19 September 2018 – Who would have guessed room 5 meant rise at 5?

Here I am at 546am wide awake after being woken before 5am by the other residents of my room in steady succession having their alarms go off, get up, turn on head torches, go to the bathroom, return pack their rucksacks, search about their beds, repack their rucksacks when they find the thing they lost.

I say steady succession because they all didn’t do it in unison so I was awakened by one, dozed off to sleep, then was awakened by another.

When it was the Brazilian lady in the bunk below me’s turn:- her alarm sounded, she found her phone, turned it off all the time shaking the bunk as she rolled about in it. She got up and at some point, remember I snoozed at times, rearranged my rucksack and the items of clothes I’d left on the windowsill.

The lady to the left of me had turned her head torch on and that woke me too. She seemed to have laid out the contents of her rucksack on her bed and was methodically going through each item including her pill collection. She had been making a strange squeaky noise after lights out the night before that was her rolling her foot over a spiked rubber ball keeping me awake then.

The lovely ladies in the bunks beside me decided that it was ok to have a conversation at normal volume that woke me again. I do admit to issuing a shush but their conversation continued. One of them closes the window, with rattling and bar clunking; why I don’t know as she was about to leave, maybe what she did at home before going out.

They share some bottled drink, it splashes round the bottle. I turned over towards them and now they too were rearranging my clothes on the windowsill. I raised my head and one of them gave me a cheery “Buenes Dias!” I did reply in my best sleepy Spanish.

Sounds of blowing noses, clearing of throats, (some close to death rattles) continue downstairs into the courtyard below where more packing of rucksacks, filling water bottles and now the floodlight to light the courtyard is on. There are no curtains in this room.

“Ping!” I’m wide awake, I’m my room’s only resident. I get up close the other window to the courtyard to reduce the noise and close the door as I hear sounds coming from room 6.

Maybe I will get to sleep till seven…