Home Sweet Home

After nearly a month at site my hut is finally starting to look and feel like a home. I had some cabinets made in my road town for about 60,000 cfa ($120) so that I could finally put away my things. I pounded some nails into the cement walls to hang my broom and keep my bags off the floor and even put up a world map so I can dream about traveling to places with mountains and trees and air conditioning. So, without further ado, the grand tour:

Some notes:

* Yes, the curtains are pink...my family painted the walls and hung the curtains as a welcome gift and I had planned to replace them first chance I got, but they've actually grown on me and I'm thinking about keeping them.

* The silver thing in the corner is a water filter. Peace corps says we're supposed to filter our water AND put bleach in it before we drink it, but I bet you could count the number of volunteers who actually do that on one hand. I would rather get giardia than stomach cancer from the bleach, so I always skip that step. Sometimes I filter my water but our well is so deep that our water is relatively safe to drink, so I usually just go for it and hope for the best. So far so good...

*My bed is a cement slab with a 2 inch thick peace of foam and is surprisingly comfortable. My mosquito net is made for a twin bed and my mattress is double sized so I had to cut it up the middle to make it work. It doesn't keep out the creepy crawlies but at least it keeps the pieces of my roof from falling onto my head.

* In the corner next to the back door is my "kitchen." I can actually make a pretty decent soup provided there are veggies available in the market.

* In case you were wondering thats what the inside of a grass roof looks like. Every once in a while grass or bits of bark from the sticks come down and sometimes I get kamakazied by a grub or two that are living in the wood, but for the most part it does its job well. Keeps out the rain anyway.

* Those sacks in the corner of my back yard are the start of my tree nursery. Someday soon I'll have my own miniature forest of Moringa trees. Against the back fence is my garden bed, which took about a week to prepare because I had to cart in manure and soil from the fields since my back yard is primarily clay. One of these days I'll go out to the forest and cut some branches to build a shade structure so I can protect my bike from the sun.

* That cement slab doubles as my shower space and the cover of my latrine pit. You can guess what the hole is for. The plastic kettle full of water is the Senegalese equivalent of toilet paper, I keep it over the hole to try and keep the flies out. I know it must seem pretty primitive but its actually not that bad...you haven't lived until you've taken a bucket bath by the light of the full moon!