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| Hey, it's a dining and a bedroom |
And then there's the puppy that lives outside of my room in a narrow veranda. I would guess that he wakes up around 5 or 5:30 AM, decides that he wants to be inside the house around 5:31 AM and continues to scratch at the door / cry until about... oh, I dunno, all day. He is a lovely little alarm clock, but also the cutest thing to walk the planet. Unfortunately, and this isn't something that I completely undestand yet and don't presume to fully understand, the Malagasy have a really interesting relationship to dogs in the sense that they're not treated the same as pets in the US. I don't want to step too much into making a claim about the culture, but it seems that it wouldn't make sense to treat dogs very well when there's people starving and living on practically nothing everyday. It's confusing and hard to watch injuried or dying dogs on the street be completely ignored, but at the same time I guess there are much bigger problems. Ya know?
To wrap up this quick entry, here's a picture of some murky water that I've been told has been boiled and is safe to drink. On the bright side, I don't have trouble distinguishing my water from others since it looks like.. this... Life sure is different here.
Le Nettoyer
I've now experienced bucket showers twice and can say that they're pretty much the same as you could imagine. You have a bucket of hot water, a small pale--similar to those you'd find at a beach, a faucet with cold water and 2' by 2' square box that is sunk into the ground a couple inches with a drain. Here's a picture to clarify.
I'm probably a little soapy and have yet to find an efficient way for using the bucket shower; however, all I have is time when I'm in the house at nighttime since I'm without internet, television and people who are awake and I'm not allowed to go out. I do have a cheap mobile phone that I pretty much use to call my mom at odd hours.
Yes, my life in Madagascar is quite thrilling. If you're ever free around 9:00 PM or 1:00 PM US time and want to drop a couple dollars on international calling rates you can have my digits :). But back to bucket showers. They're interesting, easy enough to figure out, and I'm pretty sure that I'm cleaner now than before I got into the "shower"... but it's hard to tell.
After the bucket shower, I decided to use my leftover water to clean my underwear. In Malagasy culture you have to clean your own underwear! Woohoo! I can't complain too much, since Juliette our "femme du menage," which I suppose is comprable to "domestic help" but isn't exactly the same indicator of wealth here as it is in the US, cleans the other clothing.
It's about as exciting as swirling clothing in soapy water gets WITH the added uncertainty of where to hang them in the house to dry. These are the types of questions that don't cross the language barrier very well and lead to confusing hand gesturing and incomprehensible Franglish, so I avoid asking them.
While I was spending extended periods of time in our shower room, I thought it would be a good idea to take a Magadacar Myspace picture since... when else am I ever going to have this oppurtunity again? I can't say that mirror pictures have quite the same appeal here...
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