The Heat Is Beating Me in Haiti

Photo by Bruno Scramgnon: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-photo-of-a-mountain-585759/

I don't like hot weather. If you are one of those strange individuals who thrives when the sun is trying to burn the world to a crisp, let me know what your secret is — because I am dying. Haiti is hot year-round. I thought I was prepared for it because, well, how bad could summer really be? It's not drastically hotter than the rest of the year, but somehow it feels ten times as miserable. Nevertheless, I am determined to survive. How am I doing that? Let's talk about it.

Effects of the Heat

I've been in hot weather before. Where I grew up in Washington, we used to have spurts of hot weather in the summer. Our house never had AC, so I thought I knew what it was like to endure heat. However, those spurts never lasted more than a few days in a row. Then I moved to the St. Louis area and discovered a whole new kind of humid, sticky, disgusting inferno that starts in May and doesn't let up until sometime in October. The nice thing about St. Lous is that most indoor spaces have air conditioning.

Haiti is a different story. Most days this time of year, the real feel temperature is close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Our home is concrete, which tends to absorb heat and release it slowly. Our bedroom is on the west side of the apartment, which means it heats up in the afternoon and tends to stay uncomfortably warm until sunrise. I'm constantly sweating, I've been too hot and tired to exercise like I should, and the heat is affecting my appetite. I get headaches frequently. I try to drink plenty of water, but sometimes I feel so icky that water just doesn't appeal to me.

I'm learning to cope. Slowly, I am learning to cope.

Hiding from the Heat

There are a few things I can do each day to deal with the worst of the heat:

• I start the day in our (relatively) cool living room, where I open the door to let in a breeze. I force myself to drink a good amount of water because I tend to sweat at night and don't want to get dehydrated.
• I work on my computer, which can make me hot, so I often work in front of a fan.
• In the afternoon, I try to spend some time outside on the side of our house that faces away from the sun. A breeze can make it tolerable.
• Sometimes, I lie down with a piece of ice wrapped in a towel. Keeping it against my neck helps me cool down from head to toe.

The AC Fiasco

My husband is the most considerate, caring person in the world. He saw that I was struggling in the heat, so he asked the manager of our property (our downstairs neighbor) if we could install an AC unit. Permission was granted, so a few days later, we became the proud owner of an ugly white box on our bedroom wall.

The AC works wonderfully, but it wasn't in the original electricity calculations for our house. The second night we had it, we were using it when EDH (the local power company) gave us some electricity. We had the AC set to turn off shortly after midnight because midnight is usually when EDH takes the electricity away.

Well... we had a problem. EDH took power, and our inverter was set to automatically switch our house back to battery power. When that happened, there was a power surge that fried our inverter. We had no electricity whatsoever for several hours. Now we are borrowing an inverter from a friend while ours gets repaired. Lessons learned.

We can still use the AC, but we have to be careful about when we do it. Still, it's one of the things keeping me sane in the Haiti heat.

Will I Ever Adjust?

I don't know if I will ever get used to the heat. It seems to me that even Haitians aren't accustomed to the sweltering sun. However, I have to keep doing what I can to adapt. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll get used to the misery.