Adjusting to village life

Hi all! Sorry it has taken so long for us to write again. It has been a busy few weeks with a church conference in Clarens, unpacking and settling in. We have been enjoying making our house here into our home. We have just put some new photos onto our web album- http://picasaweb.google.com/peteandjowest

We are busy adjusting to quite a different way of life. At the moment we have limited electricity supplied by an inverter and battery, which we are charging from the car. We have been able to use this to run a few energy efficient lamps, cell phone chargers and occasionally this laptop for a couple of hours. Neither of us have found that we have missed mains electricity particularly. We haven’t missed TV as we didn’t have one before but Jacob sometimes misses being able to play music on the CD player. We are looking forward to getting a solar panel soon, as this will make it much easier to charge the battery and should give us quite a bit more power so that Jacob’s regular dancing sessions can resume! Our aim is to get our solar system to a point where it can run our fridge and washing machine.

We have definitely found it harder to get used to not having plumbed in, unlimited water especially not having hot water on tap for baths, showers and shaving. On the bright side, our anthracite stove is now working so at least we can wash in a warm house!! Pete has been collecting the water from a tap about 200 metres away and is happy to be getting the exercise. Jacob has come along a few times to “help”. Once he ended up on Pete’s shoulders both ways of the walk adding to the full body work out! Water is generally collected by women here in Lesotho, so people have definitely noticed Pete with his water containers. A few ladies have commented that they would like this to catch on in the village.

We were very blessed and given a heavy duty water filter which seems to be working very well, have a look at this photo which shows a before and after shot of the water we collected one day from one of the not so good pumps in the village http://picasaweb.google.com/peteandjowest/MoveToLesothoEasterWeekendToSat29thMarch2008/photo#5186983774606746146

Another of our challenges has been our toilet, a long drop! Although it would be easy to list the negative aspects of such a toilet, there are also many positives (if you think hard enough!)

1. It reduces the risk of piles in males as there is no temptation to linger with a car magazine
2. It is the perfect sized cubicle for those suffering from agoraphobia – nice and compact
3. Some people may get to like the “farmyard” smell!
4. There is no fear of getting lost, even though it’s a short walk from the house, as passers by can easily see you when you’re standing up
5. A variety of “wildlife” can be spotted within this beautiful vantage point
6. A brisk walk/jog down the garden helps to fight off the sub zero temperatures we are getting at night time here at the moment
   
   Anybody got any others to add to this list?

Surprisingly, despite the many plus points mentioned, we have invested in a small chemical toilet for use inside the house. This has been a bonus on these very cold nights!

Talking about cold, we woke up to a beautiful view of snow on the Maloti mountain tops earlier this week which caused our bedroom temperature to plummet to 8 degrees. The snow still hasn’t completely melted but we are a lot warmer as our stone is now pumping out the heat, hurray!!

Jacob seems to have taken the move in his stride. His favourite past times are riding his rabbit scooter preferably with his little friend Katleho, spotting farm animals wandering past, feeding the neighbours chickens which come into our garden and going for walks with mum and dad (he especially likes to go past the neighbour’s pigs!).