aishaj83 - "holes, cell phones, and no oven"

This one is for my dear friend Jessica. You too can get a shout out if you ask good, funny, or interesting questions. So I encourage you to do so.

I live in the twilight zone. I pee in a hole in the ground, have a cell phone but no electricity, and I have a stove but no oven.

The hole
As I explained in a previous blog I use a latrine (outhouse) because there is no running water in my community. And just to clear things up, I do not dig the whole myself every time I want to go. This is how it works. Some man comes and digs a hole in the ground I guess about 6 to 8 feet deep and about 6 to 8 feet wide. Somehow he covers most of the hole with cement creating a hollow box so to speak. I think he uses strong metal poles…not 100% sure exactly how it is constructed…but I’m doing my best here…sheesh! So like I said there is a huge hole in the ground. It makes no sense if I want to use the bathroom to go to this huge hole in the ground because I may fall into this pit of yuckiness. (I’m going to try to explain again) So the huge hole in the ground is covered with cement, yet hollow, leaving a hole in the cement about 10 by 10 inches…just enough room to do your business in the huge hole without falling in. I know how I can explain it…Imagine a 2-liter soda bottle…but only square and wider to create a bit of a platform. The little hole at the top lets you get the soda out, but the big deep bottle holds all the soda in. Well the latrine is like that except I am not trying to get anything out of there…just put stuff in.

Don’t fret; they build walls around the large hole in the ground with the little hole on top of the big hole so everyone is not watching you go in the hole in the ground (also known as latrine). Some are constructed with cement walls around it and a door with a lock and key. Others just have walls, and others have walls and a ceiling with a door…it all depends. I have walls and a door with a lock and key, but no ceiling, which I prefer because I can get quite claustrophobic in there. FYI: make sure you look up latrine online or in a book, or ask someone you know that might camp a lot because I absolutely butchered the explanation. It makes little sense to me and I wrote it so I am sure you are all lost or looking at the soda bottle in the refrigerator trying to imagine walls on top with a door. Sorry guys…LOL.

Cell phone
Ok, I think I can explain the cell phone and no electricity with ease. I personally live in a village without electricity, but the entire Burkina Faso is not a village they have cities too, and also there are some villages with electricity. (Sometimes I feel like I have to justify using the word village on a website I know Americans are gonna read because the mind automatically goes to the sometimes true, but often exaggerated images often seen in American media. FYI there are cities; not in the sense of the word city that we think of it, but its not like a village either.) So my village…we don’t have electricity, but Burkinabé are very intelligent and creative people. Those who can afford it buy car batteries and somehow pull energy from those as a source of electricity. Most often they only use electricity at night maybe to watch the news, soccer, and to charge their cell phones. In my village of about 4000 people…maybe less, maybe more…I would venture to say that only 20 people use the car battery as a source of power. I am in the group of 3800 who do not. I can afford it, but I don’t have a tv to watch and so I would buy this huge car battery just to charge a little cell phone…not so much. As you know hospitality is most people’s middle name so if I ask, most people will let me charge my cell phone without a problem. I may reconsider buying a car battery set up during the hot season so I can use a fan.
My nearest neighbor, about 15km (1 hour bike ride away) has electricity in her village and will soon have it in her house. Most of the time when I bike there once a week, I charge my phone at a tele-center because the battery lasts longer coming from a direct source of power.

Stove with no oven…
I have a gas stove that sits on top of a table in the room I call my kitchen. It has 2 regular size eyes and one small one good for boiling tea water. I just have the top part of the stove connected to a bottle of gas like a propane bottle on your gas grill at home…or your neighbor’s if you don’t have one. And I have no oven. I am not quite sure how an oven works and why it is not possible for me to have a whole stove and oven set up, but that is what I have and I am grateful.

So how do I bake if I am in the mood? Well, I have not tried thus far, but I hear that it works. (The one time I tried to make oatmeal cookies, I fried them and they tasted horrible because I did not have butter…I used oil and in the future I think I will use the technology I’m about to describe). There is something called a dutch oven. All you need is a big pot, sand, and three empty soup cans.

1. Put the sand into the pot, the first time cook it for about an hour or all of your baked goods will taste just like mother earth. Throughout the baking process the pot will be atop the gas stove heating up.
2. Put the three clean and empty soup cans bottoms up in the sand in a triangular formation.
3.The food you are interested in baking goes into its baking dish goes on top of the soup cans. Put the lid on and this creates an atmosphere similar to a stove.

It’s as easy as one-two-three. The only problem is there is no nob to indicate the exact heat of the oven. So if you mail me cake mix for my b-day, no worries, I can bake it!

So for now I have no oven, but I can make that happen without much trouble, I just have not had much to bake since I have been here.

I said I live in the twilight zone because there is so much about life that is very traditional, but so oddly sprinkled with modernity. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my life, but sometimes it feels weird using a cell phone that I have to travel to charge.