Our house

During my tour of the house – which is a bungalow – Aaron was keen to tell me that we have just been connected to running water! So we no longer need to collect our water from the borehole. This was exciting news! It means that the toilet now flushes and the taps run, although the shower is not connected and we’ll need to bathe using buckets of water. It is not heated but on their last trip to Wa my housemates had invested in a kettle so we can heat water for doing our washing. It doesn’t matter that the water isn’t hot to bathe in because the weather is so hot that cold water is refreshing, particularly in the evening.

When you first enter the house there is an area to store the motorbikes and cycles. I will not be using a motorbike but will need to buy a bike from Wa for cycling. The first room in the main house is the large lounge. All the floors are concrete although the lounge has some tiles on it, and the walls are painted either blue or green. All the windows have grills on them to help stop mosquitoes and other insects coming into the house, and also offer additional security.

In the kitchen is a large barrel for storing water because the tap at the sink has such low pressure that the water trickles. It’s also important to have a stock of water just in case the running water stops for any reason. There is a gas cooker with hob which is better than I had expected, although the oven only does one temperature – its highest! There is also a fridge and some shelves for food storage. On one side of the room is a worktop with the water filters on it. Water for drinking must be filtered to avoid us catching any bugs so these are filled regularly.


From the lounge you enter a corridor. This leads first to Cath’s room, then to mine with the toilet and shower room opposite, and finally to Aaron and Noriko’s at the end. My room is quite large with a double bed and, so they tell me, the best fan in the house as it is new! When I switched it on it nearly took off! Also in my room there is a desk and chair and a small wardrobe (one of those fabric ones you can get from Argos) with a cardboard shelf in it.


One of my tasks later is to buy some curtains for the windows and also a means to attach them. I need to put up a mosquito net too (another problem-solving task!), but thankfully this is not urgent as it is the dry season and there are relatively few mosquitoes, unlike in the south where I was bitten several times, despite being covered in insecticide. This is to be avoided because of the malaria risk.

The toilet is a normal flushing one! The shower is not connected and the sink tap barely runs, but there is a tap in the wall below the shower which is strong. This is used to fill the buckets to ‘shower’ in using a big ladle. The water then washes away down a drain on the floor.


Washing clothes was a new experience for me today! I boiled the kettle and filled one of the buckets in the shower room with hot and cold water, and a second bucket with cold rinsing water. I then put some travel washing liquid and some fabric softener in the warm water and began the task of scrubbing my clothes. Once they were rinsed I hung them outside and found them dry within an hour and a half! My housemates tell me that a better way of doing it is to soak the clothes in the soapy water overnight before rinsing them the next day, so I will try this in future.

Outside, the garden is dry and dusty with little growing in it, although Cath and Aaron have plans to grow vegetables in it at some point.