Well, I've decided that my emails are boring and people
seemed to like my last email about the food here so I think each week is going
to have a different theme about something in Liberia that I will help give you
a little understanding on and just a brief update about my week.
This week was good, it was the end of a very long transfer.
The transfer was two weeks longer than usual because of some people going home.
I thought it might never end but I was wrong. I now have a new companion who is
from Ivory Coast and speaks French. He came the same time as I did though so he
speaks English at this point quite well. We are now also helping to cover
another area that was taken out so we have extra work to do! I am still a zone
leader, but they split almost all the zone leaders up in the mission to be with
a companion who isn't a zone leader. So my companion is actually the district
leader which is interesting.
I'm excited for this new transfer. Things should be fine and
people are starting to go home because the mission has been back open for 2
years now. It's weird.
Okay so the theme for this week is houses. I'll tell you
about the houses in Liberia and what they are like…
Well, for starters they are not like home obviously. I have
not seen a single house here that is made out of wood. I've heard that the
reason why is because if you shoot a bullet through a wood house it would just
go right through and kill you. I don't know if that's really the reason they
use cylinder blocks or not but it is kind of funny... And sad.
So you’ve got different levels of houses here. We'll start
with zinc houses. Zinc houses are made entirely out of zinc. Generally they
have a dirt floor but it is possible that they have some cement flooring. These
houses often have trouble during the rainy season because there will be holes
in the zinc roof and it will drip inside. I always feel really bad when
that happens.
Then you’ve got cement block houses. These are generally
nicer houses; however they can still be looking sorrowful inside. Some nicer
houses like this I've been to have some tile flooring and some decent walls and
maybe a tv or something, so not too bad. Almost regardless of where you live or
what your house is made of though, it will have a zinc roof. Even our apartment
has a zinc roof. It makes the sound of the rain sound really hard when it
starts to come down which is kind of fun.
There is also a house that is essentially made out of mud. I
don't think it is necessarily an adobe hut, but basically you take a certain
kind of mud with water and put it in the form of a block and let it dry in the
sun. Then you build your house with a bunch of them. A lot of people say this
is stronger than a cement house but I'm not too sure about that.
Generally houses in this nicer area that I'm in even have
power pretty constantly from something called LEC. It goes off sometimes but
it's fairly reliable. As far as running water goes though, it is pretty rare to
find running water in someone's house. They have city water but it doesn't
always come on and you most likely need to have a big water tank to fill up so
that you still have water when the city water stops coming. We have both, so we
usually have running water so that's nice.:) Most people draw water from a well
and then store it in a barrel or big bucket in their house.
Okay so that's my housing show for the day. Hope you enjoyed
it and let me know what else you want me to write about in the future!
Elder Bush
The Seitua Fam!
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