Getting Settled

We survived the 24-hours without a toilet easily, and it prompted me to go outside and clean the squatty potty.  I washed the walls on the outside and the floors on the inside.  While scrubbing the acutal squatty, I found some "residue" tucked under the edge that had been there for awhile, which was probably causing the smell.

So glad that's over!

Also that first night (as we experience every night at some point), the power went out.  We had the solar lanterns lit on the dinner table, and just as I got ready to snap this picture, the power came back on.  But you get the gist.

After one night sleeping on the doshaks, Doug was prompted to walk down the street and investigate mattresses.

Lo and behold, he returned within two hours with a truck following him.

He was a little disappointed that he didn't get as much discount as he thought he could have gotten, but when the only thing you know how to do is point and look at a man's calculator when he types in numbers for you,  you pretty much get what you can.

We like the mattress!

Also, on this day, we went to a government office (think "closet with one man and a heavy cloud of cigarette smoke hanging in the air") to have copies of our passports made and stapled to another sheet.  That's it!

I had my mobile taken away and a full pat down to go to that office for a total of 3 minutes.

Then, we headed to a clinic (on the other side of town) run by the government to have our blood drawn and tested (for malaria, HIV, bilharzia, etc).  We paid about $50 and then stood in line for the needle.  The sign says "Blood Withdraw Exit", but it also happens to be the entrance, which makes it quite crowded and complicated.

We were told to return to the "Smoking Man's" office in two days, and he would have the results of our blood test and we could get our permits.

Well, that didn't happen...

But to continue on with setting up our house, the next day, Doug went walking down the street again, and this time when he came home, a truck followed again very quickly.  This time it was carrying a washer and dryer.

I love this man.  He knows the way to my heart!

The dials have pictures on them, so I don't even have to know how to read the language yet to operate it.

 The amount of dust on top of the packaging was enough to give anyone pause.

But the following day, a very nice man helped us hook them up.

That's the nice man, climbing out the inner second-story window to get to our water heater and some pipe he needed access to.

Since the door to the laundry room (that's what I call it) opens to the inside, the washer and dryer wouldn't fit in there, so Doug and the other man re-situated them under the stairs.

I'll be honest.  I hated to lose that under-the-stair storage.  Or on second thought, I could have put Keira's bed under there!! :)  However, since I will only need the dryer during the winter months, I could, realistically move it up to the third floor landing and retain some of the space under there.

We'll have to see.

To finish up our week, since this was Thursday (their Friday), we went to pick up our permits at the government office.  Smoking Man had our papers and it showed that we had had our blood tests done, but he said he needed to see our receipt for the $50.

We took a taxi back to our house.  Found it.  Took a taxi back to the office, and Smoking Man released us to go upstairs to see the "Big Man" who makes all the decisions.

The Big Man couldn't decide if he should charge us a lot of money, so he sent us home and told our translator to come back the following week.

Long story short (and awesome), today our translator went back, and he said we were only charged a fee to process and laminate our ID cards (about $17).  Nice, huh?

No more paper work or blood given for one more year :)

End of the week also meant homemade pizza and a movie.

I have some tweaking to do to get these better, but it was a good first start.

 

 We all sat at the kitchen table and watched a movie on a laptop while eating pizza.

Sounds like a good night to me.

Are all contractors like this?

Well, we're back to talking about toilets.

"Stop," you say?  No, I must go on.  It will be okay.  I promise.

Here, in our front room, our toilets have glared at us since Saturday.

A friend's friend found us someone who could install the toilets, but we also needed someone to move the doors.  The reason was, once you got a toilet into the tiny room, there was no room for your legs.

Curse you tiny toilet!  ("Despicable Me," anyone?)

The interesting thing is that the toilet guys arrived only 10 minutes before the door guys.

World's were colliding!

If you look at pictures of our toilet before, you can see how the door swings in and over the squatty.

 

So on this particular day (Tuesday, March 8), we had the "door guys" move the door completely.  Instead of turning it around to swing the other way, we had them move it to a different door frame.  Now you can see that it swings in, and doesn't come near the squatty.

This was happening.

 And this.

And even this.

  And what I'm not showing you is all the nice plaster they knocked out of the newly painted wall.

So I went outside.  The noise and mess were kind of getting to me.

Lo and behold, someone was making cement in the courtyard.  

(This was a whole new process from the way I had seen Ugandans do it, but it worked.)

I left with another couple to go return something at the mall, and when I returned, this is what I saw.

Pretty, huh?

Of course, I haven't mopped it yet.

And, I think we just bought our landlord two nice toilets.  

Those things are in there pretty permanently.  We were thinking they would just put some epoxy on them and set them over the hole.

Nope. 

For those of you new to third world septic systems, this is where all toilet paper goes.  

All of you who have been to Matamoros with us remember, right. 

Kind of gross, but you "do" what you've got to "do." :)

You see that nice fan above the toilet to air out the room?

Well...ours is missing blades, so there is no fan and no airing out. 

Febreeze to the rescue!!

Drawback #1:  We were told not to use the facilities for 24 hours, and we had already decided to spend our first night in the house and moved all of our luggage in.

We knew the kids were ready to be "in the house," but we didn't have a mattress on our bed, and we didn't have working toilets inside, and the showers had gotten really dirty in the toilet/door process, and we didn't have silverware to eat with or propane to cook with, but what's a little inconvenience, right?

Answer to the mattress issue...doshaks.

Hard as a stinkin' rock, and we woke up with back pain the next day, but oh well.

Answer to the toilet issue...outside squatty.

Remember the outside squatty in the little white box I showed you earlier?

Yep, that's the one.  

I'll spare you pictures, because I have yet to clean it.  yuck. 

But it worked perfectly.  No one seemed to be concerned about it except me, because I'm the only one that gets up two or three times a night to go.

All I can tell you is that it worked, and at least a bat didn't fly up out of the hole and scare me.

Answer to the shower issue...no showers until cement can be scraped out.

Answer to no silverware or propane...fruit for breakfast.

All problems solved.

The next day we spent time cleaning up all the mess from the workers.

Please tell me that contractors where you live clean up behind themselves!

What's a doshak?

Well, the short answer is: a piece of "furniture" that makes "decorating" a room pretty easy.

The real answer is: pieces of foam covered in fabric, laid end to end, that provide seating for family and guests.

In this culture, it is what people prefer to sit on to eat, watch TV, visit, etc.  Our entry room into our house will have doshaks lining the walls so that when new friends come over, they will feel at home and comfortable.

Having doshaks required a trip to a market.

There are several markets in town, and I like all the ones I have been to.  They remind me of Arua, so it's quite a "familiar" feeling.

This particular job called for an interpreter, so I went with a young lady who has been here a year, and is really getting around well in the language.  She took me to "her guy," and we started the process.

Material first.

As you can tell, choosing material can be a little overwhelming.  Hanging above are rugs or material for curtains, and in the bins below, there is material to make blankets.  

I kind of had in my mind we would look for a greyish color, but when I got there, I saw that these people really favor brown (the color of the sand that blows in their windows and doors).  

So I started to narrow it down between some browns.

 And then Kylie saw this peeking between two bolts of fabric.  It was feeling forgotten because no one here really wants grey.  But we do!

These gentlemen measured out 18 meters of this fabric for us.  And then it was time to find a tailor.

 

Oh wait!  There's a tailor on the other side of these bolts...right next door.

Hello, tailor, in your teeny, tiny room.

 They were busy making curtains for someone, but the nice man in the back allowed us to place our order and leave the fabric with him.  However, he wanted to know what size foam I was going to buy.

Huh?

So...we went to the stall right before the bolts of fabric (we had walked through it on our way in), and we had to choose between 5cm, 7cm, and 9cm of thickness.  

I went with the thickest, because if I'm going to have to sit on the floor for long periods of time, I don't want my hind end hittin' the tile.

We went back to the tailor and told him the size of foam and where I would like the zipper.  He said it would be ready in three days.

My friend has language lessons near that market, so she said she would get pick them up for us.  They were delivered Wednesday, inside out, and Doug and Kylie figured out a way to get them on. 

Now you know what a doshak is, and we have one more thing checked off our list. :)

The Shopping Saga Continues

We finally found the perfect living room set! 

Don't you love our new chandelier?

Just kidding (the chandelier was $27,500)!

Keira told me she was the queen, and she wanted me to take her picture in this furniture store.  

Nice, huh?

Well, we went a little more classy for our bedrooms...particle board.

Yep, it's the standard here.  So when the delivery guys came to set up, this is how my bedroom started.

But it ended up looking like this.  Not bad.  We just can't ever move it or it will wobble apart.

On a side note, I know you can't tell, but let me tell you, those tiles are C.O.L.D!

Here are the other kids' wardrobes that were put together on Sunday.

Kylie's.

Caleb's.

And Karis'.  

Now they all have closets (except Keira).  She's going to share a room with Karis, but I'm a little nervous about her wondering around at night with no power (lights) down those marble stairs, so for now, her mattress is on the floor in our room, and we're still working on a solution for her clothes.

For now, they're in a suitcase on the floor.  *sigh*

Here's a look at my side of town.  I was crossing a foot bridge near our house and decided to snap a picture.  See that mosque in the back left?

It's really beautiful, but this is the only shot I've gotten of it so far.  Out a window, in a moving car last week.

Here's the road under the foot bridge facing the other direction.

Speaking of mosques...interesting cultural tidbit.  Everyone uses his mosque to tell others where he lives.  For example, a person would tell a taxi driver where he lived by naming his mosque, not his street address.

I know you are ready for more toilet stories, but I have to post about another shopping trip first.  If I haven't already said it, shopping in a new city, without knowing the language, is not for the faint of heart.

Shopping...not for the faint of heart

Shopping has been interesting to say the least.  It is overwhelming for me to make so many decisions in such a short amount of time.  

But, thankfully, some decisions are easy.  

For example, some areas of furniture stores I don't even have to walk through.  Thankfully, I have one example to show you because Keira borrowed my phone to take pictures in a store one time, and she caught a furniture set on a photo.  This is a small example, but you get the idea.

When we finally get around to buying some propane for our stove, grocery store shopping looks like it's going to be fun.  I snapped some pictures today when I felt like no one was looking.

This is one of the bigger grocery stores, which I won't always visit, but it's nice to know it's here ;)

And look at how clever the store owners are...on our way up to the second floor of the grocery store, they put all kinds of chocolate between the two escalators.

This grocery store is actually in a mall.  

Last week, we ate in the food court.  Keira can't read, but guess where she picked to eat?

Even though she was born in Africa, I guess Texas is in her blood somewhere.

Also, in this mall, was the store where we bought our duvet covers and toilets.  

If you get our newsletter, I'm guessing you already saw this picture of Doug trying out the toilet and measuring it for size. 

 

One of our squatty potties has a really large hole, and we had to look high and low to find a toilet with a large enough base to cover it.

These are such glorious photos, I know, but maybe you can tell how much larger the "blue" one is

Now that you've lost your lunch, you can watch us enjoy ours. 

Doug bought these sandwiches off the street today, and we had a nice lunch in the midst of cleaning.

Tomorrow, we're moving all our bags into our new home, and then on Saturday, our beds will be delivered.  Hopefully, I'll be able to get you some more pictures soon.

                                                                                                                                                          

The White House

I have no idea why Keira called our home in College Station the "white house," but she has continued the tradition here.  It must be because of all the white walls inside, because as you can see...

It is most certainly, not white.  Whoever built it, must have decided that the work they did inside was enough, so they stopped.  Notice no railing around the balcony!  Also notice chicken man/landlord's truck on the sidewalk (which is where it is every day), and chicken man, friends, etc. outside to the left of my gate.  Basically, I have my own security guards right there for the price of rent :)

Inside the courtyard, down the right side of my house, it looks like this.

And looking at my two entrances to my house, you see a white box in front of you, which is the outside squatty potty for guests (or whomever wants to use it).

I must say, I haven't been brave enough to clean it yet.  I think it's been used frequently by some neighbors before we moved in, but I did tackle to the two squatty's inside.  Two down; one to go.

Caleb has done a nice job using the squeegie on the patio for the last few days.  Everyone here cleans their's almost every day, so it looks like it's going to be a chore that we do often.  Caleb has already volunteered.  I think playing in the water is fun for him, and I'm sure in his imagination, that squeegie is something like a light saber :)

This is my laundry room.  I'm told that culturally, this is where people would wash their dishes over the drain in the floor.

If you look up from here, you see the water heater.

And if you continue looking up, you see the cracked, plastic covering that allows sweet droplets of rain to enter on a cool day.

I plan to have that fixed :)

Up on the roof of the house, this is one of the views.  I have yet to figure out the directions, but when I do, I'll let you know.

And the side street by my house looks like this at the "slow" time of the day. 

I don't know if I'll be brave enough to pull out my camera when it comes alive, but maybe I can shoot some pics from the roof someday.

A few interesting things that we learned this week, and then I'll close.

We were getting town power the few hours that it was on each day, but when the generator for the block would turn on, we still didn't have power.  It turns out we had to pay the "generator guy" about $7, and then he would put the size AMP fuse we wanted into the power pole.

See the brown box below on the pole?

And did you see those wires??

As my kids would say, "Yikesy Poodle!"

Anyway, sometimes our power will shut off because we have too much running, so someone has to cross the street with a broom pole (or something similar) and flip the switch back up.  It's basically like the breaker box in your home except the whole neighborhood has access to it apparently.  It's pretty funny to drive down the road and see small boys with a squeegie in their hands, reaching up to flip their switch back up.  Seems like an everyday occurrence here.  (I think it's another job for Caleb).

Another "different" thing here is the "ice cream man."  Every day, the ice cream truck comes down our street.

Well, you think it's the ice cream truck.  It's actually a man in a truck playing the cutest "ice cream truck" music, but he's just letting you know to come outside if you need to switch out your propane bottles.

In Uganda, propane bottles were not always easy to find.  In fact, sometimes it was near impossible if the town was low on supply.  Here, they just go up and down the streets handing them out like candy.  I wish I had someone near me to clarify the prices, but I think in Uganda, each bottle was about $50, and here, they are about $10. 

More later on our journey to "the white house."