We have what they call a galley kitchen. Howard and I have to turn sideways to pass each other in the kitchen. Ha! The cutting board is my work surface “counterspace”. We have room for the microwave and toaster by putting them on top of the refrigerator. The missionaries put together a nice cabinet & hutch that holds the dishes, but not much else.
So besides the strange ingredients, the work area is a challenge in cooking.
The living room is a nice size with room for the couch and a table and chairs. I also hand sewed some curtains for the windows. They were already sewn only they were too long and had to be hemmed for all four windows. We were quite fortunate that the curtain rods were already put up by the missionaries. Attaching anything to these cement walls is a challenge, especially with limited tools.
There is not sufficient space or facilities for the washing machine. So we put the washer on a slab of cement outside the house. Howard put together the connections to make a water hose to run a cold water line to a tap outside the house. We run a garden hose from the tap in the front yard. We bought an orange electric cord and run it from the outside through the bathroom window to the electric outlet on the other side of the bathroom when we want to run the washer. We drain the water into the little garden area behind the house. We are very grateful to have this old broken washing machine because there are no Laundromats in this town. The elders ask different members every week to wash their clothes for them. This is difficult for some of the elders. We have been washing the clothes for one of the elders every week now.
The members also supply one meal a day for the elders. This is usually the afternoon meal around 1:30. They usually serve soup, salad, and then a main plate (many times this is spaghetti). The people here are poor and so the elders don’t always get meat. Breakfast is usually oatmeal or bread and jam. They eat “once” (own-say) which is a snack around 5PM. They eat again after 8PM which is usually a drink like tea and bread and cheese.
We have clotheslines running every direction from pole to pole under the carport. It is a great place on a day like today when it is raining cats and dogs and the back garden area is nothing but mud. Howard says the ground in very fertile and would grow a lovely garden but we must stay focused on our work so Howard reluctantly agreed to not spend time growing a garden. This resolve quickly vanished when members began bringing Howard bedding plants of tomatoes, lettuce, and basil. So now we have a garden. The small dirt yard is fenced with a high fence. But we feel safe. It is a good neighborhood. Not wealthy but the people take pride in their neighborhood and we believe all the thieves are in the big cities like Santiago. They collect the garbage three times a week. We just hang our garbage bags on the fence and they come and collect it in garbage trucks. We have a lovely little park in front of the house with swings and a slide and benches to sit on and visit with friends.
Howard put in a new shower head and we have an inline water heater. So we can begin the day with a lovely hot shower. We bought towel racks, the mission office gave us a mirror, and we bought a little holder with 4 plastic baskets for our bathroom toiletries. So we are very happy in our little house. It is very comfortable and fixed up nicely for us. It took more than a week to get moved in, but now we think it will work well for us and we can spend more focus on the work we came here to do.
We walk everywhere we go. Sometimes, when we have lots of goods to carry we catch a collectivo to get home. It was a fun day when we rode home with both windows open and the 2X4’s sticking out the windows. Ha! A collectivo is a regular 4 door sedan. Only it runs a set route like a bus. There are 6 different routes that are identified by a number displayed on top of the car. You just wave them down and they stop and pick you up. You tell them where you want to get off along their route. They cost 250 pesos per person, so for $1 we can ride home from town. We are spending 3 or more hours a day just walking where we need to go. It takes us half an hour (one way) to walk to the main part of town to do shopping or go to the District (Stake) Center chapel. It takes us about 20 minutes (one way) the other direction to get to the Paniahue Chapel where we go to church.