It was good to get back to work yesterday.
Much to my displeasure, the power is still being finicky. A lot of my daily activities require reliable electricity, so I’m starting to get a little upset. For example, to cook any food I use a little portable electric stove. I missed out on breakfast yesterday because I could cook my eggs. To shower I need power to pump the water up to my floor. I couldn’t shower yesterday. Fortunately at work there was a generator so I could get online, but at home I can’t access anything online without wifi, which relies on power.
I think Mondays might be my favorite day of the week. I really enjoy having something to do at work and always being busy. These past few months I’ve noticed myself getting excited whenever the weekend ends and I get to go back to work on Mondays. Yesterday was a good Monday. The power was flickering on and off throughout the day at the office, but there was a solid 2 hour period where they started up the generator and I was able to download a bunch of journal reports I have to read and summarize for a lit review I’m doing right now.
I took off from work a little bit early because I had stayed through lunch and was getting pretty hungry. I’m surprised I hadn’t gotten any earlier, but yesterday I had my first mangoes. And they were delicious! I know some of you may get jealous when I tell you this, but each mango costs about 20 cents. I bought three mangoes for 100 ETB and the exchange rate is right around 1 USD to 155 ETB.
Last night I did my laundry for the first time since arriving in Ethiopia. And no, it hasn’t been 2 weeks without doing laundry, it’s just that the first week I was here the house girl did it for me and I haven’t done it since then. I feel bad making someone else hand wash my dirty laundry, so I decided that I would do it myself from then on. Yesterday evening was my first experience with hand washing clothes. In Arusha I was able to use a washing machine before hang drying them, here I don’t have that luxury. It took only about 30 minutes to do this. The power shut off right as I had finished and I’m grateful that I was able to fill the sink and whatnot because I’m close to running out of underwear!
I tried to go to bed early, but I was unsuccessful. I discovered a mosquito net that Pearla lended me and thought that that would solve my issues, but I ran into the problem of having no where to hang it. I was able to create a makeshift tent out of it and my pillows and blankets, but it wasn’t too comfortable and I’ll have to find a better solution for the coming weeks. This morning I slept in later than usual because I really struggled to get good sleep last night. I feel great now though, and it looks like it’s going to be a nice day, so I’m excited to get back to work.