Hut life

The fun part about living in a hut is that home maintenance is largely experimental and yet often still successful.

There is still a right way to do things, and then there is the Keli way to do things, but here it seems the Keli way is closer to the right way.

For instance, if you have a hole in your wall, you might say to you self "Good Golly that hole needs mending!" Then simply go outside, wet some dirt, stick in the hole, and feel very pleased with yourself for being so resourceful and handy.

I built an oven this weekend. Which is less like science and more like making mud pies. I have not tried the oven yet...

I was able to make an oven because, after several of my own unsuccessful attempts to arrange for some bricks to show up at my house, my counterparts wife employed some pupils to transport the load. Thus Grade 4 and myself paraded from the school through the village to my house with a brick atop every head. I paid them each a colored hairband.

The other fun thing about living in a hut is that much of your living space is outside. Last night I bathed with the setting sun behind me and brushed my teeth under the stars. Wonderful. Brushing your teeth under the rising moon is even better.

I cook, eat, bathe, wash dishes, and laze about outside in my extended living space. When Uncle Scott visited he noticed that the ladies sweep their dirt yard and asked about it. They do this daily because really it is like tidying up the living room. When you come home and kick off your tropicals (flip flops) you don't want to step on any chicken poop or thorns.

I sweep my yard about every other day. Because I wear shoes. And I'm lazy. But I'll tell you - it sure is nice to have a swept yard.

Of course having living space outside also means that sometimes you come home to find cows have pooped in your kitchen...


Next time: Sitting around a village home, with Ba Mary as she cooks over and open fire, listening to Britney spears on the wirlesi (wireless radio). Being white in Africa: The complicated merging of tradition and modernity, poverty and aid...or something.