A box spring is not a bed

Dear Landlord,

 I think you must have forgotten something.  The beds in your house are not beds.  Well, they are technically beds in that they are several inches off of the floor and have covering on them that is entirely lovely if you want to tell everyone who visits your bedroom that you are a rich African with an affinity for gold fabric and tassels.  But they are missing a key element:  mattresses.  The first night I was here I really didn’t care.  The melatonin took care of me and my fully-clothed, incredibly jet-lagged, can’t-believe-I-am-in-a-golden-room-in-Africa self.  However, the second day I was slightly more aware and slightly less tolerant of the fact that the bed was not a bed.  It was a box spring topped by a BOARD. As boards go, this one was particularly hard, too.

We thought there must have been a mistake, so we asked your son, who incidentally lives in the garage for the time being (story later).  He assured us that no, there was no mistake, these are indeed the beds.  Dave, equally as intolerant, and I went in search of a solution.  Over the dirt roads rutted from the downpour of the previous night, through the village marketplace (sounds WAY nicer than it is), through terrifying traffic to the Muzungu (white people) store we went.  Our car was inspected at the “mall” entrance by an unnecessarily stern policeman with a mirror on a long pole to see if our undercarriage was fitted with a bomb. In all fairness, I can’t say that for sure, because I didn’t ask.

The only thing we could find that might make sleep an option again were a few “foam” mattresses. (Let me explain the quotation marks: I do not have the words to describe certain things.  Maybe my vocabulary will grow as I am here a little longer, but it may need to be censored). 

I’m going to skip forward a few hours to the moment when we got to try out our solution.  With great anticipation we tried to rest.  I wish RIGHT HERE that I were able to say that the solution was magic and that we would be able to sleep again.  If that were the case I might be in bed right now enjoying a deep sleep.  Alas, I am typing this and avoiding the golden, foam-topped box-spring bed because I know I will wake up (which assumes I would have been asleep, which I wouldn’t) in the morning feeling far worse than I feel right now.  Although the pads upgraded the bed from a board to, let’s say, the ground (or a softer board), it’s not soft enough for my Muzungu, pampered, soft, American body.  

I promise to be more upbeat about your beautiful country in the future, but that might be difficult unless I can get some sleep.