Home depot

My new house is right next door to the GACP field station/office/house. It’s maybe 12 or 14 feet square, divided in half and then one of the rooms in half again: one small room (in front, to be my bedroom with another, more distant view of Nyiragongo LINK) and two smaller rooms. The walls are mud with plaster on the inside, the floor is cement (most floors here are dirt), and the roof is tin (most here are ceramic tile). The garden behind the house is huge and I can’t wait to plant some vegetables and herbs (the only veggies in the market here are the occasional cabbage, corn or avocado). I’ll leave some of the banana trees in place but I’m going to get rid of the ones that block my view of Lake Kivu.

Today we met with the landlady, who was wearing a Home Depot sweatshirt - perfect! We discussed the alterations to be made: the 2 windows will be expanded and they’ll put in metal doors (with windows, giving me 4 windows). They’ve already put in a cement gutter around the house. I’ve put in a request for the walls to be painted white or yellow (many walls here are painted a torquoise-green, ugh). They’re going to build a bamboo fence around the property, joining it to the fence around the GACP property, and we’ll put a gate between the two. They need to build a toilet and shower, but in the meantime I can use the ones on the office property.

I’m hoping to be able to move in the week of the 20th, after IST.