The other day I received an email from a young girl at my home church asking about the houses here, and I know that there is some curiosity about where we are staying in the Amazon, so this blog is dedicated to describing our living conditions this month.
Well, it’s not quite as rustic as I was expecting, but we’re definitely in the rainforest. Our house is wooden, with the walls not quite reaching the roof. When it rains heavily (which happens at some point every day – even though it’s the dry season), we find the roof is not entirely waterproof, and everything is always a little damp. I feel like we’re living in a treehouse. The girls bedrooms are upstairs, in a section of the house held up by wooden posts, and to get here the stairs are more like ladders. Our bedrooms are great! We have mattresses, and lights (if there is not a blackout), and lots of new friends sharing our room with us! Hearing squeals and shrieks while we’re getting ready for bed is quite common as we try to figure out ways to keep the cockroaches off our beds, the moths away from our heads, the spiders out of our stuff, and mosquitoes from eating us alive.
We do have a bathroom – two in fact! They smell worse than outhouses, only occasionally flush, and you just have to get used to having an audience of cockroaches, ants and moths. But to shower, we actually have two options. We can either have a bucket shower here at the house, or wait until we visit a nearby town to swim/bathe in the river. The bucket showers are interesting, not too bad if you take the time to heat the water, but it’s a pain to haul the water upstairs.
In all seriousness, I love this place. It’s rustic, that’s true. There are lots of huge bugs, it’s impossible to keep clothes smelling fresh, and showers are an adventure, but I really do love it. It’s quirky and has character. I wake up almost every morning to rain on the tin roof, sometimes just a light shower, sometimes a heavy downpour. Looking outside, one of the first things I see is the jungle rising above the neighbouring houses. A bird has built its nest in the walls, so I am watching baby birds growing up. And every evening I fall asleep to crickets. I love this place!
