My House... My House

Song of the day: LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk is Playing at My House

I haven't been able to properly sit down and write a blog post. If all goes well and the power doesn't go out on me again I should be able to nail one out. Although the keyboard is quite sticky and many words may be misspelled I'll do my best to get the point(s) across.

So I've been at my site for about 3 weeks now... not including the 2 weekends I've been gone to go shopping for household goods and attend Youth Day in Kabale. I live in a 'compound' about a 1/4 mile off the main dirt road. Almost looks like a plantation in Georgie... except the long, narrow driveway is enclosed by shrubs of some kind. And you get a beautiful view of Rukungiri from the driveway which is really cool at night unless the power is out! At the end of the driveway is a house where my supervisor lives and I live behind that in a one story apartment like complex. My neighbors are the girls boarding at the school, a co-worker who spend 10+ years in the US and doesn't speak Runyankore, and the goats and chickens that enjoy hanging out on my little porch area. SO anyways... you walk in my 'house and the ceiling is about 15-18ft high! Tin roof and rustic wood logs holding the roof up just like a cabin! That's where the mice run around all day either on the tin roof itself or the rafters in my room. My house is just big/small enough for whatever I want to do. When you walk in you are in the kitchen/ living room, walk around the plywood wall and you are in my bedroom. Since the plywood only goes up about 8 feet you can play catch with someone from the bedroom and living room. Haven't done it yet but I will! Through my bedroom you open a thick metal door leading to my backyard! Don't get too excited its very small BUT I have a privacy fence and this weekend I'm working on making a fire pit that I can grill over! The backyard along with the pit latrine/ bathing room are all brand new just for me :) Plus I don't have to squat to go to the bathroom they build a cement toilet and put a seat on it! comfy actually. My Muzungu throne. The lights in my house aka one inside my house, one outside, and one in the latrine are all solar power. I have no running water other than the kids from the school who bring it to me once in a while. Every night I put out a small jerry can and in the morning I am brought hot water to bathe with from the Posho (corn meal) they cooked at school for breakfast... lunch... and dinner. That's the extent of my hot water. I could also leave my big jerry cans out and they will bring water up from the bore hole at school but its a GREAT workout when I do it myself. 20 liters each jerry can at about 40lb a each when full.

I'm a 30 minute scenic walk through Jurassic Park to downtown (I like to pretend that when the Cows roar... literally just think of what a pissed off cow may sound like, and the goats scream like little children who I think of as their victims. my imagination runs wild out here). Downtown Rukungiri is where I get all my shopping done at the market or the grocery store and get on the internet. So in a nutshell that is my house/ living area... I like it a lot! And I'm getting my furniture today! The chairs and couches at least so I can stop eating on my bed or the floor... yippy! I was only given a bed frame, two chairs, and a table that is more like a counter for cooking when I moved in.

I was walking in one of the semi-wooded fields by my house yesterday and came across two owls! Last week I was walking up to the house and saw 7 different bird species and thought to myself... where in the US would this happen so frequently! They were orange, yellow, blue, green, black, brown... all different sizes! I'm in birder heaven! And they all sounded so beautiful :)

Here are a few pictures of my place:

                                         My messy freshly painted bedroom (living out of my suitcase still)

                                           I wish this flower was edible... it looks like candy!

                                         One of the cows near the milking stalls

                   The driveway heading towards the school I work at (Miranda Memorial Primary School)

                                          My backyard while doing laundry (before fire pit installed)