April and Kevin in Kuna Yala, the northeast coast of Panamá

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Our House...the first step of many

Hello,
Just wanted to let you know that we have decided where to live for the next two years. We will be living in an unused "office" building. It was build by a NGO that used to be active here on the island called CDS (pronounced in spanish as casa ce-de-s-ay). It has two 10x12 foot rooms with wooden doors that now have our locks on them. It also has a HUGE roughly 30x30 foot "porch" area.

looking out from the house, that is some TALL grass.

The good: The house is in a good location in the community. Close to the one tienda that has a fridge (yup, could occasionally have a cold drink), close to nieghboors, mostly flat (other than one set of stairs that can make most people rest at the top) walk to the school, and easy access to the water. It also has room for a garden. Also, all that porch space means plenty of room to hang clothes to dry.

We have to do some work on it...namely building a latrine (more on that another day as we are jumping bravely into composting human waste), put in PVC water pipes from the aquaduct, install a sink and shower, and (eventually) build a wall to give ourselves a bit more private space. One step at a time.
The house...note the big boat on the porch...hum not sure what will happen with that.
So far we have changed the locks, hauled lots of stuff to the island (including six 100lb bags of concrete and 70 concrete building blocks, and lots of PVC - thanks Kevin who did all the hauling without compalint or my help!) We also, with help from friends, moved the stuff that was being stored there to another storage location. Kevin is scheduled to work on istalling the waterlines on 10/28 so we will see how that goes. Keep you fingers crossed.



Moving stored stuff with help from friends. The beer bottles are because they store them and then redeam the bottles for the next party....it keeps the price down for next time to have the bottles.

Future bedrooms. Hoping our bed is ready Nov 3. Note the termite nests at the top of the room...those are going to be a fun challenge to get rid of...they always want to come back.

This move will not change our mailing address at all...so keep the love coming to Sanitago!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for all the pictures. It helps connect actual images to your adventure.

Anonymous said...

I think the bug pictures are National Geographic quality! Look forward to watching the house projects. How exciting!
Mom C.

m said...

nice house! gross bugs! love ya :) m