The Quirks of Our Little Home

Jess writes:

For the purpose of posterity – so as to never forget those little details that are so often misplaced in memories of moving and settling and living and moving again – I wanted to offer up a post on some of the more interesting aspects of this little, two-room place we call home here in Africa. It begins as such…

The Walls: Our walls are made, like most in our area, entirely of a thick concrete with a partially stucco and partially smooth finish. Due to the unique texture, they are often painted in very odd colors (for example, teal and pink as in our case) or whatever mixture of colored sealant that will actually stick to the surface. And while durability may be the intent of the concrete construction, concrete does not match so neatly with the wooden beams that they meet with at the top with the ceiling. Thus, there are spaces and gaps – anywhere from an inch or two to half a foot, where the concrete has begun to crumble away. As harmless as this may seem, small chunks of falling concrete are less risk-free than anticipated when they land on tables, computer equipment, kitchen appliances and, in the rare case, ourselves. Furthermore, though we are reasonably safe from these mini, interior avalanches while asleep under our mosquito net, it is not uncommon to be awoken to a small boulder that has been dislodged from the wall by a scurrying lizard (or perhaps a mouse… ick) as it runs the length of the spaces between the wall and beams. We’ve gotten rather accustomed to these minor sleep disturbances and have taken to merely sweeping up the debris in the mornings.

The Roof: Oh our roof. Perhaps the bane of our living existence in this country. The roof is constructed of layered and overlapping strips of corrugated tin. Thus, the ceiling not only acts as a convection oven during the hot, summer days, but also as an amplifier to everything that falls on it – say, seedlings, twigs or rain. A good rainstorm will cause the whole house to vibrate with an unbearable beating of noise, usually beyond the audible level of anything else. For this reason, Adam and I have adapted to yelling only necessary questions and answers to one another while siting across from eachother on the bed. And in some instances, we have almost literally scared the life out of eachother by entering the other room without shouting our presence and facing the terrified surprise of the other when he/she turns around to find the other standing right behind. Sorry. But back to the rain… the other curious (or as we like to think of it, completely idiotic) characteristic of our roof is that it is completely flat. But what should that matter?? Well, when it rains, the flat, corrugated tin roof does nothing to dispel the rain off the sides of the house – as with a normal, slanted and guttered roof – so water simply pours in from random dents and divets in the construction, creating miniature (and sometimes not-so-miniature) waterfalls in our kitchen/living room and our bedroom/office. Furthermore, as the walls have those aforementioned gaps between top and ceiling, the flatness of the roof makes possible the most interesting and horrifying of water features down the insides of our walls – creating rivers of tiny rapids crisscrossing the landscape of our floor and pooling in the lowest areas that we now call ‘the ponds’. So why, you ask, would they not just slant the roof and eliminate the problem all together? Our answer: that would just be far too convenient and, afterall, this is Africa.

The Floors: Our floors, like every other home we have seen in South Africa, are covered with polished, multi-mixture concrete. Luckily, this makes sweeping quite easy as there are no hardwood-floor cracks or tile indents with which to compete. Being polished concrete, however, it has an uncanny ability to attract dirt and dust that ingrains itself in the tiny pores of the polish. And after several years of polishing, sweeping, re-polishing and re-sweeping, the floors have a tendency to take on the traits of the Arctic Ocean in response to global warming – that is, growing ever so slowly a half centimeter a year from the layers and layers of newly acquired covering. For this reason, I have all but given up on actually keeping the floors ‘clean’ and have merely resigned myself to ridding only the piles of dirt that become visible to the naked eye and, of course, the chunks of concrete wall and dead insects that are scattered about in the mornings.

The Water: We don’t have any running water inside the house, but I think I’ve beaten that dead horse a couple times before, so just refer back to some of our previous posts…

The Electricity: I feel that I should dedicate this section to Jill Peters, who has experienced the incredibleness of our little home’s electricity to a far greater extent than either Adam or myself. I’ll explain: I would describe the electricity in our area as semi-consistent, meaning that it is on most times, except for the pre and post-storm blackouts and the during-storm brownouts (why the electricity stays on better during a storm and not before or after a storm will always remain a mystery to me). We are lucky, therefore, to be able to cook, heat water, and run our computer mostly to our convenience. We are unlucky, however, in the fact that our house is apparently not ‘grounded’. Meaning that any contact with an electrical outlet, switch, or appliances will likely provide you with a ‘morning jolt’ that you were probably hoping would come from your coffee instead. Thus, we wear shoes around the house at all times (not such a difficult sacrifice considering my description of the floors in the previous section), but for the primary purpose of ‘grounding’ ourselves. Jill, however, we have equated to the lab rat that never quite figures out where the cheese is, regardless of the physical stimuli (sorry Jill, I had to include it!!) Jill is a barefooter, including in the house. So, we often know when she is attempting to use the stove or turn on a light, not by the smell of food or by the change in lighting, but by the immediate yelp that follows these interactions. But she has not been the only victim in our home’s love of innocent electrocutions, Adam and I both have experienced this same ‘jumpstart’ when doing menial tasks after a rainstorm (read as: flooded house). Standing in water, as we should have realized before our first electrical encounter, serves as an incredible conductor of electricity, shoes or none. And I cannot forget to point out here that, unlike the in the States where the common household voltage is 120V, South Africa has a frighteningly high voltage of 220V!! And from personal experience, we can all tell you that this makes a significant difference – think shaky hands and an inability to focus clearly for a while afterwards…yikes!!

The Furniture: Finally, I reach the most comforting aspect of our little home – the couches, the chairs, and the bed. And while ‘comforting’ should not be misconstrued for ‘comfortable’, our furniture does offer us an immense sense of feeling at home. The couches, for example, actually allow for visitors as well as a place to sit separately while one or the other works in the kitchen or the bedroom – and I should mention here that ‘separately’ might seem to be an odd adverb to describe our couch sitting, but you would be surprised how nice it is to rest, even for a short period, someplace independent of your spouse with whom you spend all of your waking (and sleeping) hours as Peace Corps Volunteers. And on the subject of spending time together, our bed – for reasons not nearly as exciting as you may first assume – is our home’s sanctuary. Under our mosquito net, on top of our over-stuffed, Peace Corps-provided comforter, we spend much of our evenings and weekends sitting on that bed. We eat there, we watch movies and TV shows care of our computer there, we send emails and check Facebook there, we work from home on days that we don’t trek to work there, we read there, we listen to music there, we play cards there, we nap there, and last on this list of the uses of our bed, we actually sleep there. Our bed, as it turns out, is our home-away-from-home-in-our-home. Hmm. It’s also worth noting that since the start of our rainy season, we have become very protective of our comforting furniture and have been able to make it all surprisingly portable. Thus, when the water features on the walls and waterfalls in the rooms start to pour down, we are able to clump all our furniture (not only couches, chairs and bed, but also bureaus, kitchen cupboard unit, wash table, etc.) snuggly toward the centers of the rooms so that the rivers can divert cleanly around them and the ponds can pool safely beyond their reach. All of these earthly belongings that make us feel at home in our home, therefore, have become puzzle shapes in the tetrus game that is our two-room house during a flood. Nevertheless, the water always dries, the furniture stays reasonably undamaged, and we can always retire after a long day of work and long evening of waterproofing to our double-size haven in front of a fan.

And that is our home in a nutshell – virtually the size of a nutshell, in fact – from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, and from sitting spot to resting spot. As much as this two-room structure is often a recipe for disaster, and usually on the brink of complete destruction from flood water, electricity shortages, or scurrying reptiles, there is still something about it that feels somewhat right. And regardless of all the challenges that it doles out from day to day, we often find ourselves smiling at our humble abode, marveling at the joy one can find in such a small, simple way of living, and feeling very at ‘home’ in our quirky, little home.