hut improvement

In the past few weeks I finally got around to all that “make your hut your home” stuff they told us to do in our first three months at site. I had delayed mostly because I wasn’t sure that I would be in my hut this long; when I first arrived, in November, and construction on the batiment had just begun, my family assured me that as soon as this first one was done, and Ami had her wedding, then they’d knock down the second row of huts and build a second batiment—all before the rainy season came in June.

Riiiight. If I’d understood village time then like I understand village time now, I’d have tiled the douche.

Here’s what I’ve done:

Gotten my mattress out of the way, since it’s too hot to sleep on right now (that’s it at the top, resting on ropes), and gone from beach motif to apocalyptic flames:

Painted the cabinent doors and tac-board with chalkboard paint:

Dug, placed borders, and seeded two beds in the backyard; filled broken pounders with dirt to make flower pots; and placed cinder blocks as stepping stones from the hut to the douche (though they’re already breaking apart since they’re more dirt than cement):

Painted the plastic lining the shade structure roof: (Those are Happy Clouds, not spots on a blue cow.)

Adventures in farming continue, despite minor hiccups for the demo plots like not planting the millet until last week, using 1/10th the correct amount of fertilizer for the corn, and children pulling up the stakes marking the bean field.

On the other hand, I found a hedgehog in my hut last week: