We built a house

          My daughter Ariel motivated me to write when she wrote a post on here.  If you get a chance check out her thoughts on "travel with ariel".    We've moved since my last post.  Within about two weeks Chris and I built our house.  Not a finished product.  But finished enough to get visitors stopping to come in and take pictures.  I'm starting to notice this becoming a habit.  With our bikes first and now this.  I don't see being "normal" in our future.

Here's how we did it.  

Chris built the frame out of small local trees and the roof from bamboo.   For the walls we layered chicken wire and then mixed 3 parts cement to 1 part sand.  In my mind this seemed simple.  Just finding the right sand here took several trips (they call it dust, how was i supposed to know?). Water had to be brought about 250 ft. from a well in buckets.  Then I got the ratio wrong at first so chris had to mix and mix more and more cement and water than humanly possible.  Meanwhile there's about 12 kids grabbing our tools and cement while we're working.  And the cement didn't adhere as well it did in the pictures I saw online.  But we managed to perfect it a bit while getting our hands eaten and torn raw from the cement.  Then when it got dark we biked 2-3 miles home and started again in the morning.  I'm pretty sure i lost a few pounds in this process and Chris and I had more fights in the 2 weeks than our 10 years of marriage! 

 Our first night sleeping in our abode was interesting.  Only half the walls were built and the rest was either open or covered loosely with a thin plastic.  It was sooo windy those first few nights and the plastic roof and walls kept flapping in the wind, I kept waiting for the roof to lift off in the middle of the night!  We definitely had a good breeze going through.  At the time i found none of this humorous...

first night

My brother Mike arrived right after this and decided to stay until December.  It's been an adjustment for him but we are encouraged to have him here and have someone who understands us.  Part of the walls are still not finished but much more secured than our first night here.  During the cool season here it can get chilly at night and the moist cold air goes right through to your bones.  So we bundle up the best we can with blankets, sweatshirts, socks.. Normal chores require a lot of work.  Water has to be brought from the well for dishes, flushing the toilet, showering, and laundry when our rainwater runs out.  Plus, the rainwater is brown because of the palm leaves on the roof and is starting to smell funny so i prefer the well water.  Laundry means throwing clothes in a bucket and stomping on them and then squeezing and rinsing.  I do my fair share of complaining...haven't got that part down yet.

Chris has been able to put together some beds and bunk beds for our neighbors in the back yard which has been an encouragement for him.  They have been sleeping right on the ground for who knows how long and it make us happy to see them happier.  The funny thing about our house and homemade furniture is how happy it makes the Tongans.  They all say it reminds them of how it was growing up and they can't believe a couple of palangi's are living with so few comforts.  God has been using this for the Tongans to respect us and connect with us better.  I do not enjoy this way of living, but it won't be forever.  And right now Chris is tiling our bathroom floor, one more step towards it feeling a bit more sanitary and nicer.

We hope to visit the U.S. in 2014, until then we are working on finding and applying for grants to start bringing in skateboards and building a transportable skate park to reach the kids here.  Everything takes time and patience.  Especially here, nothing is done fast.  So we take one slow slug step at a time.  A few back.