Home Sweet Home

We got the curtains for our windows finished yesterday and now they are hung and we have a little more privacy. The house is up on a hill and has very large windows, so the whole town can see into our house if the windows aren’t covered. Now that the curtains are up, the house is 100% complete (or as complete as it is going to be) and I included some pictures below. Honestly, it is pretty ridiculously nice all things considered. We painted all the rooms when we moved in and all the furniture was provided and was out in storage, so we just brought it in. All the other decorations are pretty much local or some version of things that you can buy locally. The house has two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room/dining room, and a small kitchen. Then outside there is a guest bedroom/bathroom and a utility room where our washing machine is and where I “study” at a desk I put in there. Considering just two people live here, there is ample room. The family that lived here before us had everything fixed up really nice. Things like a water pump, which allow decent water pressure and a water heater for both bathrooms and the kitchen sink which is quite a convenience. I mean, considering I live in the “countryside” this house is far nicer than I would have ever expected. We really enjoy living here.

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Yesterday, we finished planting our garden out back. I love that I am taking ownership of it, when really our guard is the one that manually hoed up the whole plot, pulled up all the weeds, levelled the ground, and did all the grunt work. I walked out there and told him where I wanted the seeds – that was my contribution. I’m sure he wanted to punch me for trying to tell him how to grow vegetables, but they do things a little differently here and I knew some things I wanted a certain way (like things planted in rows instead of just scattered wherever on the soil). You really can’t buy many vegetables here, but thanks to my mom, we will be growing okra, sweet corn, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, carrots, and onions. The growing season here is pretty much year round if you have a way to water it, but we are currently in rainy season so watering is no issue for now.

I am not the only one who planted a garden this week. We also distributed seeds to some of the countryside women this week. One of the houses we went to, the lady told us that last year they had eaten off of the seeds that we had given her and they had sold some of the produce and she had been looking forward to them this year. She is one of the goat beneficiaries and she also told us that she sold 7 of her goats and used the money to build a new house, which means her old house had to of been pretty bad, since they don’t build new houses for nothing around here. We were very excited to hear a success story from both the goat project and the seed distribution.

Katy Perry is also doing well back out at the goat site. I swear there were a couple of days when she was sitting on death’s door around here. I would lift her head to feed her, she would thrash around the whole time, and then after feeding her she would collapse and seemingly go into a coma. I really didn’t think she was going to make it. Seems she finally decided to get a brain and is now nursing and drinking from a bucket out at the site. When we saw her on Thursday she was prancing around and hopping everywhere and acting like a real goat. So, maybe she will actually live to tell about all of this.