Moving In

This is our house: you walk up a dirt road that leads off the main road, for about 300 meters. You walk up the stone steps and follow a path about 200 meters through scrub brush, banana trees, spikey trees, other weird trees, and tons of little bushes that love to stick you with their seeds. Skinny little dirt path. The whole yard's dry as hay and full of huge volcanic boulders. If I was a kid I would be climbing all over them. I still need to do that one day: scale all of the big rocks in our yard. The whole place is screaming out for me to make little winding paths all through it to little garden courtyards. I may buy some little cactus plants, you know, those kind you can always find, I think the name has something to do with hens?

There a bougaivilleas everywhere. I am making a magic garden, with candles on the rocks, and I am making a brick patio and hanging windchimes that I'm going to make with seashells I found in Montezuma. Also, the island has every kind of large decorative seed you could dream of, which is fun to make stuff with.

Then we have a house at the end of this path. The most important room in the house is not a room, actually, it is the covered porch in front, which consists of a red cement patio supported by a few wooden beams. I spend 80 % of my waking time at the house on this patio. We have a hammock, and I just today bought a second hammock for myself. We have mosquito coils, an ashtray, Leia's dog bowl, and not too much else besides whatever we leave around. At the far corner are two doors, one to the kitchen, the other to the rest of the house.

I spend about another 15% of waking house time in the kitchen. We have an electric hotplate with two burners. Also we have a sink. There is good news and bad news about the sink. The good news is that I can drink the water! The bad news is that the sink is flat-bottomed. It is probably about 2 by 4 feet of slate with a drain in one corner. This is hateful to me, because all the gross little food bits (which are mega-gross and totally gag me to begin with) just float from one side of the sink to another like lost little souls in rotting food pergatory. But the nice thing is that we have a window over the sink where you can throw all your compost, and it really doesn't smell bad! I think because Leia almost immediately eats most of it. If you noticed that I do not mention any other appliances, a fridge for example, it is because we don't have one. But you know, rice and beans and veggies is all we eat, and that can last just fine from one meal to the next. But usually we give Leia the leftovers. She is useful like that, like a pig, but we don't get to eat her later. She's Thomas's puppy, a little mutt just the right size to be small without being a 'small dog'. Very obediant, pretty much leaves you alone, good tail wagger and watchdog. Very gentle.

Then inside the second door you come into the living room. There is nothing in the living room. Ok, just kidding, we have a machete, a tent, and a large sisal mat. Also hiking boots. The bummer is that the windows are totally open air (as is a large space between the roof and walls), so if you are not in the house you have to keep the windows shut so that the children don't come in and steal your stuff. There is a lightswitch that Thomas wired himself and occasionally gives you a good zap of electricity to keep you going strong.

Off of the living room are Thomas's room and my room. I have a little bed and a mosquito net. I am going to build some bamboo shelving to put my clothes on. I have two windows that look onto the yard (although I usually keep them locked and barred) and a little ledge on one wall where I keep most of my worldly possessions including tons of books.

When I first moved in I was a whirlwind of cleaning and scrubbing. I moved in 100% in less than 2 hours. I haven't cleaned my room since, even though the dust of dead insects is accumulating on my little shelf.

When I first got to the house, supplies were spare. The previous room mate had taken a lot of things with her. We had no tables. No chair. In the kitchen we had 2 pots (plenty), 2 pans (also plenty), two spoons, a fork, a butter knife, a cutting board, a half gallon tupperware, and one plastic coffee mug. For 4 people. We now have pretty much everything we need. Although the chair situation could improve. We have two broken plastic lawn chairs, but if you stack them, because they're broken in different spots, you can even lean back a little. Gently.

But what we do have is peace and quiet, relaxation, nobody telling us to do things differently, good friends, and fresh air 24-7. Thomas has a brilliant collection of world music and blues. One night I made minestrone soup for us, from scratch. I gave the cooked bones to Leia. We listened to Edith Piaf. Thomas ate out of the half gallon tupperware. I ate out of his little glass ashtray. And it's as happy as I have ever been.

We do our washing in the lake. The first time I really botched it, doing it in a rough spot with lots of waves, so I lost the soap in the lake and really just sort of 'rinsed' my clothes, then laid them to dry on a dead boat while I read on a tree that had fallen into the water.

My god, I am always so dirty here. We have the classic dustbowl situation: very dry land, all the dirt in dust. No pavement anywhere. Wind. Plus, it's about 90 degrees so I'm sweating buckets, and the dust just clings. People plan their days around midday heat, making sure they don't do ANYTHING. Or at least we do.

Funny story: I was swimming in the lake (we have a great swimming hole about 5 minutes from our house) and I played keep it up with a ball with some guys. I went home, and two of them caught up with me on horseback. We chatted a little, and then, in perfect English, this 16 year old tells me, 'I will visit you in the night. You will enjoy it very much'. The things you just don't expect, let me tell you. My little brother (also 16) better not be saying those kinds of things to the tourists in Boston.