Home Sweet Home

Family dinner went well today but I didn't get a chance to take pictures, I was busy finding missing sleeping children under trees and feeding some of the little ones. I hope it is OK if I temporarily switch to a new topic for today's post. For those of you wondering why I am bombarding you with new posts, we have electricity again!!! YAY!

Home Sweet Home

We live in a modest 1 bedroom house right off of Lila Voix (or Lilavoix?) Street in Croix des Bouquets. Dust constantly blows into our yard from the street, even though we are protected by 6 foot walls and a huge metal gate. Our house is made totally of concrete and the windows are either decorative iron bars or concrete slats. We are surrounded by grey walls, grey ceilings, and dusty floors that leave our feet grey. We only have running water in our shower, so we wash our dishes and clothes (not together!) in the shower at night. We don't have any hot water, but we don't miss that at all.


Our neighbors closest to us have regular domestic disturbances that get really loud. Since it is oppressively hot here they usually choose to get into fights late at night when they have the energy. We don't understand their words but have made a game of filling in our own imaginary words to their Creole arguments. We imagine a Romeo and Juliet type situation, hopefully this has a happier ending. It is actually pretty fun, though considering our total lack of other entertainment our fun-meter may be a little off.

Our backyard, complete with an outdoor toilet, electrical wire running to the next house, and  clotheslines. Bonus points if you can spot the two lizards!

Our landlords live right behind us. We only get our part time electricity because they have connected our house to theirs via an extension cord. Last night we noticed that the entire neighborhood had power, but we did not. In our broken Creole and their broken English, we discovered that they aren't going to plug our electricity in unless we give them the water from our water tank. This is the tank that we bought and pump water into with our water pump, using our (borrowed) generator and our gas. Carl hopped the fence into their yard and got into a little disagreement in which no one knew what the other person was saying, but he ended it by plugging us into their house and hopping back over. I have been terribly nervous that they will now come steal all of our things or worse. We already know that they have been sneaking into our yard, turning on our water line and draining our water tank at night. They have not fixed our power, have not fixed any of the sinks in our house, and I am pretty sure they are constantly spying on us.

Our wishing well, mostly we just wish that it would fill up so that we could have more water!

The switch may say ON/OFF, but it lies!!!

I have been trying to focus on the little things, like the unique hand carved door leading to our living room. The tiles all over our house are not quite symmetrical and drive me crazy, but I can face a certain wall and feel that my OCD is satiated. I love our mango tree out front, I hope we get to eat some of its fruit next spring. The kids love sleeping on the gated in front porch. Little things, maybe, but little things can add up to us finding peace in this third world country where nothing is solid or organized. 

Isn't this a cool door?

Today when Robert (the director of Children's Heritage Foundation) got here he had a lengthy chat with our landlord and demanded that our power and sinks be fixed immediately. The landlord seemed pretty embarrassed to be called out and promised to have a plumber and an electrician tomorrow to finish fixing our house. I sure hope that happens, it would be really nice to have a working sink and enough power to plug in our laptops, a tv, and a fan at the same time! A girl can dream :)