Saturday, April 30, 2011

Baby It's Cold Outside

(Sorry about the corny title. Moving on.) Winter is coming. And it gets seriously cold. It was 47 degrees at 8:00 yesterday morning. INSIDE our house. I don’t want to even imagine how cold it was at 4 a.m. We have almost perfected the art of layering to go to sleep. Matt wears a pair of pajama pants over a pair of sweatpants and two long sleeved shirts over a t-shirt. Sara usually wears lined North Face pants, a t-shirt, a long sleeved shirt and a large sweatshirt. We then sleep in sleeping bag liners under two sheets, two big blankets and two throw blankets.

We have both obviously lived in much colder environments and thought we should be able to handle the cold. When we could see our breath while still in bed, however, we decided enough was enough. Yesterday, we took a public taxi to our shopping town and purchased a kerosene heater. By the way, don’t google “dangers of kerosene heaters” if such a heater is your only viable option. We purchased kerosene at a store in town, which was poured into a two liter empty soda bottle, and we were ready to go. Matt was able to set up the kerosene heater fairly easily, and we were able to spend our evening in relative warmth. We turned the heater off when we went to bed though. For now, we’re paying heed to the scary carbon monoxide warnings (damn you, google). We’re also trying not to think about the fact that winter doesn’t officially begin for another month…welcome to Africa.

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