Some FAQs

What's your water source?

There are a couple water pumps in my village, and I live pretty close to one of them!!! And by "close" I mean, it takes about three minutes to walk there, and about five to walk back with water. Not bad! 

I have this big, yellow, plastic container called a bidon (bih-DOH-n, rhymes with "phone"), which I take to the pump and fill with approximately 25 L of water. Then I strap it onto the back of my bike with a rubber strap, and ever-so-carefully walk it back to my house! 

I think I mentioned in my post about site visit that my neighbors make dolo (a beer of sorts made from red sorghum); well as you might guess, making dolo requires a loooot of water. So really, most of the times that I go to the pump, some of the neighbor kids are there pumping a water into 10 or so bidons, and if they're there, they pump it for me. :)

Depending on which/how many kids are there, sometimes they also insist on walking my bike/water back to my house for me. The last time this happened, I told the boy who started to walk my bike back that I could take it, and he just really quietly says, "Non."

Hahaha ooookay fine by me!

Round trip usually only takes 15 min, and I usually need water every other day or so.

Do you have to sterilize your water?

You bet I do, but it's super easy! Peace Corps gives us water filters, so I just have to pour water in the top, let that water pass through the two filters, and put bleach (two drops per liter) in the bottom.

**Some day I promise I'll post pictures!

How do you cook?

I have a gas tank and a little gas stove with three burners. The awesome PC driver, Moussa, who dropped me off at my site, set up my  tank/stove and demonstrated its use. He then made me try it so he could make sure I did it correctly, which I very much appreciated. So basically, Moussa is the reason I can eat at site.

PS Can you tell that I adore Moussa?? He also called each of us after our first nights at site to make sure we were doing okay. Angel. 😍

How do you bathe?

I pour water from my bidon into a bucket, and use a little plastic cup to take water from the bucket to rinse with.

Sometimes I heat some of the water (as much fits in one of my cooking pots) and then pour it back in the bucket - and man does it feel gooooood!

Sometimes when I want to spoil myself, I use this pressure shower thing, which was super cool care package gift from my sister. Basically you put the water in this little tank, hit the seal, and then push this little foot pedal to pressurize it. There's a little hose that connects to a sprayer - almost like one you'd see at a kitchen sink. You just keep pressing the foot pedal to add pressure! 

It makes washing my hair a LOT easier so I definitely use it for that, but I don't use it every day because quite frankly, I'm pretty good at bucket baths. Its reeeeally nice to be able to close my eyes and pretend I'm taking a shower, though!! I seem to use it in spurts - I'll use it every day for a bit, and then one day I'll forget to fill it up before it gets dark so I'll just do a bucket, and then I get on a bucket kick for a while, and so on. 

How often do you wash your hair?

To this I say...don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to.

How do you wash your clothes?

I have three buckets. I fill each one 1/2-3/4 full, and put three light articles of clothing in the leftmost bucket. I take a bar of laundry soap, and scrub it on key areas of the first garment (collars and under sleeves for shirts, waistband and pockets and hems of pants/skirts).

After each key area is washed, scrub soap indiscriminately over entire garment and scrub fabric together. Rinse, wring out, and move to middle bucket. Repeat with garments 2 and 3. Add three more garments to left bucket before doing another all-over scrub of each in the middle bucket. Rinse, wring out, and move to bucket on the right.

Continue until all clothes are in the rightmost bucket. Dump soapy water from middle and left buckets, rinse them out, and fill middle bucket 1/2way. Take item from bucket on the right, rinse and wring out REALLY well, and wring out in middle bucket. Add a couple more if you want. Rinse and wring out items from middle bucket, and dump in (empty) bucket on the left, until all pieces of clothing have been rinsed and wrung out a final time. Turn items inside out and pin on clothes line.

NOTE: as you may have noticed, it takes a good amount of water to do laundry - almost a whole bidon. I'm not a big fan of going to get water, so needless to say, after a couple weeks at site I was OVERJOYED to see my neighbors washing their clothes AT the pump!!!!! And then just hanging up at their houses! Talk about a game changer!

How long of a bike ride is it to Tenkodogo?

Tenkodogo is my regional capital, so it's a pretty sizable town/city - and it's only like 35 min away!!!! I mapped it, and it's only about 8.something km. It's a dirt road for probably 7m, and a paved road for 1+. 

Going into Tenkodogo on the dirt road, there are two slight downhills (one steeper and one more gradual) and one slight gradual uphill.

On the paved road, there's a crest, I would say, and it's closer to my dirt road than to Tenko.

All that said, it probably takes 30-35 min to get into town, and more like 35+ to get to my village - so not bad at all!!

I'm pretty sure that every time I make the trip I do it a minute or so faster, so it's probably going to become my personal speed challenge. I mean, I kind of figure that I'm going to be drenched in sweat upon my arrival no matter what, so I may as well get there faster, and with more of a biking-created breeze!