Our living situation in Tangbaya

January 31 2012

Our situation in Tangbaya is really very good. Our guests and
villagers are extremely nice. Tucker and I are always 'escorted' by
the Chairman of the community school and his brother Ali, one of the
teachers there. Used to always having someone around in West-Africa
(something I found a bit hard to get used to during the first project
back in 2004), their presence not only makes me feel welcomed and
accompanied, but it is also helpful because they speak Krio and a bit
of English. The women in the household we're staying in are all wives
of a men who is now away in Freetown. They are lovely in our
interaction and also help us with house chores, since we're busy
working with our computers and teaching kids in school.

The house looks quite occidental from the outside, as if made with
bricks, then plastered and painted. However, the bricks are made of
mud, the walls are short and end unevenly and there is no ceiling, but
a tin roof that covers the whole single-floor building and amplifies
any noise made within. Most of the floor inside is made of hard dirt,
not wood, porcelain or anything like that. The room I occupy has tiles
on less than one third of it's surface, the rest is still dirt. The
majority of the dirt part is covered by the bed, which is about queen
size and too short for me, while the couple feet of dirt I step on on
regular basis is partially covered by a thin cloth that in all
likelyhood used to be used knotted around a woman's waist as a long
skirt.

Outside, there are three smaller constructions sheltered by thatch
rather than tin. They are open on the sides, without walls, so the
roofs come far down to prevent water from coming in during the rainy
season. These kinds of constructions are typically kitchens and often
times there are as many as wives in a household. Right now during the
dry season, though, these particular women prefer to cook in a common
area outside, in the shade of the mango trees that surround the
compound.

Besides the school chairman and teacher, lots of people come see us
daily, just to greet us or because they are curious about these white
people and their computers. There are neighbors, there are chiefs,
there are brothers and nephews and wives or children of X and Y. Today
several people came to greet us and let us know they're leaving town
for a few days, one of them M'bom, my homonym (M'bom is the Mani name
I was given in Moribaya in 2005).