How to Beat the Heat

Sunshine makes me happy.
And happy people climb totem poles.

These days, I’m so thankful to Facebook. Every morning, Facebook is there to tell me that “it’s going to be a hot day in N’Djamena today. The forecast shows a high of 44C.” What would I do without this advanced knowledge? It’s unlikely I would have even noticed the sweat dripping down my back between my shoulder blades. I might have thought there was some weird African bug crawling on me.

I’m ok with a bit of heat, as you may have noticed if you are a regular reader of this blog (HI MOM!). I was born in the desert and raised on the equator. I love the sun. And 44C is only 111F and I am doing ok. True, if my landlord had followed through with fixing my AC, as he had promised to do, I would be even better. It’s not so much that I like AC (I don’t really like it—it makes me cold), but if you have AC, you can keep a room cool with it, even when the power goes out (which happens a lot now that it’s hot and everyone is trying to use their AC to cool down their rooms). I don’t have this in my house, so I have a few other creative means of staying cool. And by staying cool, I mean that I am sweating, but at a rate that can still be replenished by drinking water.

Most of the day I’m out at work where we have the perfect AC in my office—a partially-functioning one. It gets the temperature down to about 32/90, which is ideal. So my ‘beat the heat’ options really only apply to the evening.

Brownies with crackers
in them are also a good snack.
Yeah, I ate them all myself with a
fork right out of the pan,
because it was dinnertime.

Note: I would like to mention a couple of options that have been suggested to me as ways to “beat the heat” that are not technically possible here. These include A) the cold shower and B) the consumption of ice cream. A) The cold shower is impossible because my faucets no longer provide me with cold water. Water from the faucets is always warm now, which I like because warm showers are cozy. B) The consumption of ice cream is ideal, but not when your power is unreliable. Case in point, the other day when I got home from work, what was my first clue that the power was off? My house smelled like melted butter. While this is not an unpleasant smell, it does make the inside of the fridge rather drippy. Hot melted ice cream is fine as a snack, but not as a way of keeping cool.

On continue…

Me and my new best friend
(we commemorated our love through selfies, like real friends do).
The water sprayer doesn't work anymore,
but my face is already wet (sweaty), so NBD.

In Chad, most people sleep outside during the hot season. This is a good idea. There is usually some kind of breeze and temperatures outside are cooler than inside. Unfortunately, I live on the second floor of an apartment building. I can’t drag my bed outside because there is no place to put it. Also, I don’t think it would be super-appropriate for me to sleep outside alone here (in my underwear-sleepwear of choice these days), even though my evil neighbor has moved out! (I like to think that I drove him to it by being extra-annoying, but it’s possible that he just moved out because he found a place he preferred to live.)

Since I can’t sleep outside, I really rely on my fans to keep the air moving in my house. When the electricity goes, I have a cute little battery-operated fan that was given to me in a very roundabout way (Minga gave it to Tara who told me to keep it because I was having electricity problems, and now she doesn’t want it back, which is good because I never planned to give it back anyway). This little blue thing is enough to keep one part of my body cool at a time—face or leg or back of the neck or one arm. I can balance it on a pillow next to me while I sleep, but I also have another sleep solution: the frozen water bottle. 

Pre-jungle Amanda,
of the Pil-Pil days.

I’ve started sleeping with a frozen water bottle. This is great because I have to hold something while I sleep—a habit developed from childhood when I slept with this ratty old pillow my mom made me that I called “Pil-Pil.” She made me throw it out when I went to college, and I feel a bit guilty over that still—too many readings of The Velveteen Rabbit will do that to you.  These days, I clutch that frozen water bottle near to my chest and let it melt all over me and the bed. This keeps me cool, and by the middle of the night, when it is all melted, I can drink it to start replenishing all the fluids I’ve lost by sweating, now that the frozen water is gone. It’s a very efficient system. (I recently had to explain that this is a frozen bottle of drinking water, not in fact, one of those rubber hot water bottles filled instead with ice. Apparently this makes the fact that I drink it less gross. But I work with two clean water organizations-Amanda doesn't waste water.)

But it is true that the heat is getting a lot of people down. I respect that, but still it’s such a great unifier. Everyone is in this together. Everyone is just trying to survive. We ask each other, “How are you doing with all this heat?” The preacher in church on Sunday brought it up to illustrate the importance of staying joyful in tough times. I laugh with the attendants checking my bag for bombs and dangerous weapons (like I keep those in such an obvious place) about how at least they get to work in air-conditioned hotel lobbies. It's so nice to have an automatic conversation starter and/or sermon topic. 

So no, the heat doesn’t get me down. I’m kind of thriving on it right now (though I have started waiting until the very last minute before I leave my house to put clothes on). My ‘beat the heat’ suggestions should be taken with a grain of salt, as I beat the heat when I was born. But put me in the cold weather and watch me melt into a puddle of tears (ironic since I should be freezing in the cold and not melting—so much for accurate water metaphors). I will put on all my clothes, curl up in a ball under all the blankets I stole from various airlines around the world, and look up ways to treat frost bite and hypothermia on my phone from my cave under the covers. And when you finally agree to turn the AC back up to 25C/77F, we can be friends again.

Jungle style--only for photos because again,
I LIKE the sun (and skin cancer probably someday).

A different desert than where I am now, but still fun.
I love when the air blows hot in your face like a hair-dryer.

PS: You’re welcome, Americans, for the Fahrenheit conversions.  God bless all of your hearts.

Herve's daughter appreciated the American flag I gave her.
Or Herve appreciated it anyway. He has a high level of American patriotism
that can put other bearers of the Blue Passport to shame.