Our house is across the well clearing from a delightful family headed by the industrious Ben, who does something in agriculture requiring huge rubber boots, and his wife Winifred, who smiles at my roommate and I doing the wash in the morning. They have a collection of young children ranging in age from Naomi (10 months) to Mama (8 years) and an older girl (17 years old?) who may or may not be their born child, but is part of the household. One of the girls, a 3-year-old named Fewa, has a red stuffed animal that she carries around everywhere. This weekend she was wearing a red shirt, turquoise skirt, pink rain boots, and a child-sized lappa cloth in yellow, green, and orange. And she had used her lappa to tie her red stuffed doll to the small of her back exactly like her mom secures Naomi. She had a tiny bucket and was helping her brother and sister haul water from the well, too. I feel like there is a photo somewhere of me in an equivalent outfit pushing a stroller holding Baby James Butler and following Mom down the street in San Francisco.
Every Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia would probably tell you that the community they live in is the best volunteer site in the history of the organization in this country. I am no exception to this rule, despite brief initial misgivings when I learned that I would be traveling nowhere at the end of training. In the week since we moved in I have come to appreciate the things Kakata has to offer: a highly-functional school that boasts a functioning PTA, actual toilets that are cleaned regularly, and a 50-unit computer lab with hot and cold running internet; access to luxury food items like frozen chicken, canned veggies, BBQ sauce, snickers bars, and ice cold beverages; a daily market offering in-season fruits, bed sheets, water buckets, tomato paste, and monkey meat; two paved roads(!); and many more things I was not expecting to be included in my Peace Corps experience.
By far the best surprise to date has been our house, though. It is one half of a brand new lime green and brown duplex off of one of the main roads and down a valley/dell. We share the bowl of this depression with Ma Winifred's family, their two puppies (Peace and Poornotfriend), and their chicken flock. Small Brown Girl, the most helpful chicken in Liberia, is a regular guest on our (beautiful enclosed tiled) porch while we wash laundry or cook dinner. Last week she brought Ma Winifred and her teenage daughter and we all listened to music, braided hair, and talked about kids and dogs and our new home. If good fences make good neighbors, the deep wells and friendly poultry do as well.
Inside our new palace we have a real, recognizable kitchen with counters and a sink, and our bathroom is a work of glory. We don't have running water, but all the drains work. On the first day we made curtains for the windows in the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and all three bedrooms, and furniture will be coming from Amos the carpenter 'this week.' My room is a nice bright green, the other two bedrooms are mauve, and the main living area is a very strong and assertive pepto-bismol pink. To alleviate a little of the pink-ness of our walls, we ventured to Jeety's store (home depot equivalent, selling all your hardware, flooring, and plumbing needs minus the orange aprons) to buy some white paint. On the way along the coal tar, we passed wheelbarrows full of copy books, pens, and rulers (office depot back-to-school sale), and some ladies selling fried egg sandwiches (egg mcmuffins?). I made a stop at the Lonestar store to get Internet set up on my phone, and waited in queue just like in the Verizon store in Napa when I took Nate to get a new phone.
My roommate, who was born and lived for 11 years in Botswana (to missionary parents) before seeing the US for the first time, shares my feelings of comfort and familiarity with our new life. I am assured that awkwardness, discomfort, and frustration are coming, but right now I can wholly embrace the little corner of the world in which I find myself. There are glorious and fascinating new things to discover, and, surprisingly, some wonderfully familiar things as well.
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