New home

We arrived in Chibombo on the2nd of June. Chibombo is bush, very different from Lusaka or Ndola. When I arrived to the house where I am staying now, it was a shock. Although I didn’t expect very good conditions, I expected a nicer house.

My new home has four bedrooms and a common area that is a sort of a corridor, kitchen and living room. The latrine and the “shower” are outside. The latrine consists on a little house with a hole on the floor. The door doesn’t close properly; we have to use a rock to close it. The shower is not a shower. Actually, it’s only a place where we have to bring with us a bucket full of water and use an empty package of margarine to wash ourselves.

At least, we are lucky with the water. We don’t need to boil it. There’s a pump with safe water close to us … and if we want to warm some water, we can use either the two electric boilers or the cooker that we have.

When I arrived to my room, it was full of spiders and spider nets. Fortunately, after a cleaning action, there aren’t so many spiders as before.

Through my room’s door (even if it is closed), you can see what is happening in the common area. Actually, this door has some holes, which reduces the privacy and increases the feeling of community life.

Apart from me and my colleagues (Árpi and Zoltán), there are more people living in this house: Daniel from the US, Seong Han from South Korea and Andres from Colombia. We also enjoyed the company of a Japanese girl called Xiiro for a couple of days.

The best part of our house is the two nice and useful cats that we have. Besides of the food we give them, they eat snakes, mice, spiders and other insects. However, they are very clean and cute.

After one week, this house is not as bad as I thought it was in the beginning. I think I’m getting used to it.

In the next post, I'll explain you what is my job here. See you!