You know you're in Africa in the summer when...

• it's so hot you decide to clean the fridge, just so you have an acceptable excuse for sitting in front of it with the door open.
• killing cockroaches on a daily basis is just a normal part of the day.
• you take multiple showers daily to cool off.
• 4pm is the quietest, stillest hour on the continent because everyone is napping.
• you contemplate sleeping in the bathtub filled with cool water until you remember that drowning is not worth cooling off.
• you wake up to drums, you fall asleep to drums, and you begin to think in drum beats...wedding season means drum season.
• you live off of cereal, yogurt, fresh fruit and vegetables, and various salads...because it's too hot out to eat anything hot.
• you contemplate sleeping on the roof or balcony because it's cooler outside at night than inside, until you remember that mosquito bites and cockroaches crawling on you is not worth cooling off.
• you see women carrying buckets on their heads to provide some semblance of shade.
• even the "cold" water coming out of the pipes is warm because the water tank is hot from being in the sun.
• it takes your laundry about 20 minutes to dry out on the line.

I've been hearing from folks in the states and France that it's hot elsewhere than here. That makes sense...it is the middle of July. And I can't complain, because we had an abnormally cool June here, and so it was quite pleasant long past when it should have been hot already. It is, however, hot now.

And while it may actually be hotter where you are in the US... I don't have air conditioning. I leave my hot apartment to walk for 35 minutes through 100 degree weather to my language school, which thankfully does have air conditioning. By the time I have cooled off and re-hydrated, it's time to walk 35 minutes again back through the 100 degree weather to my hot apartment, where I do nothing the entire rest of the day but lay in front of the fan dreaming up ideas of how I can cool off.

It's supposed to be 105 on Thursday. Praise God! I always tell people who complain about heat that dead people are cold and clammy. So, if you're hot and sweaty, at least you know you're alive. :) I have been enjoying the heat, actually, even if that translates me into not doing anything but lying in front of the fan all afternoon.

I've gotten used to killing the cockroaches. (Can't say I'm enjoying that, though.) I'm even starting to dig the daily drum beats from all the weddings in the neighborhood. So, I'm starting to find that (except for the cockroaches), summer in Africa is actually quite pleasant.