We Are Moved In

We got to our site, the village where we′ll spend the next two years, just in time for a week-long school holiday. We read for a week and worked on our communications infrastructure – both of us now have Internet access and cellphones. We finally moved from our temporary quarters with the local tribal chief (chief not like in a Tarzan movie, but like a small-town mayor) to our permanent home at the Catholic mission a week ago, late on Saturday night. The pick-up truck (or ″bakkie″ in South Africa) that was supposed to come transport our stuff had engine trouble and for two hours the owner and his friends tried to start it. They finally showed up about 6:30 PM – pushing the bakkie. In the meantime the principal in charge of our move had called another friend who also had a bakkie and he came and moved us even though it was dark.

The chief was sorry to see us go, and told us repeatedly “we are together” (a phrase you hear a lot here) and insisted that we come visit as often as possible. We will miss seeing him every day.

It turned out that the move wasn′t our last. We are still in temporary quarters, with a couple of more weeks to go while some arrangements are made and work is done. But the big news is that at last we have our own kitchen. As soon as we could we bought a stove and refrigerator. The stove is small by U.S. standards (narrow, and three burners rather than four, but a regular oven -- not the little countertop two-burner with a toaster oven underneath that so many people use here) We also bought a set of 6 pots and pans so we could cook on it. The refrigerator is what we′d think of as ″apartment-sized,″ not fancy (the freezer section isn′t self-defrosting), but it does have a freezer section, so we don’t have to buy all our food on a day-to-day basis.

We only moved about a kilometer away from the chief’s house but uphill – the compound where we are living is set at the foot of a ridge on one side of a wide valley. The hills are not very big but they are high enough and quite beautiful, outcroppings of reddish rock and trees that with spring well underway are blossoming and leafing out.

Right now there are lots of big blue jacaranda trees in bloom and they make the hillside look spectacular. We are blessed with a beautiful view and a gorgeous setting up here.

We are also blessed with wildlife, up close and personal. Daily a troupe of baboons comes down from the hills to forage for food. Sometimes they jump on the tin roof of our building – a sudden and unsettling sound. They go all over the compound – the clinic, the two schools, the training center, the church. The teachers at the schools assure us the monkeys won′t hurt us, but we are cautioned not to carry food outdoors, because they will grab it from our hands. We can′t leave windows and doors open when we are not around, either, because the baboons may get in and take things like food and small objects. So we have to be vigilant.

We′ve also discovered that mosquitoes are bad here. The first night we left the window open and were chewed up. We now have a bug spray called Doom and we ″doomed the room″ well the next night and it was much better—for us, not the mosquitoes. We′ve now acquired two kinds of mosquito repellant to wear to bed, and we′re planning to start using the mosquito net the Peace Corps provided for sleeping bug free.

We are beginning to feel a little more settled. We finally unpacked our suitcases and put them away. It is nice not to be living out of the suitcases.