Home At Last

We moved into the house we’re renting last week and so haven’t had much time or access to internet to give updates about how things are going.  We are very happy to be moved in though!  We finally unpacked and found a lot of things we forgot we packed, and have now been able to get the materials out to start school with the kids. 

To give you a little description: our house is near the edge of town where houses are popping up fast, but we still have a lot of empty lots around us.  It has three bedrooms, one of which we use for school, a dinning room attached to the living room, and a kitchen with a pantry (but no shelves whatsoever!).  There are friendly neighbors across the street/alleyway with boys who have slingshots and an interest in climbing trees.  We have almost a dozen fruit trees (mostly too young to give fruit) squeezed inside the wall that surrounds the house.  The yard has 0% of the grass to mow that we had in the States, but is mostly sandy with lots of construction debris and odds & ends.  The house is made of concrete block covered on the outside with a sort of sandy coating that was blasted on wet and the roof is slanted corrugated metal.  We’re the first house on our immediate block to have electricity brought in (thank God for the amazing quickness with which it happened), and in the minority of people who have running water, so people sometimes come in to use our outside hose.  The pleasant surprises have been the tinted glass in the windows which does cool down the direct sunlight a bit and the best flushing toilet I’ve found in Niger so far (you don’t need to pour a bucket to assist it)!