Note: “Code brown” is a fun saying in various situations. Utilize it when referring to baby diapers, the running trots or certain pool mishaps.
Senegal living is known for its…quirks. Growing up in the United States, it was easy to take stuff for granted that make everyday life run smoothly: power all the time (and if there was no power, the electric company would immediately get a phone call and be on their way) and clean water. When you’re going about your daily business in middle America, it’s easy to forget that millions – billions – of people around the world don’t have those things.
The water in Senegal isn’t as bad as some other countries; it’s typically safe to use for showering and washing dishes and, because we like to live on the edge, we brush our teeth with it, too. But not when it looks like this, as it did one night last week.
The sludge factor randomly happened for a few minutes when I was washing dishes, then the water went right back to normal. It didn’t…smell like anything suspicious. Who knows how some dirt or sewage or whatever it was got into the water pipes.
The electricity is also a fun little gamble. It clicks off maybe three times a day or so just for a few seconds before coming back on, but it went out seemingly for good last night around 11:30. I generally sweat in Michael Jordan-like proportions, so some thrashing and cover-kicking went on as the temperature in our room started to rise (luckily, it wasn’t that hot outside last night). The utter silence of a power-less house also magnified every tiny noise outside, contributing to my pervasive nighttime fears of robbers and rapists and other evil intruders (unsubstantiated fears that long predate coming to Dakar).
Everything came back to life around 2:30 a.m. Not sure why our generator didn’t come on before then, but I’ll hold my tongue on complaining too much, because many people here – both Senegalese and expats – don’t have the luxury of a usually reliable generator. Of course, generators sometimes break or run out of gas or decide to take naps instead of coming on, but c’est la vie.
Rachael Cullins is a twentysomething American girl living in Dakar, Senegal, with her husband and two dogs. She blogs about her adventures in Senegal and travels elsewhere in West Africa. She will reside in Dakar until summer 2013, when she and her family will move to another foreign post as part of her husband’s career with the U.S. government. In addition to West Africa, she has traveled to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and Costa Rica and plans to continually add to that list.
