Here are some shots of the lovely house I'm living in. Our landlady is Mama Mary and she is fabulous! She is a Clinical Officer (one step below a Doctor) at the Seko-toure Hospital. She owns her house just the street over, plus this house and the house behind us. She said this place was built in ~1996 and I think she has recently repainted it inside and out. She is great - if anything breaks, she is on it the second we tell her. We went to her house for dinner the other night. If I thought the gardens here were lush, they are merely a mini-version to her place! She has a banana GROVE, a giant avocado TREE and massive passionfruit trees. Not to mention the dogs (mbwa), geese (bata), chickens (kuku), rabbits (sungura) and I'm sure there were other creatures we didn't see.
She has hired a boy named Freddy to live here full-time to be the guard and gardener. He is very sweet and is always waiting for us if we get home late. He gets Sunday during the day to go home and go to church. He is trying to learn English as we try to learn Swahili.
We don't ACTUALLY have an address. This is what we tell the taxi drivers: Isamilo, Barabara Nyanshana, Kwanza gatei - which means Isamilo area, Nyanshana road, the first gate you see. They sometimes don't know exactly where but with a little sign language you can manage to get here!
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| This is the gate that goes out to the road. Mama Mary wants to install more wire to the top to make it higher. |
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| Our lime green establishment! This front porch is officially 'The Office.' |
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| Close up view of The Office - internet reception is optimal out here for one of the providers. |
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| The front gardens - giant palm tree they extract oil from, three papaya trees, some young passionfuit and banana trees and countless plants that I only see in mixed baskets at home. Freddy takes good care of it. The far back corner is the 'garbage area' - all garbage gets buried here or in most cases, tossed in the closest tree or bush. |
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| Two orange trees and there is a 'lime' (which is more like lemon) tree here and on the other side of the house. Freddy gives us a bag of goodies when they are ready. That little gate at the bottom of the wall is where the mongoose get in to rummage in our garbage area. |
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| This is my first room. Sleeping under a mosquito net is KIND OF like having a Princess bed - but not quite! |
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| Bathroom/shower - above ground toilets - classy establishment! |
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| This is my new room - Megan left yesterday and I moved into her old room while Susan got my room and Kate took one of the other two spare rooms. |
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| This room comes with extra closet space - not that I brought tons of clothes but at least I can spread them out now! |
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| The other bathroom/shower. This one has an actual toilet paper holder - SWOON! |
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| View of kitchen from the pantry area. Sink and drain board on the right. The counter where we prep is to the left. |
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| View of kitchen from dining room. Fridge and stove - which has two gas elements as well as two that run on hydro as does the oven. This means we can COOK when the hydro is out which is KEY! |
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| The dining room. The wall is concealing the built-in hutch for dish storage. Since Susan and Kate have moved in, a water cooler has been added which is awesome! |
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| This is the living room. Still decorated from Christmas. |
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| This is the other end of the living room. This is MY office. Where I sit and scan all the study documents into my computer. Hours upon hours I have spent here and hours and hours more to come! |
EDIT: I forgot to tell you about the LOCKS in this place! It's a bit like Fort Knox. It take a good 5 minutes to unlock the door to get out and then relock it when you leave. Each lock has to be turned at least 2-3 times in order for it to be shut properly. I'm glad for the safety but it's no good when you are late! Here is a picture of the keys I must carry around with me...these are all for the house and gate and the locks on my cabinets.
Until next time!
Shannon
Thanks for the update Shannon. Hate to admit it but the bathroom accommodations reminded me a lot of Greece. So did the garbage "disposal". We lived just outside the town limits so our garbage did not get picked up and we had to get "creative". Except we didn't have mongoose or a Freddy to take care of things.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the temperature like down there? Looks warm but not "I'm melting" hot....
Cheers
Stamatis
Hi Tom!
ReplyDeleteThe temperature range is very narrow - 27-30C - during the day and 19-20 at night. It 'cools' down when it rains but then shoots back up again quite quickly. It's not particularly humid tho which is lovely. So I find it HOT but not disgustingly so. After the rain it gets humid but that disappears at night.
There is garbage EVERYWHERE here. People just throw things everywhere. Most places bury there garbage and I've seen people digging up the piles to go through it again. What they are looking for I don't want to know! There is no sanitation here at all.
Thanks for reading!
Shannon