Our home

Our home sits on a hill but then so does everything in Kundiawa. It takes 10 minutes to climb a rocky road from the centre of town. It is a very pretty house on stilts. Below the house in a traditional hut sleep two house boys. That is how they are referred to but in fact they are two delightful, fit young men who we discovered today are married. There is nothing apparently they will not do to help us in an outside manly sort of way. Their great benefit is the level of security they add to the house. On our street everybody knows everybody and looks out for each other. As we walk to work in the morning we greet everybody and they greet us, children, old, young, those sitting selling a few objects by the road, mothers and fathers tending their "pikininis" the smartly dressed on their way to work, even those in 4*4s as they carefully pick their way down the hill. Nobody can be missed out for fear of causing offence. This is an oral culture where relationships are everything. Naturally Heather and I are a major source of interest. We are the first white people ever to have lived in this compound.

The house itself has a raised verandah off which there is an outside toilet and separate wash room with a brand new washing machine, water boiler and shower. Then there is the door into a large living space with a fridge-freezer, new electric cooker and double gas burner for the days the electric fails, double sink and all new crockery including the now famous bone china teapot and tea cups. The room also has a dining table, comfortable chairs, two arm chairs and three seater settee. We have a double bedroom with en-suite, no door to the en-suite so it's the latest fashion in open plan loos. Then there are two other rooms one with a single bed for guests. This is volunteer luxury. The garden has banana trees, a deep drop loo for additional dysentery emergencies but one would never make it up the hill in time.

The hard working house boys have in one week started to build a patio. Hard work in the UK but it is unlikely that we would go to the river and dig the sand and gravel out of the river bed, collect a huge pile of boulders from the river for hard core and after having transported them by truck, barrow them up a drive so steep it severely challenged a Land Cruiser. Meanwhile a plumber has fitted the washing machine, the electrician has refitted sockets so the leads for the boiler and washing machine can now reach. All this is impressive responsiveness and the neighbours could not have been kinder. Heather and I feel embarrassed and very grateful for our luxuries, when we came home one lunch-time our neighbour was washing her clothes in the tiny stream that acts as a drain by the road outside our house. Many things can be found in that stream the cutest of which are some absolutely enchanting pigs.

I think our electrician may need a return visit. I became a little doubtful when returning to use the loo at lunch-time, an essential part of the daily plan, I found the electrician hiding a bottle of root beer behind his back in classic naughty boy style. I asked him if he was drunk. He jumped to attention denying any impediments. I pointed to the three additional cans in the plastic bag on the verandah and forbade him to drink more until the job was complete. Sadly that evening when we plugged in the washing machine the socket fizzled and sparked and we rapidly pulled the plug. The next day the socket was dead. It feels like a recurring theme, appearing drunk in charge of _____ , fill in the blank. This week, drunk in charge of a screwdriver.