Sarah and I joined with them as Kim kept hiking up to find her seamstress. Mary, Sarah, and I then headed back to the compound.
That night we had a “girls” night. It consisted of doing facial masks and lots of popcorn and fruit. I couldn’t bring myself to put a yogurt-based mask on my face and so I just curiously watched. It was interesting. After girls night, Alyssa and I decided to wind down to another episode of Grey’s Anatomy. However, before we even got started watching Alyssa made a very bad decision. She started hissing at me again. I decided to retaliate. Every time she hissed at me, I would bring out the tickle monster in me and pin her down like a trapped bug. I think she finally got the hint that if she hissed at me I would tickle her until she stopped. After that little hiccup in our plans, we were finally able to watch Grey’s Anatomy and go to bed. Oye vey, what a day.
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