Sweatin’ to Shiverin.’ Morning temps: 87 degrees to 57 degrees (both inside our house). Sea level to 5,000 feet above. Fans set on high to electric radiators, gas heaters, space heaters and heating pads on our beds. Anyway you look at it the weather shock was intense for us. Flowers are still blooming and the grass is green but oh, it’s a little chilly for us West African people. Oh, and did I mention adapters? We have more sticking out of every outlet than you can imagine!
We’ve enjoyed seeing the change through our children’s eyes as well. Lucas has many questions. Why is there grass? Where is the sand? Why do you have to wait for the light to turn green to go? (Traffic in Dakar was really a giant free-for-all, Johannesburg has organized traffic and we have to pay attention to every sign.) We have had to teach Alexis not to take rocks out of people’s yards because they’ve paid for them to be a decoration. She loves rocks so we still let her keep the ones in the street.
We have visited the mall. Our hope was that we wouldn’t look like hillbillies seeing things that look so modern after such a long time without it. (I think we did ok.) We rode the escalator many times and the kids loved finding shopping carts they could ride in. After running into several people while walking in the mall, we realized we not only drive on the left side of the road, we are supposed to walk on the left side of any path. That takes getting used to but we are beginning to have to say “excuse me” a lot less.
We’ve enjoyed learning a few new words. A man came to fix the carriage door in our townhouse. The first thing we had to buy were nappies. We had chips with our sandwiches and crisps with our hot dogs. We push our children in prams. There are robots at the major intersections. After we go shopping we put our groceries in the boot. Here’s the translation. A man came to fix our garage door. We had to buy diapers. Chips are French fries and crisps are chips. Children get pushed in strollers, stoplights are at the major intersections and car trunks are called boots.
Dan had a young lady at the mall tell him, “Oh, you have such a cool accent!” We just laughed because we don’t think we’re the ones with the accent! Then at breakfast today Lucas wanted Dan to pray in French. So, Dan did. Then Lucas said, “That was a short prayer!” Well, yes, we don’t remember quite as much French as we’d like.
We have moved into our townhouse in a gated community. There are 48 other homes and we were able to attend a neighborhood party the day we moved in. The fun feature about our home is that we have a loft and the kids love to play up there! Oh, and we have a small yard with grass which we all love! It does take a lot to heat our home. We learned from Dan’s co-worker that people who’ve lived here awhile go through a 9 kilogram gas can about every 25 days. Whoops! Ours was empty in 3 and a half days! What can I say? We chose to live in Africa because we like to be warm! We did have someone tell us that the winter has been unusually cold here this year. Huh! When we arrived in Dakar last summer they told us it was unusually hot. What is it with our family and extreme weather??
