My house is a very, very fine house.

Most volunteers build their own homes with the help of community members. It is a great way to bond with the people you´ll need to be working with, plus, how cool is it to say you built your own house? Throughout training and early on during my time in-site, I thought that´s what I would be doing too.

But eventually I decided to rent, and I think it was certainly the better decision. First, if I were to build a house, I would build it very close to where the rented house would be. I would have to worry about getting all the supplies, installing water, possibly building a tap stand and bathing area (or else bathe in the river for two years... ick), and spend a whole heap of my own money. Peace Corps doesn´t really give us money to build our own houses, and volunteers inevitabily end up withdrawing lots from their accounts at home. We only receive a $300 ¨settling-in allowance,¨ presumabily to buy things like a mattress, pots and pans, a gas tank, range top, etc. My friend who is building his own house nearby estimates he will spend $1,300, including everything, and that is with some generous donations from his community in terms of wood, labor and supplies. Living with host families is difficult, so I wanted to be able to move in as soon as I was allowed. The family who owns the rented house has another, and doesn´t spend much time in this one, so I was able to keep stuff there when I moved to another host family, and start buying things poco a poco and keep them there until I move in for good. Renting was the better option.

The house I will be living in is close to the road, so I hear a lot of trucks and buses whizzing by, which is not exactly what I pictured when I imagine my Peace Corps life. But the proximity does make things convenient when I want to bring supplies back or catch the first bus out early in the morning. I also have neighbors whose proximity can be a good thing, but also feels a bit too much, with visitors constantly coming by, and my neighbor Seña being able to look from her cooking area and see onto the porch. I am hoping one day the novelty of staring at me and visiting constantly will wear off. In the mean time, I will keep the porch gate locked, and start turning away over-eager visitors.

I joke with my friends that the house is something of a Ngobe mansion. It is definitely nicer than all of the houses around it, and is even painted, which is a rarity in these communities. The bottom floor (yes there are two floors... another rarity) is a fenced-in porch with a concrete floor, the kitchen, an outdoor sink and a bathroom area with a toilet and an indoor shower. I live in a community where only a handful of houses have latines and my house has an indoor-flush toilet. Kind of ritzy. The upstairs floor has four rooms. I am sequestered in one small one due to nighttime rat visitors in the larger bedroom in which I had hoped to sleep.

(Note: Rat tips? They eat the bait from my rat trap and leave. Their is rat poop on my food shelf, and until I boxed everything up, they were munching through soup and coffee packets, crackers, anything. Rats are disgusting disease carriers and I would like them to go.)

Here is the front of the house.

Here is where I shall make my culinary masterpieces:

Here is a room upstairs, where I will read/study/hide from children:

So yeah, the house, if you can call it fancy is a lot nicer than all of the other houses in the community, which makes me feel a little more visible and slightly awkward, because no one can believe that I´ll be only one person living in such a big house. Parents have offered their children to ¨accompoñar¨me in the nights. Check my photo album for more photos of the house and a bunch of other stuff.