My Perfectly Normal Morning

7:00am. Alarm goes off. I quickly silence the annoying noise.
I don’t want to get out of bed.
As I come to consciousness, I feel the wooden slats of the bed beneath me.
Through the thin foam mattress.
My pillow has busted open.
During the night.
During the night my pillow busted open.
Brown balls. Little brown balls. Everywhere.
Little brown balls everywhere.
And unidentified fur.
Little brown seeds that look like peppercorns and unidentified fur everywhere around me as I was sleeping.
What the hell are these little brown balls and unidentified fur coming out of my pillow?
This is disgusting.
I want to get out of bed.

I’m up.
And I’m in place that is the closest thing I’ve felt to real life in long time.
I laugh as I turn off the air conditioner.
Air conditioner, aren’t I lucky?
I stumble into the bathroom, flush the toilet, wash my hands, and I laugh.
I have running water, and it’s ridiculous that I have a chance to revel in the luxury of washing my hands.
I wash them again, just for kicks.
Kicks kicks kicks kicks kicks.

I continue my tour d’appartement.
Lap top computer.
Internet.
Let’s check the internet, in my pjs, just for fun.
Maybe I have an email. Maybe good news on facebook.
I don’t really care if I have messages or if things are exciting.
I’m doing it because I can.
And I have emails and pictures and messages of people telling me they love me.
And I love them too.
And I wish that I could be in those pictures and writing those emails with those people I love back.
But for now, I’m happy to be doing a normal American task.
Checking email in pjs.
Checking email in pjs.
You can’t check email in pjs even if you’re one of the lucky volunteers with an internet café in town or in your office.
I’m checking my email in my pjs in my air conditioned apartment. I feel I am not in Guinea.

Breakfast. This is the most normal morning I’ve ever had in Guinea. Let’s continue it.
Breakfast.
I bought cereal yesterday.
At a grocery store.
There is one city that I’ve found in this country with grocery stores.
So while I’m here, I like to go in and walk around, just for the experience.
Yesterday I went to a grocery store.
And I bought a box of cereal.
A box of raisin bran.
Only not real raisin bran. No, real raisin bran would be too lucky.
Knock off raisin bran.
This is the first bowl of cereal in six months. Six long cereal-less months.
I carefully open up the cardboard box. Well done.
I carefully open up the plastic bag. I pull apart the plastic sides, but it doesn’t give.
I pull harder.
Damnit, I ripped the whole damn plastic bag. Perfect normal morning isn’t so perfect, but ripping the plastic bag, for me, is quite normal. I accept the failure.
Normal morning.
Find a bowl in the apartment.
No bowl.
Mug.
I find a mug. A mug will work just fine.
Milk. A can of Nido, the expensive, classy, powdered milk.
Luxurious.
This is not quite as normal on my perfectly normal non-Guinea morning. But Nido is classy by my standards. So I am being classy. And the perfection continues.
Perfect morning with my can of Nido powdered milk.
I put in a scoop of Nido. Must add water.
I have a sink in my kitchen.
A sink.
And a kitchen.
Two more things that I laugh at, because they amaze me. What kind of village savage have I become? I laugh.
I have a faucet that fills my mug with water.
And like Jesus when he turned water to wine, I have turned water to milk.
Water to milk with a kitchen sink. Unbelievable.
Water to milk.
Add cereal, careful not to loose any of those precious flakes of bran.
And there it is, my perfectly normal classy mug of knock off raisin bran.

First bite. Delicious because its cereal.
Flakes of brain. Bites of raisins.
But there is no crisp. It doesn’t crunch. This is not how I envisioned my first bowl of cereal.
The cereal is stale?
The cereal is stale.
I buy a box of knock off raisin bran and it is stale.
Only in Guinea does one accord so much importance and value to a mug of cereal, only to have all hopes and dreams of delicious cereal in powdered milk come crashing down.
Only to Guinea do people sell their boxes of cereal that never got sold after waiting 2 years on the shelf of some grocery store.
This knock off raisin bran hasn’t moved off the shelf in two years.
Let’s sell it to Guinea.
I buy it. I buy stale cereal.
But I devour it anyways, because it’s precious cereal and it’s almost normal.
I take my mug and devour my stale cereal that becomes soggy in the classy powdered milk and I devour it. And it is normal.
My perfectly normal morning continues.

It’s time to get dressed. I know what I’m wearing.
I know what I’m wearing because I wore the same thing out to dinner last night and it’s a good Monday morning dress.
My indigo dress with criss-cross straps in the back.
Office appropriate.
Clean. Unlike my tan pants.
My tan pants are filthy. How can I wash them in Conakry? I have no buckets.
I wonder if the maid would wash my pants.
But I’m not going to offer the job, even if he would appreciate it.
I can’t ask people to wash my clothes.
Just because I’m white does not mean I can’t find a way to wash my own clothes.
My indigo dress is good for today.
The Guineans at the office will appreciate my cultural adaptation.
I put it on.
It’s good.
I add turquoise jewelry.
Pretty, African jewelry. Again, I am scoring cultural points.
Cultural points that I hope will make a good impression on these people.
I am pleased. A great Monday morning outfit, first real day at the office job outfit.
It is good.
A business suit would be better.
But I never even thought of packing a business suit when I joined the Peace Corps.
Who would have thought.
But I have a good Monday morning dress and now I am dressed and my perfectly normal morning continues.

Fifteen minutes before I have to leave.
There’s a TV in the corner of the apartment.
Normally I hate TV. I hate the noise that comes out of that box.
It just bothers me. And if it’s not in English, it just bothers me more.
But it’s a TV. And this is my perfectly normal morning. And I have 15 minutes.
I turn the TV on.
French news. I wish I spoke French with a French accent instead of a Guinean one. But I understand most of it.
What other channels are there?
I flip. Mouths are moving, no sound.
Wait. I am no lip reader, but I could swear that news anchor is mouthing English words.
I can just tell.
I want to know. Find out if I’m right. Why is there no sound?
I increase the volume.
Obviously, problem solved.
And I’m right.
There’s a British guy talking about the economy. It’s CNN. British CNN.
For the first time in six months I am watching TV in English.

How in the world have I become so privileged as a PCV that I am being shown English television?
For the first time in six months I am watching TV in English.
And it is unbelievable. I understand each word. And I don’t have to strain to pay attention. I don’t have to pay attention, and I’ll still understand.
Economy is in shambles.
Investors are risk averse. Overly risk avers.
The markets are doing much better. Investors should take on more risk.
Some Asian reporter flies to South Korea and pays $6 to put a hex on her co-anchor. Some crazy lady under a bridge writes his name on a paper and chants in Korean and burns the paper to hex this British report.
What the hell kind of crap is this?
The shot goes back to the British office.
The Korean reporter is sitting next to her hexed co-anchor.
She’s giggling like a fool.
I want to punch her in the face.
She is not professional. This is not news. Is this really CNN?
She blew $6 on a hex for a co-worker? $6 would feed my neighbor’s family of 10 for 3 days.
She is a giggling fool who hexes people and reports on her crap.
Stop wasting my time.
I’m getting dumber watching this.
They start talking about how to handle personal problems with co-workers.
The hexer and the hexed.
How do you handle discrepancies?
Talk it out.
Be honest.
Be respectful.
Listen to each other.
Crap.
Lots of crap.
If you don’t know how to handle a problem with a co-worker, and you are looking to CNN for answers, you have more problems than just the one with your co-worker.
CNN needs to report real news, not lame messages preceded by crazy Korean women under bridges chanting hexes.
It’s crap.
Utter crap.
I kind of like it.
Although its crap, I like it.
It’s normal.
It makes me feel normal.
I don’t get the luxury of watching crap TV anymore. So I enjoy it for what it is.
A continuation of my perfect normal morning.

And then I look at the time. 7:55 am.
I need to pack up and leave.
I pack up my lap top, place dishes in the sink, lock numerous doors, and leave.
I just had the most normal morning.
And it was perfect.
My perfectly normal morning.

And being a Peace Corps Volunteer, that is anything but normal.