Our House in Gesses part 2

Our living room/dining room.

This picture was taken from the front door facing the back.  Our main room is long and narrow so not quite sure what to do with the space as there are doorways coming off both sides. 

This is the right side of the house and has 4 doorways.  The first one is Kalia & Ariana's room, the next is Joel's room, then the bathroom and then the office.  They are all quite small rooms but they will work.

This is the left side of the house and has two doorways.  One is our master bedroom and the other is the kitchen and pantry.  These rooms are larger which is helpful.

The girls room. 

Kalia on top, Ariana on the bottom.  The mosquito nets are quite cumbersome but they help us feel secure from bugs and creatures.   Actually we are surprised at how few bugs there are considering it is rainy season. 

There is just enough room for a cupboard but it is pretty dark in this room so we are planning to paint it.

Joel's room.  

It is about the size of a walk in closet but he enjoys his own space.  He likes to sit on the desk/shelf and play or look out the window.  Very little time is actually spent indoors.

Our bathroom. 
This is the view from the doorway.  There is a flush toilet though it doesn't actually work so we use buckets for flushing.  During rainy season, there is plenty of water but later we will use only grey water for flushing (or the outhouse). 

For some reason, a bathtub was installed and not a proper shower so we don't really enjoy washing bodies at the moment.  It uses too much water and takes too long to actually fill up the bathtub so we have bucket baths. 

The kitchen.
This picture is taken from the doorway.  On the left there are 2 closets for food storage.  The butagas stove and washing up area has 3 windows above them.  This allows for good ventilation.  The stove is pretty small.  It has 3 gas burners and one electric burner (which we cannot use) and the oven also runs on gas but takes a long time to heat up. 

We have been given a solar fridge (it is still here in Addis) and that will hopefully fit at the end of the counters.  We also have a solar oven which we can use when the rainy season ends so I am looking forward to saving butagas (since we need to bring that from Addis) and experimenting with the power of the sun. 

It is long and narrow and has lots of cupboards and a long counter to dry dishes on or do food prep.

Kalia is my #1 crepe and pancake maker.  Since dry cereal is expensive and not available locally and bread is a luxury, we have porridge or pancakes for breakfast.  

Master Bedroom.

There is a double bed with a mosquito net.  I really have a love/hate relationship with these nets.  They are great protection from creatures but it is hard to make the bed and it is hard to get in and out of bed especially in the middle of the night.  The bedroom is just wide enough for a double bed and space for getting out on each end.  The length is longer and so we have Sonia's playpen at the end of our bed. 

We also have a single mattress for Nadia on the floor.  She is posing under her net.  The dark wood is the closet door which has some shelving and a set of drawers that just fits inside.  The tile of this floor is covering plywood which has been eaten out by termites so we have to be careful how we walk.  We told the children not to jump on the floor or they might fall through.  Of course, Joel tested it at some point and happily told us that it didn't happen.  Needless to say, Rolf will be replacing the plywood and tile in 1/3 of the floor upon our return.

Our office.
This room could be used as a guestroom or a 3rd bedroom but we decided to use it as a shared office/music room/homework room.  We cleaned out an old desk that was previously used by rats in the Gumuz school building.  Rolf will replace some of the drawers as they smelled.  This office has a door that leads out the side of our house. 

This is a picture taken from inside the office and shows our power invertor.  We have 2 systems of power that run off solar power.  We have solar panels on our roof that charge car batteries on the back verandah.  We have a 12volt system that runs all our lights at the moment.  We have a 110V system using the invertor shown.  It converts it from 12V to 110V and powers all our sockets and the remaining lights.  The fridge will run off 12V and I think our washing machine will somehow run off of the 12V as well.

 Some really great shelving in this office which we are using for books, homeschool materials, office materials and medical supplies.

The top light is a 12 V light and we have one of these in each room.  The second light is a 220 bulb which is presently not in use since the 220 system was ruined in the past.  These lights will be replaced by 110 V lights when we return to Gesses.

Hopefully these pictures help you envision our home and lifestyle.  Possibly you will have more questions than before and that is okay too!

The ripped screen on our back porch which will be replaced upon our return.

We use the well water alongside the Gumuz for drinking water.  This well is the closest and is about 1/2 mile away.  We can use a donkey to carry several jerricans, take the landcruiser and fill as many jerricans as we want or we can carry them by hand.  Rolf prefers the latter when he can.