How did we ever survive?

Terrible heat rash

May brings back memories of our first hot season here in Niger. We didn't have a generator and we had frequent power outages. That year we even had 42 hours without electricity in a row! During a power outage I would wake up and move the kids to where I felt like there was the most air flow (really non existent) and I remember once falling asleep while trying to fan them. That time I was woken up by a cockroach drinking the sweat dripping off my hand. Our children's backs were covered in red bumps of heat rash.

Sometimes we didn't have power all day long - meaning no internet, but that made work very hard. Thus, if the power did come on at night, I remember waking up to do precious work on the computer that had to be done. We were exhausted.

We also really struggled with water that season too. We would leave the tap on in the bathroom and wake up when we heard it start running. We would get water for an hour or maybe two in the middle of the night only.

Jump forward to this year. We now have solar fans and a generator (The solar will not run the fridge nor AC - In fact, the generator can only run one of those at a time.) We also have an AC and for the last month we have all slept together in one room to enjoy the AC. We set our AC at 86 degrees and when walking into the room from the 105 degree house it is so very refreshing!

There are a few times the we have brown outs and are trying to run the AC, but it isn't working at all. It does get hot to have 6 people in a closed up room in that case, but it has been rather infrequent.

We also have had a lot better water this year. We have had to worry about storing water in buckets as back up, but we have been able to accumulate most of that water during the day light hours instead of waking at night.

So the conclusion is that we are getting soft! Well, in reality it makes home livable for us and we are enjoying these comforts while wondering how we ever did it!