26 August

We all trooped into the mess room this morning, made ourselves tea, sat down, and went, “Hm.” There was nothing to eat for breakfast. Okay, there was a box of corn flakes, but corn flakes last approximately a day in this damp, hot weather, and when they must be eaten stale with warm milk you’ve just made from warm water and milk, corn flakes sound disgusting. I tried it yesterday and made it through half the bowl before I gave up in despair. Also, we are out of the sweet cakes. We sat around debating for a while and someone asked why there was no bread, don’t they make bread in TLT? The cook informed us that the LAST person here hadn’t liked bread, so they don’t buy it.

The only person with clearance to drive the car (NOT the battered minibus; that was only temporary) headed into town It took nearly an hour for him to get back, during which time I ate some Pringles they had brought back from Slightly Bigger Town yesterday, but the car eventually came back with cool (okay, not quite cold) bottles of water and a bag of warm, puffy pita-like rounds of bread. I drank my third hot beverage of the day (Cadbury’s Drinking Chocolate, this time) with the bread and we sat around talking about how very good the bread was.

Right now it is raining deafeningly hard onto the tin roof. I had to put in my ipod for the noise-blocking effects, and then turn it up. I also unplugged my computer (thunder and lightning) and I’m very determinedly wearing my rubber sandals in case we get zapped. If you want to speak to someone, you have to go over to the person, lean over, and shout. At my first desk, I started getting wet with rain blowing in the window, so I moved first to another desk (where rain was dripping from the ceiling), then another (where rain was blowing in the window), and now to a fourth (where I only get little droplets when the wind blows particularly hard).

I managed to sleep quite well in my semi-permanent new abode (for the next two and a half months minus, oh, three weeks of traveling), into which I moved yesterday. It is a little stuffy, since the mats hanging over the windows block the rain very well, but also the breeze, but it has a rectangular mosquito net. I love rectangular mosquito nets, as of today. They actually reach the edge of the bed without falling into your face. This is because they are attached to the ceiling in FOUR locations, the corners, rather than the annoying shortcut central single attachment of the round nets. I feel so trapped in the round nets, because they press in on my face and my feet, and last night in the rectangular one, I felt so free! So open!

And… there went the power. Silly of us, no, to be using three laptops and the wireless when there is no sunshine for the solar panels? We’ll be sitting in the dark tonight. And I just lost two conversations I was having online. Blast.