Our Home

Off the main road to the airport, down the dusty road over many speed bumps, take a right down the foot path, take a left at the new two room daycare and when you get to the brick wall on the left take a right down the steep hill of the water eroded path, and our house is on the right. You can’t miss it. In a neighborhood full of brick houses our painted house and grass lawn our house stands out.

We weren’t looking for a house as large as we got, but when the price is right and the neighborhood is safe what can you do. We live in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house complete with living room, dining room, indoor kitchen and garage. It has a very small back and side yards. When we moved in it was an empty shell. When you move into an unfurnished house in the states the house at least comes with closets, cabinets in the kitchen, cabinets in the bathroom and maybe even a linen closet. This house, and many I’ve seen in East Africa don’t come with any closets or cabinets! We literally washed the tile floors and put our things on the ground in piles. We have a bathroom pile, a clothing pile, an office pile, and a huge stack or random stuff that doesn’t seem to go into any pile.

Power has been one of our biggest challenges. With nowhere to cook we found ourselves eating many peanut butter sandwiches the first few days. Again the kitchen has nothing in it but some counter space and a sink, the water doesn’t work in that sink though. We bought a hot plate and an electric hot water kettle to begin our time. Our long term plan is to buy an oven but…with an expensive purchase like that we need to make sure we find the right one for a good price.

When the electricity works it comes in anywhere from 50-120 volts. Remember though that Uganda’s power should be coming in at 240v. We have been told that people in the neighborhood have been stealing the electricity which reduces the volts. This means that our hot plate and kettle take about a half an hour to warm up and work.

In addition to our electricity being weak we also have faulty wiring in this house. Our lights in the kitchen will work well but if we turn it off and on again it may or may not come back on. Oh it’s interesting. Also certain parts of the house work at certain times. So the bedroom will have light but the living room won’t. This all applies to the rooms that actually have functioning light fixtures. Our bedroom, the bedroom we are storing things in, and the dining room don’t have any working fixtures so these rooms remain dark once the sun goes down.

Day 6 in our new house and the neighbor children have figured out that we don’t have water flowing in our pipes anymore. Yesterday our reserve tank ran dry and we paid an 11 year old boy about 11cents for a 20 liter jug of water. This morning when we were getting very low on water after using it to shower, boiled for tea, and washing dishes; who shows up on our back porch… two six year old girls and each with a small jug and the boy with his large one. What a blessing. We were happy to part with our 22 cents and quickly collected all the water bearing containers we could find!

There are down sides to living in a house that hasn’t had someone in it for a while. The neighbors. It’s not their fault, this land has been their walking path and playground for quite some time. Although for our own sanity we have discouraged shouting right outside the windows, peeping in the windows, and pooping in our front yard. The random people walking through and the visitors knocking on our back door are welcome.