Thought you might like some photos of our house. They aren’t perfect but will give you an idea of where we live.
This is it! It is a 3 bedroom home, with a garage and enclosed porch, as you can see! The long square things just below the roof are ventilation spots. Essentially holes in the wall with bricks inside them and screens on the inside of the house. The window is our bedroom. The rooster is not ours.
This is the view to the right. You see: Our yard! A big banana tree, some lovely bushes. Our water tank, a small roped off garden area in front of it. The wall, (not really pictured) which has a small ledge along it halfway up. Overall it is all overgrown but boy do I have great plans for it! We enter our house through the back door so we go through our yard to get there. We have city water which apparently won’t run out, woohoo! We boil the water for cooking but purchase our drinking water. We might buy a filtration system or just stick with purchasing the huge 18L jugs. I don’t think you can see my clothes line but it runs from the water tank towards where I am standing. It is used quite freely by the other people in our compound, however, so we will need to find a workable solution to that issue. As soon as I get a clothes washer I will be cloth diapering again and the line will be a hot commodity! (I am taking a short break from handwashing the cloth diapers because we are handwashing all our clothing and I am not the perfect Proverbs 31 woman yet! I have, however, only cried once when washing poopy diapers. I soon bought gloves and found that that helped tremendously). The chicken is not ours.
This is the driveway that becomes a pond when it rains…because it is the lowest ground around. We live at the bottom of a steep road…need I say more!? We are only about halfway down the hill overall, though, so I can only imagine what happens to the slum areas at the bottom of the hill… The pink house behind is a hostel (essentially an off campus privately owned student dormitory) from which we hear loud music occassionally. It is called “Off Shore Hostel”. The bushes/trees you see are avacado, papaya and a hibiscus. Those are the ones I know, anyway.
This is Ken’s house. He is the landlord’s son and has been a huge help to us. He’s accompanied us to the market, walked with Blair to pay the water bill, and so much more! You can see half the gate, and I think you can make out the people door within it. 
Note the steep incline! When it rains the water rushes down like a waterfall! Well, nearly.
This is the apartment to the left of our driveway. Note the stairs to the 2 homes on the upper level. A wee bit scary. And I saw the tall curved wooden ladder in use yesterday! Thankfully not for a fire escape! Ken had moved it against the papaya tree and had scaled it to get some fresh fruit! A friend of his used a long stick with a forked end to steady the ladder. I hope the papayas were worth it!
Here is the living room part of this room. There is a dining room area right next to me. None of the furniture is ours. We have until December to purchase our own so that is good. AIM had short-termers staying here before us, so we are using all the short-term furniture and stuff, with gratitude! I think tomorrow we will go bed shopping, which will be an adventure…pictures to follow! And when you visit me, I’ll bring you breakfast in our enclosed porch. Doesn’t that sound lovely!?
Let me introduce you to our kitchen! Blair is standing where I stood to take the living room picture, only facing the opposite way of course. The back door entry (via mud room) is to the left of the door frame. The sink with a window is behind me. The outlets are high up in the wall, so we are using a small stool so the cords to our appliances (toaster and kettle) can reeach the outlets! The cupboards are EXTREMELY high up so I have to stand on my tiptoes to reach the handle. I have my glasses in them, and I’m glad it’s just Blair and me, because I can only reach the first two glasses. I need a stool. You can see I am using my pressure cooker on a propane hot plate. It works fine, but uses up most of my counter space so I think we will get a stove (what!? have the use of an OVEN! What joys!) And then put the fridge either in the dining room or squeeeeze it into the wall space to the right (not pictured). Overall it is great, I would like to paint the cupboards some day.
We have been encouraged to hire househelp, as it is considered selfish to not do your part in sharing what you have. IE. because we have more financially than others, it is important for us to give work to others if we can. On that note, we also need to hire a language helper. We would appreciate your prayers that the Lord would provide the right people to be our house helper and language nurturer. Thanks so much for praying for us!
We are headed off this weekend for a retreat. It is a once a year retreat for the AIM missionaries who are in the Kampala Unit. We feel a little silly going so soon after arriving, but are looking forward to meeting all the other AIM missionaries in our area. Next year we’ll be probably be needing the “retreat” aspect more than this year. Blair has been asked to lead worship.
And for the pictures you have all been waiting for…
On a house note: you can see the dining room table behind Soleil. I have a sink in my dining room! The chair is right in front of the sink, but you can see the tiled area where the sink is…anyways, it is a very classic Ugandan thing to have a sink the dining room, at least in the city! Makes handwashing, well, handy! And the hallway leading to the 3 bedrooms is to the left of Soleil.
So as you may know, names mean a great deal to me and I am happy to announce that I have acquired another one. I will keep you all in suspense as to what it is so you will come back and read my next post.
Haha.
Love,
Aletha Kwagala (for Blair Magezzi and little Sunshine too)
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