5Longhausers: Back to Africa

A continuation to our travel saga.

We were informed a week or so before our arrival that we would have to be put into temporary housing for about 2 weeks. This is actually quite normal, especially during busy transfer seasons. What is not normal is to be put into temporary housing because your house is still under construction. In Africa. And already way behind schedule.

So we arrived at our "temporary" house. Initial reaction, gross. I spent a summer in college digging up an archaeological site in Iowa. I lived in a tent and used the 4-H campground facilities. Our house kinda reminded me of that. The bathrooms were just plain gross. The kids bathroom didn't even have a hot water spigot (faucet is too generous). The master bath, oh where to begin on the dusty rose masterpiece. There is a bathtub (with shower curtain and shower head) as well as a stand up shower (with no shower curtain). One problem, the shower "spigot" in the bathtub shower is attached to the wall, at chest height, on me, and Mike is nearly a foot taller. I literally showered on my knees. I'm not quite sure what Mike's plan of attack was. This "worked" for just over a week, until the water pressure bottomed out and there was not enough pressure to make water come out the shower head. So we took down the shower curtain and moved it to the stand up shower. This worked for a few days until this shower decided not to produce water anymore either. Count out the kids shower too because you can either have a freezing cold shower or a flesh dissolving scorching hot shower. Need to mix some hot into the cold, or some cold into the hot? Not going to happen here. No problem, still have a bathtub. Well.... This is a true story: turn on bath, make kids dinner, sit with kids while they eat dinner, clean up dinner, put kids to bed, do 30 minute exercise video, boil 4 pots of hot water to add to bath, wait another 10 minutes, and finally, bathe.

But there is no need to get all worked up because this is just a temporary house, right? Well.....

As the weeks DRAGGED on, it became increasingly clear that new construction was a really, really bad decision. The house was not ready, was not going to be ready, and quite frankly was simply dreadful. We had quickly determined that one of the reasons that people like Malawi so much is that the yards are GINORMOUS! To be honest, at this point in the story, this was the only reason we could identify that people actually liked it here. Seriously, all the yards we had seen had tons of outdoor toys for the kids (trampolines, zip lines, club houses, forts, swing sets, etc). The problem was, this new (unfinished) house sat on approximately 1/100th of the yard that everyone else had. Not to mention that after 4 weeks of being here it still had no electricity, no window screens, no grass, no trees, shelves were falling off the walls, the doorways were too low for Mike to fit through, when opening the windows, the levers either broke off in your hand, or once opened did not close. The list goes on, and on.

After being here a month, we had to formally appeal our assignment to the unfinished, no grass, disaster house. The housing board quickly approved our appeal, but didn't exactly know what to do with us. So we waited another week, and another week, and another week. The problem was that there was no where for us to go. Keep in mind that because we are in temporary housing, we don't get any of our stuff. Our 7000 pound household goods shipment has been in Malawi for weeks, but we can't have it. Our smaller unaccompanied baggage shipment, which is supposed to arrive lightning fast shortly after one's arrival at a new Post is completely lost at this point. For 6 weeks we lived on what was in our suitcases. The kids were sharing 2 coloring books, a Ziploc bag of markers and a few DVD's. But the most punishing side effect was no Internet and no television. The horror.

This is getting much too long, so I'll begin to fast forward. The housing board finally decided that we could just stay where we were (would have been nice to know 7 weeks ago!!!). I was less than thrilled at this decision (gross, dirty, small house, with no water), but after a day of pouting, stomping and generally feeling sorry for myself, I decided to move on with my life. The house is too small for us, and it is still quite nasty (currently have wrinkled yellow bed sheets hanging in the living room for curtains), but they have fixed the water, and we do have a ginormous yard. Beyond ginormous.

Ginormous yard showing ginormous pointsetta tree (the gardener said it was a pointsetta, take it up with him if it's wrong.)

Our unobtrusive water tank in one portion of our ginormous yard.

Moving day for our housekeeper. Notice the little girls with the boxes on their heads. My kids are starting to practice this too.

This is our garbage bag. I learned that our housekeeper was emptying the bag into a large trash can, then washing and drying the bag in order to use it again. Outstanding!

This is not our dog. Another long story. He has gone to Burma now, but his fleas are still here. Just ask Margo.

Our living room with the yellow bed sheets for curtains. Nice sized room, but the stairs jut about 1/3rd of the way into the room leaving 2 "wings" of empty space behind on either side. And, how do you arrange furniture? Fireplace to the right, "khonde" (screened patio) directly in front of the staircase. Trust us, this room is a logistical nightmare.

Dusty rose master bathroom grossness. Notice the location of the shower "spigot" in the following pix. Just about chest height.

Kids bathroom. Sink has only cold water.

OK, this is the under construction disaster house. This is pretty much the entire yard. Compare with the ginormous yard. A bit different. Only if you look closely.