Our House from Joshua's Perspective

Dear Reader,

Here I am in AFRICA! It's not exactly what I expected. There is a lot of poverty, but where we're staying it's great! After we took two seven hour flights, we spent a night in Douala and then Father Michael drove us six hours to Bamenda, the place we are staying now. He told us about Cameroon currency. What I learned is that there are 10,000 notes ($20), 5,000 notes ($10), 1,000 notes ($2), and 500 notes ($1). Also there are 500 coins ($1), 100 coins (20 cents), 50 coins (10 cents), 20 coins (4 cents), 10 coins (2 cents), 5 coins (1 cent), 4, 3, 2, and 1 coins (.8, .6, .4, and .2 pennies). I also learned a little bit of Pidgin-English from the priest. Eat is “Chop” and to use verbs you say, “Dee.” For example, I am eating is “I dee chop”

As we were driving, there were Africans that came up to the side of our car saying, "Hey, you need banana! Bou Preece! Only 100 Franks!" in Pidgin-English and French, trying to sell nuts, fruit, clothes, whatever! When we got to our town we ate dinner at the Archbishop and Bishop's house. I liked most foods, but some weren't my favorite. Then went and were introduced to our new house.

Our family walked in and were surprised at all that we had; huge room including a living room with comfy chairs and a fireplace. We live on a hill, which has disadvantages and advantages. The dis- advantage is the inclined walkway that we have to go up when we go to the Bishops' house, and also when we're coming back from the cathedral, clinic, market, and other places. Another disadvantage is that even though we got a very good soccer ball (or Football ball as they call it here), we have an unlevel backyard with open drains that go down to the village and the ball can get lost or stuck. But the advantage is that by the angle of the hill, our staircase (Yes, staircase!) only has 5 steps, though we have a whole two stories.

We have a dining room table and in the next small room a pantry with the plates, bowls, cups, and silverware we put inside it. In our kitchen, we have a refrigerator with candy, milk the creamer that my mom made, a water bottle etc.  Also in our kitchen we have a sink, a gas stove with no oven–something you would use on a camping trip, and a tin water filter. As we look at the water filter–gray and small, we all aren't totally convinced that it will clean our water so that we can drink it.

In America my mom purchased a good quality plastic water filter that looked pretty impressive and Janice, program director for The Lay Missio-Helpers, said it would clean the water (she's a very trustworthy person). So instead of using the tin filter, we set up the plastic one. We've been using it for the last few days now and I even though I'm not a know-all-about-water professional, I'm thinking it's pretty clean. (Though honestly it's because it doesn't taste like sink water!)

Up our 5 step staircase, if you turn to your left you see a restroom your everyday American toilet. The only things different about it is you have a knob on top of the toilet seat that you pull up to make the toilet flush. The other thing different is that when you pull on the knob, the water flushes differently. (Go! Flush your toilet!) As you can see, it flushes counter-clockwise. Well, here the water flushes first out in the opposite direction of you ÎÎ then on both sides comes back (   ) kind of like this: ( ÎÎ ) We also have a sink though the water isn't drinkable, and a shower that provides hot water.

To the right of the restroom, is the kids' bedroom. We share two beds (I get one to myself. The girls even have a bunk bed!), a sink (again, with undrinkable water), two closets (me being Mr. Independent and the girls sharing one), and a leftover suitcase to put our toys in. The room's actually pretty big even with my sisters in it. Surrounding the beds are bug nets. When the girls first saw them they were like, “(Gasp!) Princess curtains!!!” even though they were green. But two days ago,  my mom presented the girls with pink “princess curtains”. I don't really care about the color, but to the girls pink is as good as you can get! And to the left of the restroom is my parents' room. They share a bed, a sink, and two closets. They also have white bug nets.

Our house is great, our backyard good--big and unlevel, and our neighbors very friendly.

Joshua (age 10)