heat

I am, frankly, disappointed in the weather service. They had me all geared up for ferocious weather and snow days and now the sprinkles of rain are very anti-climactic. We need to step things up here.

The good news is that the return of the drear of winter has started me thinking about Where To Go Next. Yes, it is true that the plan was to stay here indefinitely, but um, has anyone noticed how early it gets dark here in early December? Less than nine hours of daylight is just not realistic for me. Yes, the summers are brilliant, and it's fantastic that it stays light for 15 hours a day in June, but I don't think it's a fair trade. I would like to keep up a more steady dose of sunshine all year long. I am beginning to plot my escape, although the escape that I am planning may take a few years.

Not only that, but I'm all nostalgic now. You know things are bad when you spend your time longing for a place where you thought every evening, "Tomorrow I am going to have them get me a flight out of here." Yep, I'm missing Southern Sudan, palm-sized spiders and spitting cobras and smelly pit latrines and all. I rationalize this by telling myself that I actually enjoyed Tiny Little Town by the end. The last two weeks or so. Before that, I would lie in the darkness in my mosquito net every night, shrinking into the center of the bed to avoid things getting me through the mesh, and think, "Tomorrow, I am asking them to book me a flight out of here. I can't do this anymore." And then in the morning the sun would rise and I would take an outdoor shower and everything seemed great. 

And that evening, I would lie in the darkness in my mosquito net, shrinking into the center of the bed to avoid things getting me through the mesh, and think, "Tomorrow, for sure, I am asking them to book me a flight out of here. I can't do this anymore." 

There were things going on in my head other than worries about bugs and snakes - it was not Tiny Little Town's fault that I was so miserable. I would have been miserable in a great many places right then.

And to offset the fretting that my head was doing, there was strong, constant sunshine, so strong that I put sunscreen on the part of my hair even when I wasn't going anywhere. Just the 50 meter walk from the tukuls to the office was enough to burn my wimpy pale skin. I found myself missing that sun today. When I stand waiting for the bus in the 24-degree Fahrenheit cold with the wind somehow finding its way through my layers of coat and scarf and multiple sweatshirts, I miss the weight of hot sun. 

I would take hot sun over cold wind anytime. I would blame this on a childhood in Liberia, but my dad is the same way. We are creatures of the tropics misplaced in the temperate zones of the earth.