Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Other important aspects of our new crib...

Our house is basically sitting in the middle of a corn field. In another month we won't see much outside of this window in our living room besides tall, green stalks.
This is looking out the side of our yard. Our village sits in front of a beautiful range of rocky hills and cliffs. I'll try to get some good pictures of those for you the next time we go hiking around.
and this! THIS is our very own, brand new bathroom. We have it all to ourselves with seperate 'potty room' and shower room. We're quite excited about it. I'm sure you would be too.
this is looking out the door of our shower room (no not a real shower, but a whole little room where we can bathe). It has a lock and a door!!! Moving up!

around the house

the kitchen hut and office room are actually seperate from the other hut. but our clever electrician who set up the solar power thought to give us a light bulb inside so we won't have to use our flashlights to cook at night now. inside the kitchen we have a gas stove/oven to cook with. it's very handy. if we ever actually go to the trouble to cook...
inside the kitchen hut, our pantry. beautiful isn't it? Notice (if you can) we are sufficiently stocked for the time being with plenty of pasta sides, club crackers, instant oatmeal, cereals from the great USofA, peanut butter, and pringles. we also have quite a bit of packaged meats that we are greataful for. after 4 days in our new town, we've still hardly cooked an actual meal for all the 'premade' stuff we brought back with us from home. it's great, but our neighboring family, i think, is getting concerned that we don't actually cook anything to eat. she's brought us food at every meal.
next to the kitchen hut there is another room that we are using as our 'office'/storage room. our bikes, books, and extra cot for all you visitors we are expecting to come see us...
once again, inside the living room, the view from my room door looking across to Reaiah's room

inside our kitchen hut. we have a fridge that is still trying to figure out if it's going to work or not (run off of gas), and a few storage trunks to hold our pans and dishes, water filters on the table to get that extra clean drinking water...
and HERE is our water system. ya, we don't have running water, so we have this ingenious method of sending the neighborhood boys to the water pump to get water in 5 gallon jugs. we then empty the water into these 25 gallon barrels where we can retrieve water for bathing, cooking, cleaning, and keeping the filter's supply full. Kind of a long process for having water alway accessable, but at least its clean water, and its close. to go get the water a bucket at a time would mean a 10 minute walk to the closest good well, hoping not to spill it all before getting home.

inside the house...

Oh yes, that's right my friends... we have electricity! Only one normal plug to charge things off of and a few others to run some fans off of, but we are totally excited about it. More than we've ever had in a hut! here is the underworkings of our solar power system... the car batteries that are charged by the sun panels, then the power box which converts it to the right voltage for us to plug in and charge the computer or phone or whatever... pretty sweet isn't it! This contraption sits just inside our front door.
The second night in the house the first big rain of the season came (bringing with it a huge dust storm and nearly ripping our poor little house apart...). The next morning the whole house was covered in dirt. This is the top of my dresser after i removed some of the things that had been sitting on it during the night.
This is from out side the house, in the yard. You can see our solar panels attatched to the roof above my room (that's my window). The bathroom is to the left.
Reaiah is sitting underneath our porch washing our dishes that have been in storage while we were gone. They were nasty, so it took us a while to get them all ready to use. But this is how we wash dishes. Big buckets of water. Dry em in the sun. then shut them up inside a storage case so they won't just get covered in dust again.
this is inside my room. its kinda bare right now, and still being unpacked/organized, but it's mine. with a window!
the other side of my room
inside our living room. not much, but we don't spend much time inside anyway. it's too hot to stay inside a mud hut with a tin roof during the day... (we've been clocking it inside and out... temperatures in the high 90s during the day inside with almost no air circulation. at night it only goes down to mid 80s, still with no air-- we've been sleeping outside. SO much nicer.)