Notre Maison!

It's time for me to show you where we live!

I find it helpful to picture someone else's life when I can picture their environment, so here we go.

This is our street.

The first night we pulled in, Cindy, who was driving us, was giving us "the tour" and she said, "and here's your street!"

I thought,  "I don't see a street. I see a path."  In Mango, this is a street.

And this is our house from outside our gate. The local kids bang on the metal door so it isn't hard to know when they are there.  You can also see the tree (on the left side)  that they sit in and look over our fence at us.  It's funny to see four or five kids in that little tree.

And here's our house from inside the wall:

Sorry about all the laundry blocking the view, but it's almost always there.  The laundry is continual here just like it was at home!   The green grass you see is unheard of here.  The missionary couple who lived here before us picked the grass in bunches as they went about the town and transplanted it here.  Then it grew in.  They were good gardeners for sure!  We have a banana tree (with bananas on it!), papaya trees and a few others that I don't know.  The only small problem I have with the trees is that snakes like trees.  Green mambas really like trees.

This is our living room...

All the floors are concrete or tile in the house -- in anyone's house.  I cannot imagine what carpet would be like here -- yuck!

Here's the kitchen, sort of.  And again, this kitchen is unbelievably huge compared to the other missionary kitchens.  The couple who lived here before did a big reno.  And guess who is in my kitchen making Chicken Pot Pie??  Odile!!

Next are the bedrooms - one for me and Nate, one with blue quilts for Nolan and Red Ted (he's a tad sunburnt today), and one with three beds for Kylie, Ethan and Jack:

This is our dining area and will be where we do school.  I didn't bother to take pics of our bathrooms because, well, they look pretty normal.  Toilet, stand up shower (no tub) and a sink.  Even towel racks.

The chairs that we are using are quite nice, made by the students from the Blind School at south hospital in Tsiko (pronounced Cheeko).  Solid wood and woven very nicely -- all for about 9000 francs each  which translates to about $19 a chair!

I do have one pic of Teddy in his tub in the shower  (I'll share that one because it's so cute):

Bath time in a rubbermaid!! These things are so handy.
So that's us -- quite comfy in Mango.  Believe me, this is a BEAUTIFUL house here -- we are so thankful for it.  For it's Africa-proof-screens on the windows and doors that keep bugs and critters out, for ceiling fans, for electricity, for running water, for appliances that work, for so much that in Canada, we would have never even considered NOT having. Here, in Mango, these are BIG deal things and we are very very grateful.

Wait til I show you photos of our neighbours homes....then you'll get what I mean.

300

Okay...you need to know some stuff before I write the actual content of this post.

First of all, we live in a fenced compound.  Not really a compound but it's big concrete wall around our house.  Inside the wall is a small yard, our home, and an outbuilding (which I have not dared to go into).

Our 'street' (and I use that term very loosely....think dirt path) has many many children on it and they sit in the tree beside our wall and look down on us, yelling thing to us.  Nice things.  I'll come out onto the porch and I'll hear a few sing-songy voices holler "Bonjour, Madame!"  It's not irritating...it's kinda cute.  They want our kids to come out and play with them and our kids have totally embraced them.  Our guys are out there playing soccer and kick-ball and run-down-the-road-pushing-an-old-tire (I even tried that one but I'm much slower than the locals.)

The missionaries here say that the children on our corner are the most aggressive and annoying in the whole town.  I don't find them aggressive and annoying but we've only been here one week.  We've set boundaries with them but I love chatting with them and making them laugh -- which is super easy to do.

As soon as we come out our gate, there are about 10 children right there.  They want to say hello, hold our hands, touch our skin, and especially Teddy's red hair.  They all know our kids names and so we're trying to learn theirs.  Today I met a Jean, Robert, Emmanuel, Valerie, and a little boy whose name sorta sound like you grunt and say Grant at the same time.

There are a gazillion kids in the area and if they get wind of something fun happening, it spreads like wild fire and suddenly there are 25 kids outside the door.

The other day I was chatting with my neighbour, Odile.  Odile is like a gift from heaven.  I already love this woman.  I mentioned to her that I'd like to paint the toes of the little girls on our corner.  She said she would ask their mothers and see what they say.  She came back later and said it was okay.  So I asked her how we go about doing this.  She said I should do it outside my gate and that she would bring 8 or 10 girls over.  So Kylie and I dragged an old bench off our porch to just outside our gate, grabbed our nail polish bin, and went out.

The girls sat on the bench and picked a colour they liked.  I sat on a towel on the ground and painted.  They LOVED blue.

I just prayed for each girl as I wiped off her dirty little feet and painted her toes a pretty colour.

And then....more began to arrive...

This is Odile in the above photo. She is just a super jolly woman.  She sat the whole time and watched me paint, translating when I couldn't understand.

A few of the happy customers.

After I had done the children, all the moms wanted it done too! It was getting to be time for us to leave to go for dinner, so I had to wrap up before everyone had been pedicured.  By that time I'd done thirty girls and ladies.  

300 toes.

30 prayers for our corner of this village.

I love these next two photos.  The first one is Kylie and her friends.  The second one is me and the other moms.  I think you'll be able to tell who is who.

Praise God for Nutella!

Just a spoonful of Nutella makes the malaria pills go down....  (sing it with me!)

Here's three little doses of malaria pills all crushed up for three little people.

And here's three malaria pills hidden a spoonful of Nutella -- goes down smooth and sweet!

Nothin' says fun like malaria in the morning!!

We're HERE!!

So I just got internet this morning and am so very excited to be connected with friends and family again.  The last week has been a whirlwind.  I have so much to tell and so little time to do it this morning.  I'll do a few posts working through the last week so I've got record of all the craziness.  But the good news is we're here.  We're alive.  And we're adjusting....sort of.

Come with me, back in time, to a week ago today....

We were at my parent's house the night before we left and stayed overnight because we had officially moved out of our un-rented house in Coldstream.  The morning we left was difficult.  Really difficult.  Our Robert Q ride to the airport was booked to show up at 10:45 am.  At about 9:30 am people started arriving at my parent's house to say goodbye and see us off.  My mom, sweet hostess that she is, had a small table set up by the driveway with coffee and kleenex available to anyone who need either.  It was adorable.

We had several friends and family show up, and it was great to have people to chat with as we waited for time to pass and Mr. Robert Q to show up.  Once we saw that big white van coming down the road, my stomach was in knots.  Uggh.  We're leaving.

And the hugs, kisses, and tears began.  I NEVER want to do that again.  We prayed together amidst sniffling and nose-blowing and then we piled in.  All our stuff fit.  I have photos to show you but will download them later as I just want to post this so you all know the story.

As we climbed in, shut the door and waved good-bye, there was silence inside the van.  Awkward, uncomfortable, sad silence.  And faintly but ever so clearly on the radio, I could hear a song playing....

"Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you....whatever it takes, or how my heart breaks, I will be right here waiting for you...."

Seriously.  I did NOT need that right then.  But it was almost funny because of the timing.  But not that funny.

We arrived at the airport, got all our luggage checked and waited.  The first flight was just a hop, skip and jump to Montreal.  I sat between Jack and Ted and they did amazing.  We took off, the nice ladies served us pop and pretzels, we made one craft together and we were landing.  It was good practice.

We waited in Montreal for an hour, had a snack and then reboarded the same plane for Brussels. I told Ted and Jack that after they served us supper, we would watch one "kid show" and then it was time for bed.  And that's what we did.   We ate dinner, they cleaned it up,  Teddy put his head on my knee and was asleep in about five minutes.  All I can say is....THANK YOU FOR PRAYING!  The kids were amazing!

We landed in Brussels, found our terminal, bought a snack and waited.  (I bought one water bottle, one tiny coffee and two croissants for the grand total of $16 american.  Nice!)  This was a long wait and thankfully, the terminal we waited in had a play-place for kids.  Somebody in Brussels was thinking!

We boarded again and before the plane had finished boarding, Teddy was asleep in his seat.  I was feeling like crap...I was certain I'd be barfing before the plane took off and I had one seat next to me where some poor stranger would have to listen to me puke in those little bags.  But again, THANK YOU FOR PRAYING, because, in fact, nobody sat there and within a few minutes, I was asleep kinda-stretched-out in my seat and the seat beside me.  I woke up feeling way better.  This flight was loooong and boring.  Only one movie was played in 7 hours of travel.  And the kids had seen it twice already.  Oh well.  We landed in Cote D'ivoire, but didn't have to get off the plane, they just refuelled and brough some more people one (no one in my extra seat) and we took off for the fourth time.  We were getting really good at take-off's and landings.  The kids started rating how good the pilot was by the last round.

At last we landed in darkness at the Lome airport.  But don't think "airport" like you know one to be.  Think big empty warehouse filled with the stench of sweaty African people, a couple of "seats" in it (which were two upholstered chairs with the stuffing bursting out) and a baggage claim thing.  That's it.  I tried to take a picture but I thought I might get in trouble so I only have one crappy fuzzy photo of Teddy lying on the floor of this big dirty place.  He was so tired, and I was so tired, I just let him lie there.  I'm sure I deserve Parent-of-the-Year for that one.

We picked up all our luggage, (thank you again for praying as not one piece was lost or damaged), made our way through customs, and found Cindy, our missionary colleague who met us outside customs, helped us through some craziness in the parking lot (men wanting money) and drove us to our little hotel in Lome.

And that's day 1.

More to come later....