This time of year daytime temperatures are quite high and it doesn't cool down much at night. This can make it quite difficult to sleep, so many (most?!) of my neighbours carry their beds or mats outside and sleep there. Even if there's not much of a breeze, it beats sleeping in a hut with almost no ventilation.
One morning this week I snapped the picture above of a yard that I pass each day on my way to school. The beds hadn't yet been taken inside for the day. You can see a few metal beds, a wooden bed (just beyond the red metal bed in the forefront) and a mat on the ground. These are the three typical things my neighbours sleep on.
Metal beds are somewhat of a luxury. Most people use wooden beds instead, or simply sleep on a mat on the ground (if there is a bed, it's usually an adult and a baby or small child/children who sleep on it, and older children sleep on a mat).
People here don't have box springs on their beds. For both the metal and the wooden beds, a grid of plastic string is "woven" across the metal or wooden frame to make the support for the mattress to be put on or for people to lie on. (This picture is of the string grid on a metal bed frame I have on my porch, supported by bricks, for people to sit on.) The string grid is usually very firm at first, but it wears out and can get really saggy.
The mattresses here are foam, of varying densities depending on the money people have available. Some of them get soft very quickly and don't offer much support.
Many people don't have money for a mattress so simply sleep on the string grid, usually with a sheet or cloth of some kind on it to make it more comfortable.
The yard photo above also shows the three main kinds of houses in my area: the traditional hut (back left), the mud/cement brick "modern" house with tin roof (back centre) and the grass mat shack (back right).
One morning this week I snapped the picture above of a yard that I pass each day on my way to school. The beds hadn't yet been taken inside for the day. You can see a few metal beds, a wooden bed (just beyond the red metal bed in the forefront) and a mat on the ground. These are the three typical things my neighbours sleep on.
Metal beds are somewhat of a luxury. Most people use wooden beds instead, or simply sleep on a mat on the ground (if there is a bed, it's usually an adult and a baby or small child/children who sleep on it, and older children sleep on a mat).
The mattresses here are foam, of varying densities depending on the money people have available. Some of them get soft very quickly and don't offer much support.
Many people don't have money for a mattress so simply sleep on the string grid, usually with a sheet or cloth of some kind on it to make it more comfortable.
The yard photo above also shows the three main kinds of houses in my area: the traditional hut (back left), the mud/cement brick "modern" house with tin roof (back centre) and the grass mat shack (back right).
Are there mosquitoes at night during the dry season, which bite and carry malaria? The people sleeping outside don't seem to have mosquito nets.
ReplyDeleteHi Dale. There are very few mosquitoes--or other flying insects, for that matter--this time of year. It's one of the nice things about the dry season. :-)
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