My New Fale

Fale

For two years I lived with a Samoan family…and as many crazy stories I have to share about them, I am sure they have equally as many to tell about me.  I loved living with them because they made my life so simple and easy.  Food was almost always taken care of, the house was always cleaned (or in the process of being so) and there was always people to talk to.  It was real enjoyable. 

Now, I am living on my own (until I can get a lock on the door to my bedroom and then I will have a few roommates).  It is a big house and like all big houses it has a lot of upkeep.   It is nice in some ways to be on my own again, but there is sometimes not enough hours in the day to get everything done.  There aren’t doorknobs on most of the doors, allowing you sometimes to get locked inside a room….A huge problem if you are there by yourself.  Also, mosquitoes swarm into my room, even though there is mosquito wiring on the windows….because I can’t shut my door and there is not mosquito wiring on the other windows. One of the bathrooms currently doesn’t have water for the toilet.  The electricity runs on cash power, in which you put money on the meter to let the electricity run, and when your money runs out, your power also runs out.  And because of having a full size refrigerator, my money goes quickly!  I haven’t been there a week and have already run out of power twice!  (The first day and again today.)  The box to check and see how much power I have left is so high up that I have to climb on the windowsill to check it. 

The other difficult problem I am having is that I loved half of my stuff into my new house the day I arrived, but because the Peace Corps office hours and my office hours conflict with each other, I have been unable to retrieve my boxes.  

But the worst of my problems is in my kitchen.  I currently have a giant slip and slide there….and no one can figure out while.  Each day it looks as if several gallons of water have been spilled on the floor and as many times as I try to mop it up, more and more water shows up.  It seems strange because it is coming from under the carpet (not real carpet, Samoan carpet!)  I have had so many days of sliding around almost falling.

With all of these problems to start off, it makes me miss having a nice stable family.