My Abode! (Part 2)

Part 2 (My House)

The other exciting news is that my house is almost completely finished! I have been living here for 3 weeks and it feels like home now. Last week I got my lights installed and the border on my ceiling finished so I could start actually unpacking because now I don’t have a lot of workers in here. I wont be able to post pictures until the first week of March when we have an ‘in-service training’ (assuming the internet is better quality wherever we’re placed) while schools are closed because of elections. Or I’ll be able to if I visit another volunteer and the internet signal is stronger there. I’m so happy I have the Internet but sadly the signal isn’t strong enough to skype or post pictures. Oh well, maybe the anticipation of seeing stuff will make it better? J

So let me try to paint you a rough picture of my humble abode here on the compound of Sipili School for the Deaf…

My house has 4 little rooms and is the perfect size for me to live in. My bedroom is painted a sky blue on the bottom 1/3 with a cream on top. My bed is covered in a mosquito net so it’s like im tucked into a little cave every night. I have a large wardrobe opposite of my bed and 3 shelves tacked to the wall. I have maybe 15 pictures of family/friends taped to my wall and random quotes scattered about that I cut out from magazines while living in my temporary house with not much to do. They include ‘love actually is all around’ and ‘reach for the stars’. My living room, painted with a teal color on the bottom third, is still waiting for my hammock to be put up but I have a coffee table and bookshelf in there now. Thanks to Jess and Jenny, the previous volunteers in Sipili, I have almost a full shelf of books to read! I also have painted an outline of Africa and written a phrase from the Shakira song ‘Waka Waka, it’s Time for Africa’ on the back wall of my living room…it’s probably my favorite ‘decoration’. Once again, I have a few more pictures and posters of quotes taped up as well including a drawing of an alien that Bethi sent me J My bathroom is, like all my other rooms, filled with quotes but they are bigger and overtake it! I have ‘cause I’m just a teenage dirtbag’ painted in green on one wall and ‘I feel good, I knew that I would’ on the other wall. I also have 2 posters that I wrote Roald Dahl quotes on and had laminated on my other two walls…now I just need my plumbing to work so I can actually use the toilet in my own bathroom. Lastly, my kitchen has an outrageous shade of yellow with hints of blue thrown in, on 3 of the 4 walls with my bedroom blue color on the back wall. Once again, thanks to Jess & Jenny, I have a loooot of spices and pots and pans from them that they left me! I also have 2 shelves on one wall and a counter top across the back. I use a little gas stove and it’s been fun, most nights, cooking for myself whatever I want. I painted ‘making banana pancakes’ above my shelves in red and taped the cut out letters of ‘D to the E to the LICIOUS’ on my other wall from that Fergie song ‘Fergilicious’ hahaha.

I think that about covers it and overall, things have been going well here, I’m getting more and more settled in by the day! Time to grill some cookies…todays batch: choco-chip with half a banana, raspberry-apple-raisin oatmeal and cinnamon! YUM! J

If you have any questions, just ask and I’ll try my best to answer!

Love to all, many kisses from Kenya,

LindeLoo

p.s. In the quarterly Peace Corps Magazine that all volunteers receive I read an article on a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and her husband who started a fair trade lingerie line. They both had done a bit of work in Africa, she served in Cameroon, and they knew they wanted to do something. They talked to some of the villages started a fair trade line of lingerie which I thought was pretty cool. Just thought I’d throw it out there if anyone was interested because it’s new and it is fair-trade. The website is: BeSexyBuyFair.com or cherieamie.com  à they both go to the same website J