My living arrangement

I live in a "permanent structure", of which there are few in the village. Most homes are made out of a flimsy wooden frame that is then coated with mud and cow dung. For anybody who has spoken to me recently, I have another use in mind for this cow dung - biogas... more on that later. So my permanent structure has four bedrooms, each with four beds. As of now, there are three residents: myself, my predecessor David, and the volunteer coordinator for our partner school (Ruth). Do the math and you'll see that we all have our own rooms for the time being. "But what about the other beds", you may ask.... They're for volunteers of which there are currently none, but the first will be arriving in November. The house is run by our partner school, Arlington Academy of Hope, which I'll talk more about later. David leaves next week, and Ruth will leave in a month or so when the school year ends. Her replacement will arrive after the holidays. I guess I'll be running the house in the meantime, which basically means making sure that we're stocked and that our lovely house woman, Jennipher, has everything she needs.

Jennipher does the cooking, cleaning, and even laundry. I haven't had treatment like this... ever? I love my mother dearly, but she works too much to ever provide daily laundry service and to cook a full dinner with at least five dishes. For breakfast, we kind of "fend for ourselves" with oatmeal, jam, bread and the like, though there is the occasional treat put out by Jennipher (eggs, "french toast", etc). She also puts out two big thermoses of boiled hot water for coffee and tea every morning and every evening. My morning snack (either chipati or mandazi, both of which are oily breads) and tea are provided by the school's kitchen. I'm enjoying my morning tea at this moment, actually. I laugh to myself when I think about how great I have it. Lunch is also served by the school. Usually cornmeal, beans, and chopped cabbage. It does the trick, especially with chili sauce. Dinners are fantastic - a starch (rice, chipati), usually matoke (mashed plantains), a veggie mix, sometimes a meat dish, sometimes g-nut sauce ("Ground-nuts"), a coleslaw-type thing, maybe some avocados, maybe some beans.... lots of good options. There are always snack foods in the house like nutella, bread, bananas, jam, peanut butter.... It's really good in that department. Really good.

For number one, I use the pit latrine and for number two, I use one of two proper toilets in the bathhouse behind the guest house. It's about a ten foot walk between the structures. We use harvested rain water for the toilets, showers, and sink. It's cold, but it does the trick. For drinking water, we're stocked up on 5-gallon jugs of purified spring water. Some electricity is provided by the grid, which surprised me, and we have batteries and an inverter for backup lighting and one socket. The grid is very unreliable, so when the batteries run out, showering turns into "bucket bathing" and number two moves to the pit latrine as well. The seat in the pit latrine has been problematic and a leak has led to a puddle on the floor, which is unappealing. I plan on addressing both of these issues to make the latrine a more enjoyable experience.

All for now.... With so much happening, I'll do my best to keep these postings organized and with time, I hope that you can understand the lifestyle here. Thanks for reading!