Heat

I have never known what heat was. I thought that maybe living in Florida qualified me as an expert. Maybe visiting the deserts of southern Cal or living on the Amazon. I imagined that maybe after a year in sub-Saharan Africa I had some kind of idea about being hot. But now, I know. There is a reason why Béré is in the part of Africa called the Sahell.

Imagine. Over 130 degrees Fahrenheit. A cool evening is 96 degrees inside. Sweat is your constant companion. In surgery, with the air conditioner running full blast you soak your scrubs and drip sweat onto your patient despite your best efforts at sterile technique. Drinking water becomes your obsession. You feel a strong desire to fall to all fours and join the goats at the salt lick. Sleeping is an impossibility as you must flip your pillow every half hour to let the soaked side dry out. The stillness of the night with its hanging heat and dust weighs you down.

The newly remodeled clinic building is a little cooler with its aluminum roof instead of galvanized steel. Running the generator during the day instead of at night lets us use the ceiling fans which bring a little relief. Amazingly, a hand crafted clay jar makes our drinking water at least not hot, and comparatively cool. No fridge means food doesn't last. But one doesn't feel like eating anyway.

Sarah manages to find some ice in the vaccine fridge today and I have a brief epiphany of joy as the ice cold water flows into me. The only other true ecstasy is the couple of minutes after a surgery of placing my sweat soaked face and hair in front of the air conditioner about 5 inches from the vents and letting the cool air pour over me until the generator is shut off...and it's back, suffocatingly, unrelieved by wind or night...the searing life that is the Sahel in Béré...

James