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| Our truck in the front courtyard the day we arrived. |
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| And the other direction. |
"Missionary" is on the front and back of the truck. It helps going thru police checkpoints. And everyone knows who you are!!
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| Living Room. |
Front door at the right, taken from dining room. All of the furniture was made in Freetown. When we came to Bo , only our bed came. The rest came 5 days later. The couch, along with the guest bed mattress, arrived uncovered on top of a mini-bus, and the other furniture inside. The sides were only canvas covered... things were a little dusty after the 164 mile trip.
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| Kitchen. |
We have a "contaminated" area and a "clean" area in the kitchen. The contaminated area has the produce and eggs that have not been cleaned yet (soaked in bleach). Once cleaned they either go in the fridge or into the clean area.
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| Stove and dryer in kitchen. |
The dryer makes great counterspace. It is not plugged in and won't be until the electrical wiring is re-done to accommodate it. The stove is propane. We brought a standard size cookie sheet from Freetown but it was too large for the oven. Elder Schlehuber took care of that so it will fit in the oven now... but there is no oven thermometer and I haven't yet had the courage (or time) to see what happens with peanut butter cookies. Soon, though...
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| Dining room hutch. |
The "hutch" is a bookcase. The blue containers (matching the wall of course) is a dish strainer cut in half so it would fit. No drawers in the kitchen but that's okay because the flatware (from Egypt) can be kept tightly sealed in the containers from Thailand. Everything here is from somewhere else except the water tanks... they are made in Sierra Leone.
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| Looking from dining room to living room. |
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| Dining room. |
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| Maskita proofing (Mosquito in Krio). |
The white net is polyethelene netting treated with permethrin. It's a bed net that we have cut up to stuff in the cracks wide enough for mosquitoes. The black between the screen frame and wall is black plastic bag strips... the bags you get when you go shopping. They are stiff enough and crinkle just enough to fill the gaps. It is working well.
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| Maskita net. |
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| Elder Schlehuber at work before tying his tie. |
The bedroom is large enough for a long work table with 2 chairs. We each have our computers set up there, can have the windows open during the day (but not much breeze so far). It's very pleasant. There is a/c in the room but it is not working... yet.
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| Front gate. |
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| Back door area. |
To the right is the back of our apartment. Open windows are the kitchen. A back door opens into the gated walkway between the 2 buildings. To the left is the Bo East Zone Leaders apartment. The house is surrounded by the cement "ditch" (sounds like The Beverly Hillbillies... "cement pond"). I'm not sure that it will be adequate during the rainy season, but I guess we will find out.
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| A nice deep well with a hand and electric pump... and a lock on it. |
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| The top of the compound wall. |
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| Elder Schlehuber in front of the generator building. |
The generator is a nice 13KV generator. The property is fairly deep with the generator placed way in the back corner. It's deafening inside the building but there is another high wall between this building and the front part of the property. If I listen hard in the house I can hear it, and even outside it is not really loud, not even noticeable.. That is nice.
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| Our generator, our power source. |
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| Our 500 gallon water tank. |
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| Burn pit. 8 ft deep. |
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| Seashell walkway. |
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| Detail of shell walkway. |
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Shells are used everywhere, even around the water pump.
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| The elders kitchen, separate from living quarters. |
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| The elders cut screen for all the holes in their kitchen. |
Their kitchen is really an outdoor cooking area. There are "plenty maskitas". So they put screen in all the holes all around the building. Then they were eating breakfast one morning, watching a lizard on the screen when a big bird swooped in and snatched the lizard and flew away with the lizard still clutching the screen.
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| Baptismal font?? Outdoor bathtub?? |
No one has figured out what this is for. There's a good sized gazebo just to the right. It really looks like a small baptismal font.
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| East side of house, stairs to roof patio. |
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| Detail of tile outside of house. |
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| From our kitchen. |
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| From roof to the front of house. |
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| Gbondo Town road to the north of house. |
This young man lives farther down the road. His name is Andrew and speaks English very well.
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| Stop sign... but no one does... anywhere. |
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| From the roof to the northeast. |
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| A goat on the other side of the road... can't see it much. |
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| Our national power connection. |
This is the power connection from the house to the national power service, Bo-Kenema Power Service. I think we have been on that power for about 30 minutes in the 2 weeks we have been here. They say that in the rainy season we will have more power.
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| Elder Schlehuber picking papaya with a board. |
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| He didn't want to use this stepladder. |
This is in the back part of the compound. The depth of the property is probably 200 feet. You can see the back part of the elders apartment (the blue) and the chimney is in the kitchen building they use. Our house is in front of that.
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| Success! |
Other plants in the compound. Since it's the dry season there are not a lot of blooms. There are rose bushes, hibiscus and a lot of other things I don't know the names of. I suspect that in the rainy season there will be an abundance of growth and blossoms.
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| Coleus. |
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| 3 small pineapple on this plant. |
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| Outside the kitchen. |
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| Plantain... ready in a few weeks. |
