Pink lizards and cold bucket showers

I love finding metaphors in my life, so I’m going to subject you to two recent occurrences that I will then overanalyze to extraordinary degrees.

I was in the bathroom when a pink lizard fell from the ceiling. I think that makes a pretty excellent summary of my time spent in Senegal. Because there are three possible responses to something like that, and I go through these in different contexts essentially every single day. One reaction is to realize you’ve never seen anything even remotely like that before, which is pretty aweseome. I mean, I didn’t even know lizards could be pink. And first experiences generally make great stories, so now I have something to talk about to different people for the next hour. And to write about on my blog. So hooray life. But backing up a bit, when you’re sitting on a toilet and a blur suddenly plummets past down to the tile floor beside you, it’s actually kind of scary until you realize that it’s this cute little lizard. And even though it’s pretty cuddly, had it fallen a foot to the right, it would have landed on my head. Definitely sketchy. So there’s some low level anxiety added to the mix. And then there’s just confusion, because did a pink lizard actually just fall from the bathroom ceiling? Because really, is that possible? And is there any explanation for how that may have happened? Better throw in a dash of utter bewilderment. As a post script, tragically, the lizard did not survive the fall. I hope there’s nothing to read into that.

The next event to be overanalyzed is my daily cold bucket shower. I’m beginning to think my opinions towards them mirror my feelings towards Senegal im Allegemeinen. (I miss German.) Some mornings I really feel like I’m starting to get accustomed to them. Not completely used to them – please, I’m not that intense – but they definitely don’t feel as cold as did that first one in the hotel just after landing in Dakar at 6:00 am on January 12. And so I get hopeful that soon (or soon-ish, since I have been doing this for three weeks already without particularly earth-shattering improvement), I’ll be completely used to them. But then other days bucket showering is frigid and has me shivering by the time I’m done washing my hair and I think that I’ll never get used to it, that it’s just something I’ll have to deal with every day I’m here. But those days aren’t nearly as frequent anymore. Which is positive, right?