I Do Not Live in a Cardboard Box (anymore)

Note: Some parts of this post were originally written in various emails to various people, but I realized the eloquence of my writing should be for the masses and not just the one or two people that I occasionally correspond with…and also cut-and-paste is a great time saver. I don’t think the recipients of the emails read my blog, so no one should be offended. But honesty is important, and I don’t plagiarize, even from myself, so this is Me giving credit to Me for my own words written elsewhere.

I have finally moved into my new house, and I love it like I gave birth to it.  It is like a square cake cut into four pieces. The front two pieces are slightly bigger than the back two pieces. (Of course, if it were a chocolate cake, you wouldn’t really need to cut pieces—just grab a fork and go for it.)

All-purpose room. Yes, there is a pile of shoes at the door
because all normal people do that

The front two rooms are the bedroom and the all-purpose room. I’m calling it the all-purpose room because currently it houses a plastic trunk full of miscellaneous items, my bike, the soccer ball that I keep around for entertaining children of all ages, a ripped up poncho that I should throw away, but I keep thinking that I might want to use some of the plastic somewhere later, two buckets of water (for cleaning and flushing), and several bottles of water for drinking. The bucket water is from the storage tank, which has lots of dirt and grunge in it, so I don’t really want to drink it, even if I would probably be fine drinking it (I ate bad rice the other day, knowing it was bad, but I didn’t have any other food. And I was totally fine. And turbid water is often safe to drink if the turbidity isn’t hiding bacteria, protozoa, and/or viruses—a helpful fact from a WASH professional). It has a solar-powered light, but it is not working. But by the time that I actually post this, it might be! We are supposed to be getting more solar panels that will actually work. Of course that was supposed to happen sometime last year, but you never know…

Behind the all-purpose room is the kitchen. I have a table that I stole from the big house and I put my gas stove on top and whatever cooking stuff I need that I can fit on the side (non-flammable closer to the stove because it makes extra-hot fire). I also stacked all my spices and various other things in the windowsill because even though they should be kept in a cool dry place and that is not a cool dry place, they are very convenient there for grabbing and dumping into the food (the hot pepper is in the Blue Band container—must be easily accessible). I also have a small stool that I stole from the big house and am using for storage and a chair that is also for putting stuff on, mostly my lantern because the solar light isn’t working in the kitchen either and I often cook after dark. OK,fine- I make tea a lot at night. Then I have another plastic trunk (teams bring stuff here in them and then leave them and I put them to use) where I store food and tea and stuff that I don’t want rats to eat. As of today, there are no rats in my house, but I want to be prepared. The trunk is not pictured and neither is the large red plastic basin where I wash dishes. We were supposed to put in a kitchen sink, but it didn’t happen, and I’m fine using the basin. But I am hoping to put in a shelf over the trunk where I can store stuff because it is really cramped in there and I’d like to actually get more stuff like pans, bowls, plates, and other modern conveniences. Also, if I get to go to Indonesia next year, I’m getting my mom’s old stove-top oven to use on my stovetop. I don’t know how I’m going to get it to South Sudan, but I will do it because I have the will and I will find the way.

A late-night kitchen visitor

Archie has a cute face
but frogs are loud at night
and jump around a lot,
so I kicked him out.

If you noticed from the photos (maybe you didn’t—photography isn’t one of my skills), there are shutters on the windows in the kitchen and the all purpose room. There aren’t any on the bedroom or bathroom. These shutters are on the market-side of my house and help block the annoying noise of people’s thumping music. But fortunately we have been put under martial law recently. Restrictive political policies can be wonderful. People are required to be off the streets by 10:30. Also there is a blessed diesel shortage, which means that generators can't be fueled, which means that speakers can't be plugged in, and things have mostly been quiet before 11. Still, the other night there was some rocking party that somehow lasted beyond 11. I'm not sure how it did that, but I planned many gruesome deaths for all those involved, and it made me feel better.

My bedroom has curtains but no shutters. I could get shutters, but I don’t really want them. The curtains are made from old bed sheets and I had them in my old cardboard room. I brought them over, but since there are no bars on my window I had to find another method of keeping them out of the window when I want sunlight (previously, I just hooked them over the bars in a very classy way). I remembered later that I had a couple of green ribbons that had been tied on some Christmas present. Though I kept thinking I should just throw them away, I hadn’t yet. And they make perfect curtain ties. Lesson learned: never throw anything away that might possibly be reused at some unknown point in the future (thus the ripped up poncho in my all purpose room).

Note the cheery yellow floor mat-it was originally a
camp towel from Wal-Mart. I went there thinking
"Life in S.Sudan is basically the same as camping,
let's see what I can buy cheaply on the camping aisle."
And it turns out that the camping aisle is Walmart's practical joke
on non-campers. Fortunately, I have a sarong, which is the best
quick-dry towel ever, but my boss (who knows about camping--
he drives a Jeep and probably knows about hunting and stuff too)
brought me a legit camping quick-dry towel from some
store whose name I don't know, but it is one of those
with a logo made out of a combination of mountains and raindrops,
so you know it is for people who are serious about The Outdoors.
I use it as a blanket along with the Ethiopian Airlines blanket that
I snagged in anticipation of a long cold layover.
Seriously, AC doesn't ALWAYS need to be on high!

I spend most of my time in the bedroom, but I also really enjoy my indoor bathroom—it’s so nice not to have to pee in a cup at night and not to worry about whether to wear my boots when hiking through a forest of grass to the outhouse. I also don’t worry about being cornered in my bathroom by drunk men who sneak in through broken fences at night. It’s really great. It’s also convenient that the solar lights in my house that DO work are the ones in the bedroom and the bathroom. Yes, they attract every insect that the screens on the windows can’t keep out, but I can read at night without using my lantern, which I need in the kitchen. And I can’t get decent batteries here, so I try not to use the lantern too much.

My beautiful bathroom! It's actually very clean, but
the guy putting in tiles didn't know how to do it,
and the tiles that he actually got in the floor,
he added extra cement to, to make sure they really stuck in there good.
But I scrub it clean often, and Karioki (Lexon's son and my super-good pal)
came over the other day and said, "Wow! Your house is so clean."
So--proof. From the mouths of babes.
Not pictured: my sarong hanging on the hook beside the shower.

So that’s my beautiful house! There was a medical team here the first week I moved in, and I was able to actually genuinely like everyone who came and enjoy their company, but if I had been sharing a room with them, as I would have done pre-house, and heard them snoring and talking until all hours of the night (people don’t sleep well in strange places when they have jet lag, I’ve noticed), I doubt I would have felt so kindly towards them. So this house is already making a big difference in my life and the lives of others in South Sudan.

My backyard where I hang laundry, and where I've started
digging out the grass so that snakes don't come in and kill me and eat my lizard friends.
Also here you CAN see my red wash basin and mostly empty trunk for food.
(I will replenish you, my friend! Jelly beans and gummy bears, i.e. sustenance, are coming!)

I had a party and invited my pastor and a bunch of friends to come pray over the house and he also prayed that I would get married soon so I don't have to live here alone, so that's been taken care of too now. But I don't actually live here alone. Roger the lizard lives here too and eats all the bugs. I sometimes let him sleep on my pillow, though I did yell at him when he crapped in my bed on my clean sheets. Of course now he's started inviting his friends too, and it's getting a bit crowded. I think I'll have to speak to him about that. We don't want to create a fire hazard in my new beautiful abode of peace and tranquility. Also, Lexon says that if there are lots of lizards, it will attract snakes who like to eat them. I want to keep Roger safe, and also I would rather not die a painful death after a black mamba bite, so we keep alert here.

Friends and pastor dedicating my house on a rainy day.
It started raining right as we began to pray and finished right when we stopped.
I thought that was a little annoying of God, but He is up on his cultural appropriateness,
and everyone else was really excited, "We say that when it rains, it is a blessing from God,
and He is blessing us now!" But seriously, God. It's time for dry season because we need to drill some wells.

You are all welcome to come visit. I’ll make Roger sleep in the floor and you can have his pillow.

This is the best photo I have of Roger--
he is a bit camera-shy.

Bonus photo: here is a shirt that I saw in the
Camping/Hunting section of Walmart.
I am not really a Fashion Queen type of girl
but I'm pretty sure that this pattern would be considered
'camouflage.' I know that fashion doesn't always have a
purpose, but this WAS in the hunting section.
If someone is wearing this shirt while traipsing about the forest,
searching for prey, don't you think Bambi's mother would have seen her
and thereby avoided a lot of heartache for children and small woodland creatures?
Unless maybe the wearer of the shirt was in the forest on a day with an especially pink sunset...