Thursday, November 4, 2010

Our House in Tarime


The court yard is where we would park a car if we had one. It has 2 big metal doors that swing open to allow the car inside. Within those big doors is a small door way for walking in or we use it to bring the motorcycle in at the end of the day. Notice the clothes line and the buckets. The buckets are used to hold rain water which is much cleaner that the dirty rusty water that comes from the pipes in the house. There is a water tank that does not work but is supposed to save water for when there is not water available. We live on the right side where the door is open and Liz, Eric, and Holly live on the left side.



The kitchen is on the left side of the house and you can’t see a stove, microwave or nice double sink with a disposal, because there isn’t one. Just a tiny refrigerator and a few shelves. The large silver pot on the left is a water purifier.


Because the kitchen is so small we store the food in the pantry area. Note the eggs. Did you know eggs don’t need to be refrigerated?



This is the living room on the left side of the house. Notice how nice the curtains look. (I did the sewing). Look up at the ceiling and notice the fan. That’s all we need here because the weather is always between 60-85. The fan rotates in a circle. You can not see it but there is another chair that matches the 2 love seats. The love seats and the chair are not real comfortable but it beats sitting on a tree stump.


The main dinning area seats about 6 but most of us eat in the living room, just like home. In the front left you can see a small sink. Yes there is a sink in the dinning room used to wash hands before you eat.


There are 2 bedrooms, a small room for storage (we don’t have a basement) on the left side of the house and one bathroom. Note the new hot water heater. The water is heated on a coil on the inside of the shower head. There is no shower stall you just get everything wet that’s in the bathroom when you shower. Notice the spigot on the left side down low. When there is not enough water pressure to get water out of the shower you can get it out of the spigot. It is not very clean as you can see. I could not show you the bedrooms because they were locked.


Now for our side of the house. Just inside the front door is our storage room. Yes we are messy. The sun oven is on the floor on the left, it is wood and black. Let me also point out the toilet tissue on the left. You can only get big bundles of it and it is not very nice. It practically disintegrates before it reaches the water. TMI? There is also a big box of sweaters that were a home knitting project. We give them to the hospitals to give to the new borns. They actually will fit the kids until they are about 2 years old because of how they are made. One of the three year old boys at the orphanage was wearing one the other day. I have also seen them used for a hat. Although they look funny with the sleeves hanging out on each side of the head. Think of Norsemen. If they had horns the sweater would fit just fine.


This bathroom has what is called a choo (a hole in the floor) rhymes with “low”. Not exactly my style but the guys seem to like it a lot. No one uses the shower in this bathroom so it only has cold water the heater that is on the shower head does not work.


The dinning room on our side does not get used either. We just had guests from the US bring us 2 trunks full of stuff. One is in the process of being emptied the other is in the process of being sorted and sized. This room also doubles as a bedroom when we have volunteers from the states that only stay a week or two.


We have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms on our side. This is the spare bedroom. Note the shelf on the right is one that Mark made it is now at the kids house in their storage room.


Our side, the right side, has a living room with 2 love seats and a chair. Mark has made his love seat into a “recliner”. The door you see goes out to a patio and there is a place to cook and a water spigot on the patio but we do all the cooking on the left side. I’m thinking I might like to have some lawn chairs so sit out on the patio. It’s covered so you could even sit out in the rain and not get wet. Note the nice curtains with the lace trim. I made those, can you believe it? Near the ceiling on the left there is a bare bulb, that’s how they do it here. No light fixtures just a bare bulb.


This is our bedroom with the sewing machine on the table on the right. The fabric you see on the bed is called a konga and can be used for just about anything. I see it used as rain gear, to hold a baby on your back, to wrap around like a shall to keep you warm, to wrap around your waist and use the ends for pot holders and a towel while cooking, and to wrap around when walking threw the house to the shower. There is a book title I saw called 101 ways to use a konga. Yes I had my hand in those curtains too.


The smallest bedroom Mark made into a shop area. He brought over a lot of tools

and needed a place to organize them. He’s been using a lot of what he brought. They are very impressed with his power tools. They saw by hand and then plane the wood. A lot of work.


We are pretty proud of our bathroom it is the only bathroom with a mirror. Mark made the mirror frame by hand because his power tools did not work (he blew up the chargers and had to send for new ones). We have a heater on our shower head but it was just put in. Until last week we took cold showers. On the bottom left we have an almost normal toilet. It’s bliss :-)


Next are several pictures of things that are crooked. Now if you know me very well you probably know I can’t stand crooked things! I’m sorta obsessive compulsive that way. If you look at the bedroom window you can notice the angle of the bars on the bottom of the two outside sections do not match


Next are the floor tiles, the wall is not straight.


The doorway to the outside kitchen is, as you can see, crooked. I’m not sure they know what a level is or how to use it. Seems everything is done by eyeballing it. (I’m not sure they were sober when they eyeballed it)


I’m throwing in a few other pictures as well. I caught this yellow moth sleeping one morning on the window.


Then there are the two dogs at the house one is the size of a terrier the other is the size of a min pin or a chiuaua. The bigger one is Clifford and the little one is Blackie. I had nothing to do with the names.


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