Our House
When we arrived in the beginning of February, we thought that we would look around Masatepe for a few days, find a house and settle in. We were wrong. Many of you remember that we were “on the farm” for the first month and a half before we settled into our present home.
We are very thankful for this house, which is just 4 blocks down the road from the café and office that we work in. It is spacious, has a garage, and the front room is a great shade of blue.
I think the quirks of the house, though, are a lot more interesting.
We have a white, shiney, tile floor. This would be a wonderful thing if I lived by myself, in an air conditioned house with a maid, but the reality is that we have a neighbor who makes sawdust which waffs into our house on a daily basis. I also have a husband and two cats leaving tracks in the dust, until this week when the rainy season started; now they are tracks of mud!
The back wall of our bedroom and the side wall of our kitchen are actually the retaining wall of our neighbor. This house was built to exactly fit into the space that was left. Our kitchen has one wall that slants out by three feet, making the kitchen kind of an optical illusion!
Before Stephen added another breaker, we had lights that would flick on and off throughout the night, and we could not run the fan, the widow maker in the shower and the electric frying pan at the same time. Now we are down to just not being able to shower and cook at the same time!
Stephen describes our back patio as the outside facility for solitary confinement. It is a 20 by 10 foot space with 12 foot high walls and barbed wire. It is the laundry facility, workshop, plant growing, cat box, and water tank location.
Our water tank is a wonderful blessing because when the city turns the water off daily, this is our backup water. If we forget to close the tank, it will run over causing what sounds like torrential downpour in our back patio.
A few other tidbits: Our bedroom has no window making it about 5 degrees warmer than the rest of the house, we rarely flush toilet paper (L), we have a sink with running water that does not have a drain, we have one bathroom where the bats hang out (we don’t use that one!), our front door has six ways to secure/lock it, our windows are barred but they are also always open, an orange cat can fit through the glass slates just perfectly, allowing him to bring birds into the house, and a grey cat enjoys taking the metal drains out if the showers at night for entertainment!
In closing, just one more thing: The other day, I called a local business to have them deliver three large bottles of water. I had not given my name, but was starting to give them directions. I was interrupted with the question (in Spanish of course), “Are you the teacher of Iris?”
I said, “Yes”, and they replied that they knew where to deliver it. Now that is service (and small town living)!