Home life here at Ondati

I composed this blog several days ago but we have been without power since Sunday so haven't had a chance to tidy it up and publish it.
We rely on a car battery with a device called an inverter to charge our laptops, and first the battery ran out of juice and then the inverter gave up. It turned out to be just a fuse but it has taken us 4 days to sort it out.
I want to add some pictures to this but our internet connection is very slow so I shall try again another day.

I put a picture of our house in an earlier blog, but I want to share some of the facets of living here. 

The house was built specially for the TAMTF volunteers and is of a better standard than most local housing.  The house has 3 bedrooms, a main living room, a storeroom and a “bathroom”.  The floors are concrete - so can be kept fairly clean. The outer walls go right up to the roof – not always the case with local houses- but the inner walls go to where the ceiling would be if we had one.  The roof is corrugated iron, and does a pretty good job of keeping the rain out. It has been severely tested recently in some proper tropical thunderstorms, and only let through a few drips.  It is however, very noisy in the rain – something which I and my colleagues are familiar with working in Owen Block!

The bedrooms each have a single bed – actually surprisingly comfortable – and a metal chair to put “stuff” on.  We each have a mosquito net, a pillow, blanket and sheets.  Previous volunteers have left the sheets, but we just have one pair per bed so have to hope it doesn’t rain when they are washed.

Samina cooking

 There is no “kitchen” as we don’t have any of the equipment you would associate with such a room.  The cooking is done on a little charcoal burner which stands outside when it’s not raining or too dark. When I say little – it is no more than 20cm high and scarcely 30cm diameter so can only cook one pan at a time. Luckily both the TAMTF volunteers have learnt to cook on it, I haven’t tried yet. There is no running water so no sink, the washing up is done in a bowl of cold water, on the floor of the main room. The water is brought from a pump at the other side of the compound – 50 metres away. The water comes up from a borehole – rumour has it, it is water from Lake Victoria. The storeroom has a set of rickety shelves but otherwise everything is kept on the floor, in bags, boxes etc.  Keeping stuff cool is difficult, but the nights are quite cool so fruit and veg keep OK, but we tend not to keep “leftovers”. We eat vegetarian – Samina is vegetarian anyway – so we don’t even try to keep any meat.

The “bathroom” is a "wet room" with a drain hole in one corner that water will drain from. We use a system of two bowls – fresh water in one is scooped up with a jug and poured over oneself while standing in the other bowl.  The first jug of cold water is a shock but it is very refreshing. It is surprising how little water you need to wash all over including hair when you know every drop has been carried over here.  The toilet is about 40m away, I won’t describe it.

The central room in the house has a small wooden table and 3 plastic garden chairs.  We borrowed chairs from the school when we hosted lunch for the teachers the other day.  We have a hurricane lamp to use after dark – it gets dark by 7pm – and we use torches.  We are nearly always in bed before 10, often just after 9, as reading by torchlight is difficult and attracts moths and insects. We make up for it by getting up early.

The principal and me working on the budget

Breakfast is usually toast and coffee, and fruit –mango this morning, pineapple or papaya other days.

During term time we can eat with the teachers – ugali and kale, sometimes with meat broth, eaten with fingers. Ugali is hard to describe for anyone not familiar with native African food.  Made with maize, and cooked to a stodgy lump, it forms the basis of most meals.  I can’t say I have learned to love it but it is quite acceptable and I can eat enough of it not to offend anyone when we go visiting.

As the school is closed now we have to make our own lunch as well as evening meal.  

We were invited to lunch with one of the teachers last Saturday.  She had cooked a chicken for us (eggs for Samina) which helped the ugali and kale go down well. 

It’s a simple life but we keep well and have all the basics.  We have a better standard of living than the people around us so no complaints.