And moved into the new volunteer house...
The old volunteer
house was about a five minute walk from Neema House, down dusty roads. Picture
in your mind what you think an African road would look like – ruts and pot
holes, dust flying everywhere, people cooking right there on the edge of the
road, smoke blowing in your face, people walking everywhere – then multiply
that by a hundred. It sounds incredibly stupid and naïve, but I was not
prepared for how very African everything is. Everything I ever imagined about
Africa is true, only to a far greater extreme.
The new volunteer
house however, is much closer to Neema House - you would almost be able to see
it from the front door if there were not gates and walls in the way. It is also much more Western – it has
toilets that actually seem to flush most of the time! So far anyway. Perhaps I
shouldn’t speak so soon! We also appear to have better showers here. I thought
I knew how to shower, but showering in Africa is a whole different story. At
the old volunteer house there was a tub and an extendable hose which you unhook
and then hold in one hand to wet yourself while trying to wash with the other.
If you have ever tried to wash long hair with just one hand you will understand
what a mission this is! The first time I tried to shower just about the whole bathroom
was soaked, including a new roll of toilet paper. I was just starting to get
the hang of it when we moved to this new house!
Here we have showers
(still of the hand held variety), but no shower curtains (which makes the whole
bathroom a shower room!) and as we found out this evening… no hot water either.
Hopefully that will be fixed soon, but if not, it’s not the end of the world.
It’s nice to just have a shower, cold or no. You can see that I am slowly learning to
be grateful for small things.
It was very fast to
move all of our things into the new house, but we spent the whole rest of the
day cleaning and sorting and finding everyone enough linen and mosquito nets
and then doing some more cleaning. All the kitchen cupboards were covered in
blue mould and the showers looked like a mud hole so there was much scrubbing
and re-scrubbing to be done.
At lunch time we went
to Neema to eat pilau (a rice dish), cucumbers and tomatoes, and also to have a
cuddle of the little babies who are usually the only ones awake at that time of
day. Shermaine (my lovely roommate) and I thought we would hurry home afterwards to
continue unpacking, but I was giving Baby Joyce her bottle and it took her a
full 40 minutes to drink it so there was no hurrying anywhere!
Shermaine and I spent
the remainder of the afternoon sweeping and mopping our room and then making
our beds. We had to go out and get new mosquito nets as there weren’t enough
now that we have two more people in the volunteer house. There are seven of us
altogether now, all of us staying for different lengths of time.
Putting the beds back together again
We were using so much bleach to clean the kitchen and bathrooms that some of the girls thought masks would be a good idea.
Dorris in serious cleaning mode!
Shermaine's and my lovely new room - we have brand new duvets and mosquito nets and everything.
Altogether it was a busy day and a very different Sabbath to any I’ve ever had. I was praising God in my heart all day though for all the wonderful experiences I’m having here and all the beautiful people I am getting to know. God is good.
xoxo,
-Hannah
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