12th June, 2006 - Our White Concrete Abode
Hello again,
Well here we are. The photo below was taken across the street
from our house. Ours is the one in the middle. In front of the car you can
see a person gate and a shadow of a man peeking out, well that's our
guard. We have a guard 24hrs a day, they work 12hr shifts for 4 days, then
have 4 days off. So all up we have 4 guards keeping things under control. The
double brown gates are just wide enough to get Katie's car through (it's
a little red Kia) and that's the width of the house. Roughly 4 metres wide.
Well don't stand out in the street all day; come in. Our guard doesn't
bite, he doesn't even speak English.
Welcome to our front yard. You just entered to the right of
the picture above. The first thing you see is our generator (it's the blue and
white thing in the bottom right). The power supply here is only on about
two thirds of the time, hence the generator (since our arrival it has been working
every second day for about 8 hours at a time). Everyone has a generator at their house in Luanda.
Behind the concrete wall is a 1000 litre diesel tank; it has to be that
big because the delivery people aren't that reliable either.
Up near the house there is a blue bowl, that's the water pump. Below the
courtyard (underground) there is a big concrete water tank that's filled by the supply pipes
from the street. We then pump it out of there and into the house. It has to be
done this way as the water for the street only runs about half of the time.
Beside the pump, well that's a chair... That's the guards' chair; this
little courtyard is where they spend their days and nights, with the odd
trip out the front of coarse. Come on in, oh it's through the cream door on the left.
Greetings! This was taken from on top of the TV
cabinet which is just inside the front door (behind the guards' chair). From the left, the stairs lead up to the bedrooms. To the right the long open area is our lounge in front, through to the dinning
table and the kitchen at the back.
Here's the same thing, but looking back the other way. I took this one from the kitchen door. The opening on the right is
just a hand basin. A waste of space really - a storage cupboard would have been much more useful.
The next two photos are Katie's kitchen. Nothing
special here, except the stove. Katie travelled to loads of stove shops to
find the stove she wanted. Finally found one that was barely reasonable and had someone from her work
install it. Two days after moving into the house I showed Katie a stove shop
that was just around the corner. Low and behold the perfect stove was
sitting there and it was on sale. Aghhh. Anyway the stove is gas and the
only gas here comes from a bottle, hence the gas bottle sitting on the
floor beside the stove. I'm waiting for the day when Katie's half way
through cooking something and the gas runs out. NOT....
This is our backyard and as you can see it's quite spacious. 3m by 7m
and ALL BLOODY CONCRETE!!!!! Well to try and break up the concrete there
are a few pots in the corner and the pièce de résistance RAZOR WIRE!!!
Gosh I wish we could have this in Melbourne... Anyway out the back is a
room, mostly used for a maid, and a toilet and cold water shower
beside it.
Looking back at the house
you can see Katie's veggie garden. It's the 5 or 6 pots in the corner.
Take note of the attractive steel bars on all of the windows, they
help with that homely feeling, or somewhere for the beans to grow; one or
the other.
From here it's back inside and up stairs. There are two bedrooms, one in the front and one in the
back, and the bathroom and toilet in the middle. Not very exciting so no
photos. The next photo is the view from our bedroom, but only
if you put your face up to the bars.
If you stand back, it actually looks like this).
The last picture is the view from the spare bedroom, looking
out over our backyard towards the centre of town - minus the bars of
course.
Well I hope you liked your visit to our house, feel free to come again,
but make sure you let us know your coming. It gets a bit tricky coming into the country, and we've also got a substantial wish list to load up your suitcase.
Bye for now
Brad
