In the heat of the night

March 30th, 2009 by Elias Parisca

Throughout my life I’ve endured bad cases of the flu, strep throat, and other terrible sicknesses that kept me awake and miserable throughout entire nights. Wednesday night (of last week) beat all those past terrible nights. I’ve been keeping pretty healthy since arriving in Ghana, so I wasn’t sick. Instead, it was the heat and humidity that struck no this occasion. Having no electricity means I have no fan. The night was completely still, absolutely no wind or draft, only a pool of my own sweat. I had to pour some of my drinking water on my bed and constantly move looking for “cold spots,” which would remain “cold” for about 10 seconds once I rolled on top of them. I probably slept for about 2 hours from the time I went to bed at 8:30pm (yes, we go to bed that early since sunset is at 6:30pm) until it was time to get up at 6:30am. The rest of the night consisted of gasping for air, wiping the sweat off of my forehead and taking trips to the bathroom to pee all the water I drank. Everyone is praying for some rain to cool this unbearable heat…