It’s the Little Things

Sometimes, the smallest thing can make you go crazy. I think this is a universal truth, but it’s especially relevant here.
I can deal with not having running water. I can deal with frequent electricity outages. I can deal with hordes of cockroaches in the latrine. I can deal with homesickness. I can deal with the heat. I can deal with the fact that very few people in my community speak Portuguese and I speak 5 words total of the local language, Nyungwe. I can deal with isolation.

These are things that are constantly affecting me, and so I don’t even notice them anymore. They’re just a part of life. And yet, the smallest thing can make you snap.

For dinner tonight, I was going to make feijão (beans) with rice – one of my favorite meals. You have to soak the beans overnight before you can cook them so last night I dutifully set my beans to soak. The electricity was out for several hours this afternoon, so I played guitar for a bit and read a bit of the anthology of influential linguistics papers I’ve been working through. My eyelids got heavier and heavier, and before I knew it, I had fallen asleep.

I awoke to a weird sound. Scrape, clatter, scrape. I dismissed it as Poppy nudging her bowl around. Scrape, clatter, scrape. Ugh, shut up, Poppy, I’m trying to sleep and its too early for your dinner. Scrape, clatter, scrape.

Finally, I got up and I walked out to the main room, and what did I see?

Goats.

Yep, they’re at it again. While I was sleeping, they wandered in, knocked the pot off the table, scattering beans across the living room, and were busy licking the beans off the floor. There were beans, bean juice, goats, chickens, and flies everywhere. I lost it.

“Sai! SAI!” I fumed. “Stupid GOATS! Get out of my HOUSE! Stop eating my BEANS! AAAAARGHH!”

I spent the next half hour cleaning the floor and doing dishes. After realizing that, without beans, my meal would consist of rice only, I started preparing some more beans to try speed-soaking.

Then the power went out, and with it, my capacity to use my hot plate and boil or cook anything.

That’s it. I’m done. Tonight, dinner is peanut butter and crackers. If anyone needs me, I’ll be eating Black Cat by the spoonful and watching How I Met Your Mother.