#14: The Truth Stings

May 15, 2008    

Ow. The fire-eater ants are making themselves at home in my air conditioned bedroom, zigzagging from the bed, under the desk, into the closet and making themselves comfortable in my bathroom. They’re less gross than the huge, shiny, black cockroaches that infested the house when I got here in March. But the ants have a sting that burns up my skin, especially the feet when they rest under the desk where the ants indulge in some toe-jam licking.  I don’t notice they have stung, until after I have my midnight shower before I hit the sheets. The clean water runs over the bitten areas, making it burn even more. The stings don’t last very long, but I’ll have to contend with the ants for as long as I live here. That sounds familiar – parallel to the truth. Truth stings, sometimes, when the situations are all over the place and it isn’t so much friendly as I thought it would be. But the truth is preferred over the ugly, big, bad lie.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about reality here at home, in the desert, in Nigeria. The truth has many explanations. I tell everyone adventure stories, they are the truth. But there is also the fears I have, the things that aren’t mentioned to people or to my readers that happen while I live so far away from most of them back home.

For instance, I am experiencing homesickness. Never in my life on my travels have I become homesick. I think it’s because living in Europe for a year as a teen was a luxuty and I needed to escape home; traveling abroad knowing it’d just be a few months put me at ease. I’m homesick because here, I have no photobooks to remind me of everybody I love, I have declared Seattle my home base and miss it very much, and missing the good fresh food back home is one of many reasons. I was warned by VSO I would go through this phase, like many other volunteers, so I am taking this in stride, holding my own and looking forward to being in the States for a month-long vacation from work in August. That will give me my dose of that home feeling.

Other thing is, while things may seem great,  I’m not feeling so great about the communication barrier. Tactiling in Signed English Exact has been a great challenge – not because of the dialogue itself, but having to piece word by word that was signed into my mind, filling out a sentence. But by the time I finish the sentence, I will forget the beginning. Teachers at my school want to learn ASL but I don’t have the resources to do that, so I am hoping on my travels to the US I will be able to collect some instruction books. The people of Birnin Kebbi speak Hausa, I’ve only attempted to learn 20 words in Hausa. I’ve come to blows with my keke nepap driver because he kept picking me up so late or forgetting to do so – leaving me stranded with no way of contacting someone from work to pick me up. I try to communicate with him in gestures or English, but he has NO inkling of what I am trying to tell him. My guard speaks all Hausa, and when I need to ask him to do something, he just does that  goofy smile and pumps his fist in the air in greeting. Sigh. So, as a solution, I have asked the principal to bring in a private tutor so I can learn how to write, read and speak some Hausa in order to survive and get by. Here’s hoping my language barriers will collapse soon, because it’s wearing on my patience really thin!

The food here – where do I begin? The cucumber is a yellow color, doesn’t taste the same but nearly the same. Tomatoes are often bought very ripe, and burst from the extreme hear the very next day. Apples are very expensive, they are hardly found anywhere. Oranges have no juice in them. Cabbages are very expensive, as well as eggs. The beheaded cows and gutted chicken strewn in the market isn’t a pleasant view and has affected my appetite for meat (although I do still love it, I order it in restaurants – cooked). My fridge runs on cold air half of the day so there’s often puddles of melted ice inside from the freezer thawing. I have to boil huge pots of water daily to put in the water filter so I can fill up water bottles. My pantry is stocked with high carbohydrates – rice, bread, pasta, rice noodles, cous-cous, and ramen. I have to eat a lot of them because the other foods are scarce. I may sound like I’m complaining – it’s just my third month here – and I miss the comforts of food back home in Seattle. But as the day goes by, I think up of good recipes to make more vegan dishes from the limited choices of food I have. I have made spinach, tomato, potato, cabbage, vegetable and mushroom soups from scratch; made a wonderful summer salad with the tomatoes, cucumbers and onions (I have dressings); I have bought a crate of eggs so I could made egg frittatas in the oven, omelettes, egg sandwiches, boiled eggs. It’s good for me. I’m trying to be creative with the limited choices of food – and I’m improving. Tomorrow I’ll try to make some mango crumble. Oh yea, we have mangoes and pineapple – sweet treats for a hot day.

What other truth is there to admit? The most toughest one I’ve had to admit. I’ve noticed with the glaring, hot sun of the desert, my cataract in my right eye is growing. I have noticed a more visible white fog over my central vision and it’s a telltale sign my cataract is growing. I had cataract surgery in 2004 and it resulted in complete blindness in my left eye so after that traumatizing experience I vowed not to opt for surgery until the cataract was overblown and covered my central vision. My field of Usher’s at 5 degrees remains the same, the tunnel has not become any narrower. That’s two different things – cataract and Usher’s. Read up on it, will you? So this means that living here had come with a risk, and that would be cataract growth. Truth be told, I knew of the risk and still wanted to come anyway. It’s just progress in life – I’ll eventually become blind one day – sooner or later. I’m prepared for it. It’s just that it’s kinda sad my vision had to go while I am so young, rather than an old age. I protect my eyes from the sun with a polarized sunglasses, and I stay inside most of the day. I find it challenging to go around my house in the dark with no light, and practice my Braille in the candlelight. It’s preparing me for full-blindness, and I’m doing this gracefully.

I think that the truth doesn’t really have a sting, just an annoying itch that will go away. It’s the loneliness I’m experiencing right now that is putting everything into perspective – throw away the rose-colored glasses and see everything for what it really is. I would rather swallow the truth than digest lies and keep it in my stomach – get it all out and feel so relieved. That sounded like a Freudian slip, didn’t it?

Tomorrow, I go off in search for the truths of Birnin-Kebbi and test my character and willpower.

Tactile love,

Coco

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