Africa Fatigue

We just hit our 9 'monthaversary' in country and we have been feeling
some malaise. It's common for volunteers to go through cycles of
emotional ups and downs, so this must be one of those low phases. It
may be because it's cold, dark and wet outside (it being winter here
in the Southern Hemisphere), or that we've been working hard all
trimester without any real breaks, or side effects from our malaria
prophylaxis, or that it's been hard to sustain enthusiasm with our
youth group or get our science fair project to gel. We've also been
thinking it might be a more general fatigue built up of so many little
things here in Africa which were novel and interesting at first, but
now are not novel, less interesting, and in some cases annoying. Like
the small African drum corps of primary school kids that practices
endlessly next door, or the power outages while we're cooking dinner,
students telling us how hungry they are, the stores running out of
eggs at the same time, being asked to make birthday cake for every
child in the neighborhood, people forgetting to return things they
borrowed, any kind of African transportation, aggressive drunks,
poor-quality products breaking or parts of our house falling apart,
cell phone service outages that can last for days, receiving lots of
attention all the time, even at home when we're trying to escape, and
more, but you probably get the point. As we're trying to post this
blog Romão has come by for the fifth time, this time to ask for change
for a 20 Met bill. But Janet's family is visiting soon and we'll get
out of site with them on a much deserved vacation. Plus wet rainy
weather can only last so long, soon enough we'll have a bright sunny
day and be able to actually have our clothes dry. Romão has just come
over again (6th time), this time to ask for our umbrella. Sorry Romão,
we're using it. We don't want to blame our funk solely on Africa,
people in America feel burned out too. Maybe we've just forgotten
about the annoyances back home, like traffic, smog, consumerism....