The White House of Pleebo

At the beginning of September, we were visited for the first time by some staff of Peace Corps.  ZayZay, our training manager, saw our house and named it “The White House of Pleebo.”  There you have it, family and friends; we are the white women who live in the white house.  And our house is super nice… I would argue, in fact, that we have the nicest house in all of the volunteer’s houses in Liberia.  (But my opinion may be a little biased.)

First of all, we have a huge yard.  Lots of space for a garden, which is awesome, too!  We have a big front porch and a big back porch.  We sit on the front porch and work on lesson planning, read books, or just talk, while the back porch is where we do all of our cooking.  While we could cook inside on the coal pot, it is much nicer to cook outside and not have to worry about making a mess or anything. 

Inside, we have a very nice bathroom, a good sized kitchen, our two bedrooms, a huge guest room/storage space, and a big living room.  When we moved in, the house was brand new; the walls were freshly painted, the floor was covered with floor mats or tile, and the PTA had purchased curtains for all of the windows.  Additionally, we were welcomed with a dining room table and four chairs, a small table and chair for the kitchen, two coal pots, a bag of coal, two cooking pots, a cook spoon, silverware, and a few bowls and plates for us to use.  We are very fortunate to have such a supportive PTA here at the school, and all of this support made our move to Pleebo very easy. 

Sarah and I purchased our mattresses the first day here, and a few weeks later, we received our bed frames from a local carpenter.  He built into them a locked space, which is useful for storing valuables or anything else we’d like to lock up.  We also ordered shelves for our rooms and small tables from a different carpenter; when we received them, we were pleasantly surprised to find they were much nicer than we had expected.  We put one shelf in the kitchen, one in my room, and one in Sarah’s room; with the small tables, we put one in each of our rooms and then one in the living room (and we also take it outside if we are doing work on the front porch). 

In our first week here, we found out that we have a neighbor who runs his generator nightly and who is willing to provide current to those nearby.  After discussing it, Sarah and I decided to get current to our house; it is a luxury, sure, but it’s not too expensive, and the security it provides to us is nice.  Every night from 7-11 pm (or thereabouts), we have current to our house.  We chose to only hook up one bulb in our bathroom and one outlet in our living room; this allows us to shower in a well-lit area (something I never realized I missed) and to charge all of our electronics in the safety of our own home. 

We have since been busy making small upgrades to our house, as time and money is permitting.  We now have a fully functioning bathroom (look for a blog post on this), we have laundry lines hung up in the guest room, Sarah has a beautiful mural painted on her wall, and I have hung up all of the pictures I brought with me for small decoration in my room.  Additionally, we have our mosquito nets hung, which ensures that the mosquitoes stay far away from us while we are sleeping.  (Trust me, that is an important thing.)

My room - with all of my stuff still packed 

Our kitchen

The bathroom - hooray for bucket baths!

Guest room/Laundry room

Living room
(Notice the water filter on the table)

Sarah's room - before her mural

Our house is very slowly becoming a home, and every night, I am counting my blessings to live in such a beautiful home, in such a beautiful community, with wonderful neighbors and a supportive site mate.  We have already lived here three months, and I cannot believe how quickly time has gone by.  I can only hope time will slow down a little so I can really enjoy all that Pleebo has to offer.