Monday the 28th of April
we arrived back in Barat with the main goal of finding a place of our own. By Wednesday John met with a couple to
negotiate the terms and conditions, and price to rent their 2 bedroom house for
a year. The next day we cleaned, and
then Friday we began painting. After a
very full weekend of moving and painting, we spent our first night in our own
house on Sunday. We know so many people
were lifting this up, but we are still amazed that we are in our own place, and
in just a week’s time of returning. It
is a small house, 40 square meters (~131sq ft), but the location is
wonderful. It is in a complex just
behind our host family of 5 months. It
is at the end of a small street, keeping it pretty quiet and safe for the boys
to play. We don’t have any furniture
yet, but it doesn’t seem to matter at this point. Another blessing, thanks to John’s planning,
was we had already packed up our house in the big city before returning to
Barat. So last Saturday we hired a man
John knew to bring all our stuff here to us, without us having to return to
retrieve it. By Monday we finished
moving out of our host’s house and have been furniture shopping and re-organizing
to live amongst all our unpacked stuff. Thank
you for thinking of us. We now hope to
focus on using what we’ve been given for others, amidst finishing getting
settled.
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Our house!
At the end of the street, shares a wall with an empty orang house and sits next to a large banana garden. |
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| The back door and unfinished back yard area. |
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| Looking down our street towards our house at the end, left side. Seven of the nine houses here are currently occupied. |
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| Our living room, after we painted. |
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| Currently the kitchen, dinning room, and laundry room (washer by the back door there). |
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Our bathroom.
It too is small, but it has a sit toilet! Notice it is not a flushing toilet, which John reminded me wasn't part of my 'must have a sit toilet' condition. We just added a shower head to the faucet, but the water pressure so low showering is difficult when the neighborhood water usage is high! On a cultural note people here DO NOT shower at night, more or less after dark that is. There is some belief it will make you sick. Thus far I've been able to use the shower head at night because we do shower at night. |
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| Looking toward the living room from the kitchen area. The boys room is on the left and our is on the right. |
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Looking into the kitchen from the living room.
The frame of the doorway was a very bright turquoise before we painted. |
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| From the kitchen window are our neighbors directly behind us. They have 11 baby chicks the boys are enjoying. |
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| Our bedroom, yet to be painted. John doesn't want to see another paint can for a very long time. One of our neighbors told us everyone was so surprised I too was painting. Apparently it is not something wives or mothers do here. I got the impression it is considered the man's job. |
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| The boys' room. They are very excitedly waiting for a bunk bed! |
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| Our first event. On the first night, or day, when people here move into a new-to-them home they make a sweat mung bean porridge and other sweat treats. Then they usually read out of their holy book. Our host mom on her own initiative, with her new baby on her lap above, prepared the porridge and another dessert. Then Monday, about noon, we all ate together in our new house. |
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| From left to right: the Dad, the mom, their month old son, oldest daughter, the grandma, Caedmon and I, and an employee at the center where John will work. |
