Village Life

Since I was on official sabbatical from the hospital, I decided to fully embrace the village life. I started out with helping to fetch water. I went with Amanda and two of the girls staying with us, Faoza and Nambasa, to the pond with jerry cans in our hands. On the way, we passed a herd of grazing cows, and had to carefully navigate our way in between them. Faoza accidentally stepped into some cow dung with her bare foot (she was not wearing any shoes), but she simply shook the dung off her foot and kept walking, unperturbed. We also saw some snake skin, recently shed, which was none too comforting. We climbed through a hole in a barbed wire fence – a shortcut to the pond only slender-ish people can take advantage of. When we finally reached the pond, I was absolutely horrified. The water was brown in color. BROWN. And everyone just steps into the middle of the pond with their feet/shoes recently adorned with cow dung, filling their jerry cans with the muddy brown water. That’s the water we’ve been drinking? No wonder we only ever drink tea – you can’t tell that the water is muddy, because the tea is also brown.

I was standing at the edge of the pond, wondering whether or not to remove my shoes, weighing the pros and cons of shoes versus bare feet. Muddy shoes versus muddy feet? I really didn’t feel like dirtying my shoes, but I also really didn’t want to step into those murky depths without any foot protection. Who knows what lurks at the bottom of those waters? “Come on,” Amanda says to me. I hesitated for a split second before stepping into the water. I did not remove my shoes. All the locals were watching us with great amusement. “Muzungu!” they cheered. They couldn’t believe we were fetching water from the pond. I almost couldn’t believe it either. As I was walking back to the shoreline with my filled jerry can, I saw to my absolute horror a gigantic pile of cow dung idly lying in the pond water. I almost cried. “Amazi ku amazzi!” I yelled, pointing at the cow dung. Shit in the water. Everybody shrieked with laughter.

When we finally dragged our ridiculously heavy jerry cans filled with shit-water back to the house, I was absolutely exhausted, and ready for a shower. Until I remembered what water I was using to shower. I momentarily contemplated whether my showers were actually making me cleaner or dirtier. But I was sweaty and uncomfortable, so I decided to go for the shower. At least Nuliat boils the water for our showers. I took a tiny ounce of comfort in that thought. As I was taking my shower in the outhouse/pit latrine (we put the pail of shower water over the pit of the latrine, so that we don’t accidentally lose a limb in it), I dropped my soap onto the floor. This was the floor of the pit latrine – who knows what kind of nasty bodily excretions line this floor with their germ-filled existence? I was momentarily disgusted by this, and wondering if I had another bar of soap somewhere in my bag, when the image of the cow dung in the pond water flashed before my eyes. This floor couldn’t possibly be dirtier than my shower water. I picked up my soap, using it to finish my shower. I had become so economical with my shower water, that I actually had some water left to wash my underwear, which I proceeded to do using the same bar of pit latrine-laden soap. As I was walking back to the house after my shower, I accidentally dropped my recently-cleaned underwear on the ground. I once again saw the pile of cow dung in the pond water. I picked up my underwear, swatting the dirt off of it. I will hang it up to dry and wear it tomorrow.