The House We Live In.
Miriam Adelaide and I have been give a house on lot 46 Stanleytown. Which is basically to say on a side street that is know as 46, among about 10-15 other houses also on that side street. There are no house numbers and there are no street signs. There are signs which demark the boarders of each neighborhood, so if you were driving through New Amsterdam you could find our neighborhood. Good Luck on finding the house. Though if you were to ask around in Stanleytown where the white couple lived you would most likely find us.
We are in a space behind a church, though not one of the churches that Miriam is interning at, and both our house as well as the house behindus are owned by the Lutheran Church of Guyana. Ours is a two storey Yellow House with both stories constructed of cinder blocks and thus enclosed. Many of the houses in Guyana have the ground floor open and then upper level therefore stilted. There are very few houses that I have seen, in fact I can not recall one, which has more than two levels.
To get to the house you go down a little dirt road for say 150 yards. I would recomment that you drive slowly and especially carefully after a rain storm, as the depth of the roads holes is impossible to fathom when they are filled with water. Better yet just walk.
On both sides of the dirt road are drianage ditches. These are filled with tad poles, Frogs, and a type of small fish which I belive is called a Cori. People occassionally fish for them using a line and a pole, and I am told that they have a very strong bite that locks on to things and doesn't let go. Each yard drains into these ditches and it is best to wash your hands after clearing them out for I imagine they are fairly contaminated based on what is coming out of my own back yard. But, as I say there are too many tad poles to count so houw bad can it be right?
A little wooden bridge takes you accross the moat and there is a gate through a wooden framed chainlink fence about chest high. The gate is often latched with a chain to insure that the cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, or horses that eye the plant life don't come in as they amble down the street searching, always searching, for greener pastures. These animals all have fre range everywhere and are generally treated well by those who pass them, excepting the feral dogs and the lowly burros, who even the dogs pick on. Were you to come by around dawn or dusk, you would see a number of beautiful mongoose slinking through the undergrown, sometimes with snakes in their clutches. Or maybe an elusive rodent which I can not bring myself to believe could possibly be a rat so I have called it an incredibly large possum, with a 2-3 foot long white tail. Still searching for the name of that particular beastie.
Our front door is a few feet in past a number of flowering trees, including an oleander and a small papaya tree, which is just now begining to fruit. I have been weeding and triming up the trees much to the amusement of the neighbors. It is about as funny to them as when I come home from the market laden with bags of roots and fruits and tell them that I, not Miriam, will be cooking dinner. A white man who carries bags, walks from the market instead of driving, cooks and puts his hands in the dirt is an uncommon sight.
If we are not at home you will notice that everything is shut up pretty tight and that there are grates at every window. This is pretty standard, but like everywhere the nicer the house the more elaborate the security and vice versa. You might note the nice new grates on the front door and side doors. These were installed soon after our arrival by one of the churches carpenters a Hindu man named Chowah. He and I got along well and around lunch I prepaired a little bit for the table and asked him to join Miriam and I. By coincedience we had little in the house to eat. I put out some olives, crackers, a pitiful huck of cheese, some orange slices, peanuts, and a can of anchovies. I felt that it was rather meager and that this was a pity for I would have liked to offer more, yet also I was glad at avoiding being ostentatious. We were eating and talking about gardening and raising chickens, both projects Chowah was interested to hear that I wanted to do, as well as very keen on helping me start up. In fact the next time I saw him one week later he had some seeds for me for Bora beens which are in someplaces known as yard beens due to the fact that they are about a yard long. Unexpectedly, Chowah asked what the olives were as he had never had them before and this along with a few other revelations from him, such as what he normally ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, shoed me that even when I thought I was presenting a humble spread, I was in fact offering a banquet. After the meal he said that it was unusual for people to offer food and I replied that I found that strange to hear as I thought sharing food together to be one of the most important ways for people to come to learn about the other.
Yet after he had left for the day I reflected further. While I could say I had given food and refreshments to someone working on my house, I could not recall ever having invited them in to share a meal at my table. I thank Chowah for this gift of learning. I will look forward to spending more time with him as the year goes on.
But I digress... Sufice it to say that we have a fairly secure house, though the size of the locks are perhaps not daunting enough to my american eyes and of course someone could get in if they really wanted to. I was to explain why we have these new grated doors before I became sidetracked.
We have felt very little hostility to our persons since entering the counry. I would be surprised if we were not robbed at somepoint in our stay her as we are such appealing marks- I'd rob me based on my whiteness alone. But, we feel very good in the neighborhood and have gotten already to know the neighbors. And since they keep everything open when they are in their houses (even after dark at least until they go to bed), it feels rather insulting to lock ourselves in when the sun goes down. Plus it makes it harder to see what's going on and since people are always passing by I'd like to be able to say hello. So we keep our doors open until we too go to sleep and then batten down the hatches so to speak. One night in the first few days of our arrival, we had just gone upstairs for a moment and had then gotten into a discussion at the top of the stairs. As luck would have it this was the exact moment that miriam's supervisor Pastor Roy and his wife Alice decided to stop by and check in on us. Instead of finding us they found the house wide open and us nowhere to be seen. The grates were constructed two days later and rest assured now we use them at night. Do we need them? Hard to say, but they look nice and make everyone happy so what could be the harm.
So shall unlock the door and step inside.
The ground lvel floor consistes of four spaces, though it is entirely open save the enclose staircse going up. The first quadrant is the entrance space/mudroom, as well as the home for our desk. We have put one of the parasols we used at our wedding hanging upsidedown over the bare bulb, which makes for nice lighting in the evening (which comes at 6:30 each and every night here near the equator.) There is a window on the left next to the desk. The desk is our only cabinet and as such for the time being holds our silverware as well as our office supplies such as they are. The bicycle, whicI have on loan from Pastor Roy, is parked near the door. And as it is much cooler in the daytime downstairs, we also hang our hammock in this space for our afternoon siesta.
Coming straight in is our dinning room, which has a window on the back wall of the house and a half door on the left. These doors are fantastic and we leave the top portion open almost all the time ( with the grate on at night of course) We have a nice table which made me very happy as it is the only piece of furniture, besides a place to sleep, that I consider essential to life in a home. We started with one nice wooden chair, but now we have two more plastic patio chairs and soon I'm sure we shall find a fourth. My chos wall/ mandala/ collage is starting on the back of the staircase, which faces into the dinning area.
Continuing to the right we enter the kitchen. Against the back wall of the house is a four burner stove and a small oven, whcih has a propane bottle hooked up next to it. Then the sink which is under a window. The sink, as well as every other faucet in the house is a simple hose bib. There is no hot water, and I can not imagine what you would want it for as cold water feels so good and is such a luxory. Pots hand from the crossbeam between the dinning area and the kitchen. Various baskets and bags hand also from the ceiling holding our various goods from the market: pineapple,cassava, plantains, guava, coconuts, yams, passion fruit, bannanas, mangos onions and garlic currently. The fridge is against the staircase about chest high and needs defrosting i'd guess about once a month. There is a five gallon office cooler water bottle on the floor next to the fridge. Most people use bottled water in this form. You can get a little hand pump to avoid having to pick it up all the time to pour it, but for the time being it is good exercise. We go through about five gallons of drinking water in 2 days. We drink alot of water and walk real slow. There is also a cabinet above the fridge which helps somewhat to keep the bugs out of the dried good.
Continuing around the house to the front an the living room we pass the stairs and another half door on the side of the house. In the living room we have two windows one on the side one on the front. And three matching pieces of red valoure flower patterned furniture- alove seat and two chairs- smashing really.
little space under the stairs for tools and such. Then upstairs.
At the top of the stairs on the left is a bedroom which currently has nothing in it excepting a telephone.
On the right is the bathroom. Three spaces really- a toilet room, a shower room(set in concrete, and a sink and ironing area.
Go straight from the top of the stairs and you enter yet another room which has a perhaps repairable bed frame and some perhaps repairable fans. Taking a left goes to our bedroom with a fairly decent bed and matching armoir with a mirror. Mosquito netting hanging down above the bed completes the picture.
The rooms are divided by wooden walls of siding, which are open on the top for about four feet before reaching the ceiling. There are two windows in each room. The floor is wooden and the roof is made of corrogated metal. There is a gap all around the house between the roof and the ceiling to allow for air and mosquitos to flow freely in and out.
The house is 25 ft by 25ft or so and obviously we have more rooms than we know what to do with. Come for a visit, I'll fix the bed before you arrive, I promise.
One last thing to note as I see it falling down from the sky as I write. This is the sugar cane harvesting time of year, or one of them at least, and one of the steps of harvesting sugar can is to burn the fields. Consiquently everyday, sometimes in visible pieces and sometimes in dust, the cane ash floats down from the sky and settles on every flat surface. Luckily Miriam is responsible for the sweeping.