Africa Hot

It got hot in here. REALLY hot. 120 degrees in the shade, my friends. The worst was early April. Cameroonians tricked me. They said the worst heat would be in March, but actually March wasn’t that bad. I thought I had the hot season beat. I cackled to myself that they had underestimated my adaptation abilities. Then one weekend in April I learned the meaning of “Africa hot.” It came on suddenly. I woke up nauseated and completely soaked in sweat. It didn’t feel noticeably hotter, but I knew it must be because there was a marked difference in the quantity of my sweat. Even sitting still, sweat was pouring down my face. I felt too drained to move anywhere the whole day. The floor, the walls, everything was hot to the touch, as if my entire house had been microwaved.

In the weeks that followed, it was like living in a furnace. You know the blast of hot air you feel on your face when you open the door to your oven? That’s pretty much how the wind here felt. My bedroom was suffocatingly hot, so I started sleeping on a mat in my living room, where there are more windows. I got a prickly heat rash from biking to meetings. I asked the PC Medical Officer what I could do about it, he responded “Avoid the heat.” Hahaha. Yea right. I joked with another PCV that my commute to work reminded me of the Flight of the Phoenix (movie about a plane that crashes in the Sahara desert, and the crew has to survive extreme heat). Cooking completely lost its appeal- I now understand why Cameroonians have their kitchens outside. I drank like a fish without peeing. Cameroonians always make fun of me for carrying two or three Nalgene waterbottles wherever I go, but I think they’re crazy not to. There were also days when I was really angry and hyper for no particular reason, and a line from Romeo and Juliet came to me: “For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring…”

Those were the worst weeks. Since then, it’s gotten better, but it’s still hot. The only relief, really, is taking a shower and then sitting in front of your fan dripping wet and naked. But even that doesn’t really help you on the hottest days, first of all because the sun makes your shower water hot too, and second of all because the fans just push the hot air around and make you feel dried out. I do not have a fridge yet, and usually the water I drink is hot. It’s OK though- my theory is that things like air conditioning and cold drinks just make things worse because your body realizes how hot it actually is. If you don’t have cold things, then your body gets acclimated and doesn’t know what you’re missing. In fact, it may even be better to deliberately seek out hot things. For instance, Cameroonians drink tea during hot season. Apparently, it’s common for tribes living in the desert to drink tea. You might think that tea would be the last thing you’d want on a steaming hot day, but it makes your body work harder to cool you off. You sweat more, so you feel a little cooler It’s a psychological trick too- if you drink something several degrees hotter, you feel cool relative to what you are drinking. For me personally, tea reminds me of winter in the US, so I try to fool myself into thinking I feel a chill and am drinking tea to get warm . So I continue to enjoy my Propel tea as I bike around. I’m still testing my theory, however, and I’m not sure I’m convinced- cold water has become an orgasmic experience.

Hot season has made me very sensitive to temperature drops- I feel a chill sometimes at night, and think I must be going crazy because I know it’s not at all chilly-it’s probably still in the 90s. Cameroonians start wearing coats and scarves again as rainy season approaches. One of my Cameroonian friends told me you’re not really an African unless you’re very sensitive to cold. Notably, I will be returning from my Peace Corps service in December. Have you ever seen the movie Cool Runnings? About the Jamaican bobsled team? I’m envisioning my return to the US to be a lot like the scene where they land in Canada and experience snow for the first time after growing up in Jamaica. They take one step outside, then sprint back into the airport to put on all the clothing in their suitcases. After hot season in Cameroon, winter in Maryland is going to be COLD. I still think, though, that humid summers in Baltimore give Africa a run for its money.

What else has gotten me through hot season, besides lounging in my underwear in front of my fan? MANGOES. Mangoes mangoes mangoes. I’m up to about three big ones a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I have an addiction. It’s mango season. At the market, there are piles of mangoes everywhere, any type you want- small, sour, and yellow, fist-sized yellow-green with bright orange inside, or huge red-green and rainbow-colored. I’ve become an expert at picking the good ones. I love the experience of eating a mango. They’re a very messy fruit- juicy and pulpy, they aren’t really conducive to slices, like an orange. So once you start eating, there’s no turning back. You can’t save it for later- you’re completely occupied by the task of finishing your mango. You can’t help getting sticky juice all over your face and hands. My friend Martin made fun of me because I had mango on my nose for two meetings in a row. The skin of the mango is tart, the inside sweet and juicy. The juice runs down your hands, and you get to eat right down to the pit and gnaw the last slimy chunks off.

The best mango I’ve had so far was the one I ate in the heat of mid-day, in bright sunlight, while riding my bike. My friend Liz and I were parched, riding back after giving a talk on trash and littering at a primary school, so when we saw a mango seller on the side of the road we made a beeline straight for him. It’s not easy to eat a mango while riding a bike- we were zig-zagging like drunk drivers, but we basically were drunk- drunk with the deliciousness of our mango nectar. Mangoes are delicious in any context, but I’ve decided you need to be in a very hot place to really appreciate them. When everything around you is bone dry, biting into something that moist and juicy and sweet is such an unexpected treat, like finding a waterfall in the desert, or a piece of the rainy season that got stuck in the wrong month.

Thankfully, rainy season is just around the corner. We’ve had a few thunderstorms already, which has cooled things off. RAIN, glorious RAIN!!!!!! I will never take rain for granted again. I will never complain about rainy days ever ever again. I now have a deep desire to go to Ireland- the greenest, rainiest place I can think of. What I don’t get is that my neighbors weren’t that excited the first time it rained- they seem to regard rain as just another inconvenience, like the heat. So I had to do my ecstatic rain dance alone.