Ceiling Fans

At the moment I'm sitting on the porch at the Peace Corps house in Ouaga. The sky is blue, there's a nice breeze, a ceiling fan overhead and a productive mango tree nearby. Oh and there's a big yellow and black butterfly.

I finally slept straight through last night and woke up this morning at 8:30! This hasn't happened in months. It's been so hot in Ouahigouya the past couple of months that sleeping well has been impossible. (Think about how hard it is to sleep in the summer when the temperature hits the 90's... without air conditioning.) The temperature in my house has been hovering around 100 °F at night. Most people here sleep outside, but since I'm in a bigger city I don't feel comfortable doing that by myself. So I moved my lit pico (cot) into my living room under my big ceiling fan, which is the solution to and source of my problem.

Why fans are fantastic:

1. In order to stay cool in temperatures higher than your body temp (98.6 °F) you need to sweat.

2. The fan helps evaporate the sweat off your skin thereby cooling you down.

Why fans are sleep reducing:

1. They increase the evaporation rate of your sweat.
2. This means you sweat more.
3. Eventually you've lost so much water you can't swallow, blink or sweat one more drop.
4. You must replenish the fluids lost. For me this means waking up every 1 to 2 hours to drink.