NOISES AND SMELLS, NIGHT AND DAY

NOISES AND SMELLS, NIGHT AND DAY

The generator has just come on again: it is 4 pm; it will run until 9 pm. The noise is overwhelming: at first we could hardly tolerate it; now that we are more used to it, it is only deafening. It is run in the morning as well, 6-9 am. We can escape the noise to a significant degree by retreating to the back of our apartment. We brought in two plastic outdoor chairs and put them in the study, so we have a place to sit and read. We then close the hallway door to the front of the apartment, hiding behind it as a sound barrier.

At night, because it is quite hot (high 70s to mid 80s), we sleep with the windows open. The dominant sound is that of croaking frogs. Darlene swears that they must be HUGE: there voices certainly are. And then, there is the rain! Three of the five nights that we have been here thus far, there has been a torrential downpour in the middle of the night. (When I say torrential, I mean TORRENTIAL!) The rain makes a nice sound, really, but it is very loud.

On the softer side, typically we are wakened at daylight by the sound of singing sparrows. The sit in the open concrete blocks along the top of the walls in our apartment, and lift their voices in praise to God each morning at dawn. Theirs is a pleasant sound.

Darlene just commented, “They must have started the garbage fire.” There also are smells here that we do not normally experience at home. The burn pile for kitchen refuse, papers, etc. is located at the rear of our apartment. They set it on fire at least once, sometimes twice, per day. We then have to close certain windows, to shut down on the amount of smoke rolling into our apartment. The smell is not bad, usually, but the smoke is irritating.

C’est la vie!