My First Home...

And I already understand why my parents don't want to move into a newly constructed home again! All Joking aside though, my house is wonderful and tiny (3.9 x 3.3 meters) and centrally-located in town and, most importantly, mine!

Here is the view of my house from outside my gate!

This is just inside the gate. The roof is layers of palm fronds tied to a support structure underneath.

Here is the backside of the front door looking at my kitchen. The tall silver guy on the left is my water filter.

This picture is taken from the same spot turned 90 degrees left looking into the next room. There's a map on the wall to the right of Madagascar.

 This is my bedroom. My bed and mosquito net are on the right, and straight ahead is my set of shelves where I store my junk.

This shot shows the underside of the roof so you can get an idea of how the palm fronds are secured down. Also, vaulted ceiling because I'm fancy!

 This is the view out my back door leading to my WC! The pathway is great and has a nice little roof to keep me dry and clean coming out of my shower.

 This is my kabone (malagasy for bathroom). In my time so far in the Peace Corps I have come to the conclusion that everybody poops in a hole in the ground in this country, but I do have to say that I poop in a very nice hole in the ground!

This is my ladosy (malagasy for shower). In the hanging baskets are my toiletries and on the ground just out of sight on the right are my two shower buckets. To date I have yet to miss hot water when taking a shower!

 But naturally I can't not want to improve my house, so here are a few projects I've finished so far:

My door needed a handle to aid in the opening and closing process so I whittled one using a Gerber multi-tool given to me as a gift before I left that has a great little knife on it!

 The entrance to my house can get really dirty and muddy and gross, so I thought a good idea to help alleviate some of that would be pavers. The stones were just laying around nearby so I took them and laid them out.

 Here you can see the finished product, and off to the right near the gate you can see the shovel I used. The ground is somewhere around concrete hard, so with that shovel as my sole tool it took me six days of work to get this all finished!

Here is a little spice rack I made out of some scrap wood laying around. I only wish I had a drill and some screws to secure it a little better, but now that the glue is dry its pretty solid so it shouldn't be too big of an issue!

Of course as I get more tools, I will start tackling some bigger projects, but for now that's about all I've got accomplished.

So what else did I do in my first month in Sadjoavato? I'm glad you asked. I joined the Sadjoavato Volunteer Fire Brigade!

Here's the brigade on the side of a local hill determining the best course of action to take in containing the blaze.

 And here is another shot of the hill taken after most of the work was finished. The primary method of fire fighting here is taking a branch with a bunch of leaves on it and beating the fire with it until it goes out. Of course you can't extinguish a raging brush fire like that, but here the main goal is keeping it away from people and houses.

Lets take a look at some of the local animal population now!

 Here is a gecko. These guys are awesome! I have about 10-20 of them that live in my WC and house. They eat cockroaches and other gross bugs and things. Also, they look pretty sweet.

And here is the neighborhood puppy squad. These three little guys were born a few weeks before I arrived, and now I get to play with them and watch them grow up!

 This one is my favorite. I've named her Lime, but the locals don't name dogs, so its just what I call her. She is super cute and rambunctious and a biter, so watch your fingers and pants!

 She has taken a liking to me because I've given her some food every now and again, and also I pet her and play with her. Just the other day we played a fun game of Chew-My-Gate which she excels at!

 I'm not here for just fun and games and firefighting and puppies though. I also teach at this school, CEG Sadjoavato! We have a pretty great little school with four rooms and two offices. Three of the rooms are in the building above and the offices are at the far left side.

And here is the fourth classroom for the 6th graders! Its definitely got a better breeze than the other rooms!

On my walk to school everyday, I'm lucky to be able to pass by this magnificent little piece of Malagasy engineering! Keeping fields irrigated is very important so the locals designed this water bridge of natural materials to keep water flowing to where it's needed. When there's too much water on the bridge it overflows so the field doesn't flood and it turns this little bridge into a spectacularly beautiful waterfall too!

That's about all I've got for now. It's been a great first month at site getting to know everyone and I can't wait to see how this town will develop in the coming two years!