September 2011 - Living in Korhogo

After work on the 6^th, the missionary took me and my bag to my new house.  I was really nervous since I really did not know their customs, and I definitely did not know the language well enough.  My Ivorian family was so nice.  Living at the house with my parents were their four kids and occasionally two of their nephews.  They live in a quartier or suburb of Korhogo.  They have a house and outdoor are or courtyard enclosed by a cement wall.  The house is one-level with four small bedrooms, a living room, food closet, and a shower room.  Thankfully we had electricity so that was nice.  Sadly they did not have a fan or air conditioning.  I was sweating all the time, but I made it through.  The shower room is a room with a tiled floor and drain – not an actual shower, but the room where I took my bucket baths.  My family would heat up water and give me a bucket and cup to use to bathe with.  There were no refrigerators or ovens.  The “kitchen” was actually outside.  The courtyard has a cooking area, a well, a garden, a chicken coop and goat enclosure, an outhouse, and outdoor shower.  The toilet was a walled area made of cement with a hole in the middle.  The cooking area had an awning and a store room by it for pots and other cooking essentials.  They used fires to cook all their food.  There was a freestanding thing that used charcoal and could hold a small pot.  They also would put two big stones about half a foot apart so that a pot could rest on top, and they would make a fire between the two with wood.  This is how they would cook their meals every day.  I shared a bedroom with my sister.  She is one year younger than me, and she does most all of the cooking and cleaning.  My dad worked in the lab at the clinic.  My mom sells charcoal at a local market.  They have a few older children, but they were away in bigger cities finishing school.  I had two younger brothers.  One is eighteen and the other one is eleven years old.  Then I had another little sister who is about four years old.  They had two cousins around ten to thirteen that stay at the house.  I talked more with the children.  They spoke a little bit of English, and I only spoke a very little bit of French.  It took time, but we would converse using really simple French.  We would use hand motions and my French-English dictionary a lot.  I learned so much from them, and I loved getting to know them.