Well, I’m living in the infamous house (on my own!) now.  The first night I actually was scared to sleep there, but now it’s no big deal, it was just unfamiliar noises and a dog walking around outside at midnight.  It’s full of wildlife, or was…I arrived from Thanksgiving to two large nests of biting ants inside the house. Luckily, I had a package of ant/hymenoptera killer (wasps, ants, related) that we had used on some little black bees that lived in the house before.  Now the wildlife (minus the kitten) mostly stays outside.  The birds do like to make a lot of noise on my metal roof, but I think they haven’t been coming inside too much due to the human and feline living there.  I’m still not sure whether the bats have been getting in…yup, bats, the same animal my dad was once so scared of he poured a pot of boiling water over one to kill it.  I haven’t seen any new evidence of bat activity (poop stains that look like little oil stains on my floor), but still I wonder if they come in when I’m asleep.  So, the mosquito net is more like a bat net…since there are thankfully no mosquitos and the smaller insects can easily get through the netting.  It’s also serving as a nice kitty hammock/jungle gym…

 My lovely lovely shower/latrine.  It doesn’t smell, and taking a shower under the bright sun (nope, there’s no roof over the showerhead) in the late afternoon is real luxury, even if that water is cold.  The only issue I can really foresee with this one is that the door is only a shower curtain, and we’re starting windy season.  I can secure it on both sides, but still…you do the math.

My garden is coming along, since I obtained a whole lot of seeds from fellow agriculture volunteers at our recent in-service training.  I think the first thing I’ll eat out of the garden will be radishes, since they only really take a month to grow (and the seeds germinated within 24 hours!).  It’s a race between the radishes and the asian greens (the germinated literally overnight)…which I was super excited that somebody had seeds for!  The package was even in an asian language (I wouldn’t dare guess which, though if you asked a Panamanian it’s “chino”).  I also have an interesting variety of spinach (it’s like, a vine, but I’m sure still full of good vitamins), habañero peppers, green onions, and watermelon planted; there’s kale, eggplant, summer squash and okra in my seedbed, I’m really hoping they come up!!  I am starting a little herb garden as well, my host mom gave me aloe sprouts, and I’ve planted lemon basil, “toronjil” which is a citrusy leaf you can make tea out of, and native cilantro (flat oblong leaves, much hardier, but you need more plants because there are only a few leaves per plant).  As always, if you can find seeds and manage to send them in a way that they won’t be detected in the undoubtedly sorted-through package, I’d totally appreciate them (and promise to share with my ag buddies and community members…I’m definitely in debt for all the seeds and plants they’ve been sharing with me).

Kitchen/oven.  I have an oven…which is a luxury to people here, though they’d all like to have one.  To me it’s an essential to be able to eat real bread (the hot dog bun-like bread that comes to our store twice a week does not cut it for me) and baked foods, so I’m not going to say it’s a luxury for me.  Plus, I totally share the goodies that come out of there (like the banana bread I made yesterday that had bananas my neighbor gave me…).  Speaking of ovens…I think in the dry season I’m going to be building a fire oven and stove in the communal space (they call it a “casa communal” but without walls and a finished floor, for now it’s a space…a work in progress).  These are the stoves/ovens that Peace Corps and many NGO’s focus on, that use much less firewood thanks to some basic physical principles (like insulating and keeping the flame within the structure, and using a chimney).  So be on the look out for that activity.

Oh yeah, little Ray lives without electricity.  I have paid (and agonized over the price) a good amount to wire up my one-room house with three electrical outlets and four lightbulb sockets…but the hardest part is getting an account with the private electric company who will eventually come out and hook me onto the grid.  I tried and failed to do this myself; I needed to have a deed to the property and a rental agreement, but supposedly the owner of my house is coming next week on other business, and she will take care of this.  Still, we don’t know how long the wait will be for the company to come and hook me up.  The good thing about this is that I know what it’s like to be without the electricity, and I don’t feel so bad about having made this choice to dig into some of my US money for the privilege that most volunteers here don’t get…light and power.