Our House

Our House on Milimani Road

Our house is a very, very fine house. We live on Milimani Road, a red dirt road just one or two blocks off the paved roads. We're told this is a nice area of town. The wall in front is covered with blooming red, white and purple bougainvillea. The house is beige with red clay roof tiles. The windows have decorative bars built into them. Outside the bars, glass windows can be opened. Inside, screened panels cover the glass areas to keep mosquitoes out. The bars usually have a central circle or diamond through which the curtains can be held up, allowing a breeze through the house. The floors and walls are painted cement. The ceiling is about 10 feet high, which helps keep the interior cool.

Our living room is equipped with a metal table and four chairs, the form stuffing showing through rips. Ian was able to beg/borrow a couch, chair and coffee table from our kind-hearted landlady. We use the box our iron came in as a trashcan and the coffee maker box as the end table. Our bedrooms are off the left of the living room; Ian's room is toward the front and mine is at the back. In our rooms, we each have four closet cabinets that lock and a bed with mosquito nets. I'm using my suitcase as a bedside table and the water filter box as a trashcan. Between the dining room and kitchen is a bath area, including a sink in the hallway, just outside the toilet room and shower room. We have cold water only, so the shower is operated with one red handle. There is a drain in the raw cement floor and nothing else, apart from a plastic hook on the shower door. No soap holder, no towel bar; so we place a chair outside the shower room to hold our towels, clothes, soap and other bathing essentials.

Our kitchen, the exact turquoise of my Grandmother Bohannon's kitchen in Hazelhurst, Georgia, is at the back of the house. It has a huge pantry about seven by seven feet, with shelving on one wall. We joke this will be Frank's room when he visits from Ndewa. It now contains the ironing board, which supports our two water filters. The kitchen has a stainless steel sink with a built-in dish drainer under the window. There is nothing else in the room. No counters or cabinets. We keep the gas cooker on the floor behind the pantry door. The back door is thick, thick metal, with three heavy-duty bolts. Just outside is an area of about eight feet deep leading to the back wall. Trees shade the area. Perhaps one day I'll plant flowers next to the wall.