Ann observed that like the croc, we are also enclosed - by seven foot walls that surround the entire campus of our school. The southerly view from our front porch runs smack dab into one wall which allows us to see only the tops of buses and trucks passing by on a major artery (two-lane and paved) of our city. The noise of the street, however, comes over loud and clear. Out our back we are able to see the tops of the Kambui Hills. A typical morning in the rainy season will find the hills shrouded in mist until mid-morning. The city football field lies to the west. On weekends and holidays we can hear the cheers of the crowd, reminiscent of the roars coming from Ramer Field on a fall Saturday afternoon. Our eastern outlook is blocked by a new campus building being constructed. So far, it is only two stories high, but that is tall enough for the workers to climb to the top to watch the football games over the wall, just like Cub fans on Waveland Street outside Wrigley.
Last Sunday we got to see Salone construction techniques at work as the concrete laborers spent all day working on the third story of the building next to our house. A dozen or so men mixed cement, sand, and aggregate with water on the ground. The concrete was then put into one gallon pails that made their way up a stick scaffolding via a bucket brigade of another dozen men. About twenty workers on top emptied the buckets into forms. The pails were then unceremoniously tossed to the ground to start the process all over again. At the end of the day the men were covered in concrete which they washed off at a nearby well. As a result of their hard work, the driveway to our house is now partially paved, albeit bumpily.
Housing here, and what we have observed so far elsewhere, consists mainly of one-story concrete block structures built on concrete slabs. Occasionally you will see houses made from clay blocks cemented together with concrete. I would estimate the typical house to be about 800 square feet of living space dedicated to a living room and bedrooms. By comparison our house has around 1200 square feet. We also have higher than normal 11-foot ceilings. Almost all houses have latrines and the cooking and bathing is done outdoors. A middle class extended family might have three houses enclosing a courtyard with an open-air, roofed area in the center as the kitchen. An upper middle class family would have a security wall around the compound. A really rich house might have two stories, a tiled exterior, satellite dish, and a giant Milla water tank perched high to provide water via a gravity system. Most people get their water from numerous wells that dot the city. Sometimes the well will have mechanical arms for pumping water. For others water must be hauled up from the well the old-fashioned way, bucket by bucket.
We have many relative luxuries in our house. The biggest one is electricity. As a consequence we have florescent lighting in the living room, and lights in the kitchen, shower room, and toilet room and a ceiling fan in our bedroom. The power also allows us to recharge our portable light, phones, computers and battery charger. In addition it runs a CD player that came with the house. (It is unfortunate that we have already run through our limited collection. We had stored most of our tunes on my laptop, which somehow overheated when I attempted to recharge the battery.) We have solar-powered lights plus a solar-powered battery charger if we ever lose this amenity permanently. The most we have been without electric service is 26 hours.
The electricity also makes it possible to have a small refrigerator/freezer. Thus, we have the luxury of ice, something we never had in our previous Peace Corps experience. Another plus that we didn't have 40 years ago is a gas stove. Currently it only has one burner that works, but that sure beats the alternative of a charcoal fire outside in the yard. We haven't tested the oven yet, but hope that it will be operational for the planned Thanksgiving feast.
I am very appreciative of our bucket flush toilet. This is one amenity that most Sierra Leonians do without. When you go on a trip, you sure can't expect to stop at a McDonald's or gas station to find a toilet. For men it is easier, just turn your back to the crowd, if there is one, and do your business. It's common and done discreetly, just part of the landscape. For women almost any latrine is available to use for the asking.
We share our house with a few spiders, cockroaches, and a mouse. The mouse is in the habit of making its daily appearance under our front door about 8:00 in the evening. It scurries through the living room using our four cheetah-print upholstered chairs as cover; then it's under the dining table, behind the refrigerator and into the safety of a closet off the kitchen. There it waits for us to go to bed, so it can have a midnight snack in peace. We have been forced to put all of our non-refrigerated food in a metal locker. We have plans for him and his days are numbered! The cockroaches are shy and we only see them when we open a drawer or move a piece of furniture. Then they are promptly stomped on.
The spiders come out in the evening about dusk. Our first night here, Ann, who is particularly adept at spotting even the most microscopic of arachnids, saw one that she could not miss lurking underneath the kitchen table. It was a 4-inch monster, much larger than the wolf spiders we have spied occasionally down at the family farm in southwestern Missouri. When I shined a light on it, its eyes reflected like tiny diamonds. We nicknamed him Stewart after a similar spider we had read about in another Salone blog. Stewart made two consecutive night appearances, but we haven't seen him since. Thankfully, our mosquito net works on spiders too. You can bet that Ann makes sure we tuck it in tight at night.
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| View of our front porch. We occupy the right side of the duplex guest house. |
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