I would like to relate a joke I heard yesterday:

An American went to Senegal and was being shown around Dakar by a Senegalese man. They went to the pier and saw the boats, and the American said, “We have bigger boats in America.” Later they were on the street looking at the cars, and the American said “In America we have cars that are much bigger than that.” Everywhere they went they saw things that the American said were bigger and better in America. At last they were at the market and they saw sugar, which is concentrated into a block the shape of a liter water bottle. The American, not having seen it before, asked what it was. Being rather tired of the American saying everything was bigger in America, the Senegalese said, “Oh that, that’s a suppository.” The American backed away holding up his hands. “No,” he said. “For you that is much bigger!”

(cue insane laughter)

One of the best parts of my life here is laughter. A few nights ago I made dinner with some volunteers and spent three hours talking about inane subjects like super heroes and villains, and laughing ourselves to death. My super power was “jazz hands” and my name was Excito Boi (There was some argument from me that my name should be at least Excito Man, but I was overruled). My weakness was bulimia because I would get so excited.

Looking back, it is hard to see why we thought all of this was so funny. The joke I put above may not seem funny to most of you. It involves much subtlety in the behavior of Americans in Africa and in the views of West Africans toward Americans. Something about life here is slow enough that it allows much space for laughter, for chatting all night with nothing else to do. The pace of life can be frustrating, but it also gives a lot of time for those precious moments. They are the best moments.

In America I remember spending a lot of time working on projects, and occasionally watching movies or surfing the internet, and if I got bored with those I would read. Even if I had nothing to do, no one else also had nothing to do at the same time such that we could spend it together sitting and talking. If by chance someone did, we would usually try to find something to do.

This strikes me as terribly strange, and is one of the things I will miss most when I leave here. It is one of the things that gets me contemplating living somewhere else. Because for all the benefits of living in the US, of having family and friends and speaking a language easily, of understanding and being at ease with the culture, we just don’t laugh as much.

If you find the joke funny, or not, leave me a comment saying why. I am interested.

I spent the weekend doing exactly that. Literally. By Friday I had found out that I will be living in my current house for the rest of my service, which means having a roommate for the next couple of months before he goes home. I got a bed from the bureau that is awesome, and I was all set to clean up some and get really, finally, moved in. I was feeling pretty good.

Then I broke the water main that goes into the house…

It had nearly rusted through and after messing with it for a little while I figured out that I could replace the parts pretty easily. I biked over to a plumbing shop, where i purchased a new piece. Equipped with a lock-wrench, I spent the next 30 minutes fixing things before discovering that another piece was also rusted. No problem, I’ll just nip on over to the plumbing store again…

At this point I’m feeling pretty awesome, because I’ve fixed my own plumbing, and that with a massive shortage of tools. And so now you know what comes next.

I spent the next four hours attaching everything, seeing that things leaked, and taking them apart to reattach. They use some kind of grass instead of plumbing tape here, so that was part of the problem. I was muddy. It wasn’t working. Maybe the pipe was too short. Oh yeah, and it started pouring rain.

I announced to the world that I was already muddy enough and hardly needed more help in that respect.

At present we have very leaky water and are hoping for a plumber to come by and fix what I couldn’t.

Sometimes you just have to laugh…

Also, Mario is the plumber from Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros, for the uninitiated.