Here I am, in West Africa again, until April 3. My guidebook assures me that the southern part of this country "has two rainy seasons: the first is from April to mid-July. . . . Harmattan winds billow out of the Sahara between December and March, and the hottest time of the year is from February to April." Do we all remember how much I hate heat and humidity? Good. Now it's time to ask ourselves some existential questions (EQs).
I spent the last week in lovely North Africa (which I promise to tell you about another time), where it was in the 70s and 80s, mildly humid, and I sweat up a storm. Last night, I took an overnight flight from North Africa to West Africa, with one stop in Wester Africa. Many of the people on my flight were wearing sweaters and coats. A woman sitting next to me, who boarded the plane in Wester Africa, where the outside temperature was 28° C (82° F), was wearing a shearling jacket.
EQ: Was I flying with a plane full of crazy people?
When we landed in West Africa at 5:30 am (you know, the coolest, freshest time of day), it was also 28° C (82° F). According to weather.com, it is currently 91° F outside, with a dew point of 77°, and a heat index of 104°.
EQ: Why does God hate me so much?
The airport was like a sauna, and stepping outside the airport was like stepping into a better-heated sauna. Then I got onto the hotel shuttle, where we had to sit and wait for about 15 minutes, to see if any more hotel guests were on that flight. The outside air blowing in through the open door of the van felt like a fresh, cool breeze compared to the interior temperature of the van. Of the many places that sweat was streaming from my body, I noticed that there was actually sweat pouring inside my ears.
EQ: Where was this sweat coming from? Do I actually have sweat glands in my ears?
The air conditioner in my hotel room emits a high-pitched and very annoying squealing noise whenever it's turned on.
EQ: Is it really worth running the a/c--wait! Sorry. This isn't an existential question. It's a rhetorical one.
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11 comments:
We are reading Things Fall Apart this week and I explained Harmattan winds on Friday. BUT I wasn't sure how to pronounce it.
Help!?
I'm supposed to know how to pronounce a word just because it appears in my guidebook?! (Even if I've ever heard the word pronounced out loud here, it would have been in French.)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harmattan
provides 2 pronunciations:
\ˌhär-mə-ˈtan, här-ˈma-tən\
Go to the link and click on the little speaker to hear the first pronunciation (I think that one sounds ugly and might prefer the second).
Native Observation: a full service blog!
Thanks for the tips.
I don't expect you to know how to pronounce all the words you read, but I do expect you can pronounce words you use/write. Otherwise, you become Naomi Foss. Remember her? SOSOSOSO smart she was in our Concordia honors classes as a high school kid. Couldn't pronounce any of the fancy words she tried to use. As a more mature and kind person, I now regret the mocking. At the time, it seemed fair.
Oh, I see, so TEACHING a word doesn't count as USING it?! ;-)
Oh, teaching is a creative art. I make up stuff all day long. (I just pretended that I knew how to pronounce it and hoped they didn't notice that I changed my pronunciation about three times.)
When are you back? Do you want to see Eric in Barber of Seville? I think I'll go either Sunday the 19th (closing performance, because I'll be near the Cities on the 18th anyway) or Friday night, the 17th (because I can get half price ticket(s) through MPR, but I have to buy by tomorrow night). I'd send this straight to your email, but I'm at home and my remote email address book is being goofy.
It's so nice the way the two of you can chat back and forth for all the world to see. I'm anxious to see how Steph responds. Does she indeed want to Eric perform, or would she rather watch a repeat of Law & Order: Criminal Intent?
It's also nice to see that Scott only comments on my blog when it means interrupting a personal conversation that doesn't really concern him!
That said, all I'm willing to tell the world is that I only watch Law & Order original and SVU, and I don't even watch much of either of those now that I've discovered House.
I can respond because now the conversation is about me. I have become absolutely obsessed over House. A month ago or so I hadn't ever seen an episode, and now I watch 3 or 4 at a sitting.
Imagine how I've suffered, only having been able to see one, single, solitary episode of House in the last 3.5 weeks! I know we all hear a lot about poverty in the developing world: how almost 2 billion people live on less than $2 a day, etc. But I think it really puts it into perspective when you begin to understand that this kind of poverty means that people have such limited access to decent TV.
The good news for me is that all I need to do is shut down my computer, finish packing, and head off to Charles de Gaulle airport to catch my flight home, and in about 18 hours, I can be sitting comfortably in front of my own TV, watching another back-to-back-to-back showing of House on USA. But let's not forget how many children are going to have to go to bed without seeing any House at all tonight.
An anonymous mental health professional admits his/her most recent embarrassing TV addiction:
Millionaire Matchmaker.
Can't. Take. My. Eyes. Off. It.
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