Daily Differences in Cote d'Ivoire

#18 "Foutou"

1. You only paint the nails on your left hand because you eat with your right hand.
2. You wear the same clothes two to three days (or all week) because you’ll need to wash whatever you wear by hand.
3. The electricity goes out almost every night during dinner – I still don’t understand why.



#9 "Tea Time"

4. Everyone returns to their houses around 6-7pm to bathe, then comes back to spend the rest of the evening.
5. There is NEVER silence – there’s always music playing on someone’s phone, someone playing the drums, guitar, or balaphon.
6. It doesn’t bother you when there’s no discreetness in breast feeding, but if a woman is wearing pants or a skirt above the knees, it’s a scandal.



#13 "Meat"

7. When someone says your losing weight, it’s not a good thing, probably means you have/just got over malaria or amebic dysentery, on the other hand, when someone says you’re getting fat, they mean it as a compliment.
8. “It was raining” is a viable excuse for being late or not attending something.
9. You see men everywhere with little tea sets taking a break for tea.
10. You don’t need an excuse for being late (even a couple hours), no one even notices (even in a meeting of two people).



#5 "Balaphone"

11. If you visit someone between the house of 8-10am, 11-1pm, or 6-9pm expect that you are going to have to stay and eat a meal – no arguments.
12. When traveling, you have to assume it’s going to take an entire day, even if you’re only going 2 hours away – you must assume that the bus will not leave on time (usually about 2-3 hours later), that you’re bus is going to break down, and that you’ll have to stop at every small town in between.  A two hour ride by moto will probably take (from bus stop to bus stop) around 4-8 hours, if you started after 2pm, that means you’ll probably spend the night at some bus station somewhere.
13. You start looking at any living animal as “meat” instead of that animal – looking at a live chicken, pig, or cow can make you feel hungry.



#2 "Washing Machine"

14. If someone says that you’re going to start at 4pm on the dot, that means you MIGHT start around 5pm.
15. Eating alone is an honor – so you might be put in a room by yourself with everyone else laughing and talking outside, in order to honor you.
16. Instant coffee and powdered milk IS coffee and creamer.
17. “Child safety” looks a lot different.



#17

18. Your stomach start growling when you hear the sound of Futu being pounded anywhere in the neighborhood.
19. You can watch storms roll in for miles and are completed comforted by the sound of rain on a metal roof.

We’ve really enjoyed watching these things become a daily “normal” in our lives and really have come to embrace it.  Thank you, Lord, for 11 months in Cote d’Ivoire!

Steve and Jessica

#19