Surviving, even thriving, in heat
We Irish are the daisies of the world – bold and brash at home, but pick us up and transport us abroad and we wither and droop, we shrivel and wilt.
At worst, we undergo a complete endothermic sublimation – evaporating into the ionosphere, and only coalescing again upon arriving back in Ireland.
Before foreign travel became popular only our missionaries had to contend with the hellish furnaces of foreign climes, now we are all affected.
Fainting spells in Atacames, Ecuador and chronic lethargy in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, made me realise that I couldn’t endure extremes of heat; yet I kept returning to smelter-zones where my head and limbs would become anaesthetised, making every movement a Herculean feat.
Nowadays, I try to avoid such places, although a few months ago I found myself by accident in the blast furnace of eastern Mozambique on the plains of the Limpopo River. For the 24 anguished hours I spent there I put into action my extreme heat emergency plan. First step, make arrangements to get out of there ASAP: grab the guidebook and look for the nearest mountains, forest or shaded coastline.
In the meantime it’s about making do; trying to adapt your lifestyle in accordance with the environment. A priority is to find a room with a functioning fan, good window shutters and, ideally, a natural breeze. A fan is preferable to air-conditioning: I subscribe to the Mediterranean belief that while the air-conditioning is fine in public buildings, spending long periods in refrigeration cannot be healthy.
Once I have my room, I set about keeping physical activity to a minimum, trying to limit direct sun exposure to 20 minute periods, after which my brain turns into scrambled eggs.
Unfortunately, at times the need to obtain enough drinking water necessitates trips outside in the hottest part of the day, and for such expeditions it is vital that you’re adequately clad.
The Irish find it hard to comprehend that the more clothing you wear in heat, the cooler you can be; provided that they are the right clothes – loose-fitting garments of natural fibres in light colours. They protect the skin, while allowing it to breath. White clothing reflects sun rather than sucking it into you as black does. A hat is vital: a Panama or baseball cap may mark you out as a tourist, but it can save you from heat stroke and future melanoma. The single key element to thriving in a hot climate is to adopt the local lifestyle. I don’t mean practising polygamy or converting to Islam, but rather, getting up at dawn for a stroll or a trip to the market, and then returning to the shade for a lazy lunch of fruit or salad, followed by a nap until late afternoon.
If you can’t make it back to your room for a siesta, seek out a shady tree, castle ruins or a hidden pew in a dark church. But, watch out in churches for mantilla-clad widows creeping up on you and pinching you to check you’re alive. It can be disconcerting, especially when you get a fright and fling your glasses off and slap the poor widow across the chest then, when she tries to retrieve your glasses, she steps on them and then you have no choice but to go into the scorching sun, half-blind and bleary with sleep, to find an optician. Or is that just me?