Red dust covers everything….clothes, hair, the inside of your nostrils….yum. Its dry here, but the mass amounts of dust are a welcome because it means there is no humidity. This makes our work days in the hot sun much more bearable. Being covered in red makes you look like you got a sweet tan, and it much preferred over pouring sweat.
The blisters we get while building desks and a fence for a new English school are hardly felt when our hands are held by the small children who gather in mass to watch us work….pitching in from time to time…..but laughing and taunting us to play constantly :0) (when I say English school, I mean the young man who speaks broken English has put up a tarp outside his home, now adding desks and a white board to teach the local children the English words he knows because he wants to share the love of Christ and help these children get an edge in life by knowing English)
We’ve taken some great walks through the village. Erin is drawn to hold every puppy, and I…every baby, so between the 2 of us, we use a lot of smiles and sign language to entice our non-English speaking neighbors to let us hold said babies and puppies :0) Then we use words like ‘Glorious’ to describe the day :0) I worked very hard to learn to say ‘Jesus Loves You’ in Kamai, the local language.
We live in our own little tree house that is the size of most families homes…..10×12 or so. Most of the homes here are up on tall stilts because it is desirable to have a shaded living space below the home. It is much like a porch. The men on the team live in a small room off the main house. We are living and working with a young man names Pong who lives with a friendly Buddhist family that is considered ‘well off’ in the community. They have these extra spaces that most do not. Even amidst this relative affluence, the outside kitchen consists of one gas burner with no refrigeration and the shower is a small room where you scoop bowl s full of water on yourself out of a tank with 5 small fish living in it. It is Glorious!!!
Each night, while nestled beneath our bug net with windows open and a small fan going full speed, we are greeted with the loud sound of our very own Gecko. He makes the sound of a creaky chair rocking through the night. One morning, his call sounded exactly like he was saying the word ‘gecko’. To which Erin responded… ‘gecko’. Back and forth they went…. ‘gecko’…’gecko’…’gecko’…’gecko’… till Erin said ‘stop talking’, and he replied with a sad hearted moan.
I really love living this comfortable, hard working, essentials only, village life :0)
