Home, Sweet Home

     I know everyone is wondering about the homestay situation. I was given a room in Fred’s house, while the other volunteers stay together in another of his family’s properties on the same road. Our house is situated around a courtyard with a huge, leafy tree that gives shade all day. This courtyard is the space for clothes washing, outdoor cooking, playing, chicken roaming, and storing trash. Next to the tree is a huge cistern that collects rain water, they tell me, though I don’t see how that’s possible based on the hose hook-ups. The house has three toilets and one sink, but they exist without plumbing. Buckets of water (or buckets waiting to be filled with water) are strategically placed near the bathrooms, as are waste paper baskets for the used toilet paper. These rooms are hot and filled with mosquitoes. Two of them have an overhead light. There are also two shower spaces, ditto the lack of running water, ditto the buckets. The water is unfit to drink, of course, so tooth brushing is pretty pasty.

     The first time I tried to wash must have been worthy of a viral video. The problem  was that my bucket didn’t have a dipper at all so I kept picking up this 20 gallon thing and dumping it on the appropriate body part. I was left with shampoo in the hair, soap in the armpits, filthy feet and no more water. I’ve gotten more skilled, as one would imagine,  and usually get it all done in half a bucket. Still it is such an ordeal that the cooling effect of the unheated water doesn’t really happen. I emerge just as sweaty as ever, but I guess it is cleaner sweat than what was there before. I always try to make sure my hands are dry at least when I leave if I have to switch off the light. The whole mechanism outside the shower room door is falling to pieces and I feel like I might get a dose of the 220v current if I’m not careful, but isn’t it nice to have a light? Also that jolt might dry the sweat.

     I have the nicest room in the house with an oilcloth floor, bright blue walls and nylon curtains, a door that locks, and louvered windows with screens. No one sleeps with a top sheet, but I do have a fitted sheet on my single-bed mattress. The most wonderful invention of all time, a ceiling fan, whirls away at a fast pace the whole time I’m in the room. There is even an outlet to charge my phone.

    I don’t really want to describe the kitchen because I don’t want to paint a picture that is to be pitied, either for me or the family. They like it just fine. It serves its purpose well each day. Let’s just say it is impolite to walk into someone’s house with shoes on. Well, I had to let that one roll off me. No way I’m going near that kitchen floor in bare feet. There aren’t that many chickens running around in it now that I think about it, but the flip-flops still seem like a good idea to me.