New house, new life

After a four-and-a-half hour bus ride I arrived exhausted at the campus of the Africa School of Missions. The campus is split between ASM and Hands at Work in Africa, the organization I now work for. George and Carolyn, the founders of Hands at Work, were originally students at ASM in the mid-nineties.

The fact that I had come down with a slight bug sometime during the madness of my last two days in Canada didn’t help my adjustment to the new environment. My new place of residence, 'Westmont Cottage' as they call it, is little more than a small house in the back corner of the campus, shared by six of us. To say that it’s 'not fancy' by my usual standards is a bit of an understatement. I think there are prisons in Canada that have nicer rooms than mine. It's a bit of a change.

To be honest, I had no preconceptions anyway, and I was surprised that the adjustment was even the slight bit difficult. When I left I didn’t expect to have any problems adjusting. I remember being a little depressed my second day in, wondering to myself what the hell I was doing here for the better part of a year... Nevertheless, I think a lot of it had to do with the exhaustion and physical illness, not to mention the fact that I just uprooted myself from everything I know almost overnight. A six hour nap that afternoon fixed things up a bit.

I actually can’t complain at all. I have great housemates, running water (both cold and hot), all the household appliances I need (including a washer), and electricity most of the time. True, half the cupboards don’t work properly, and we don’t have a complete set of plates and glasses, but it’s not like I’m bushing it—the glass of cabernet sauvignon next to me bears witness to that. The wine here is smashing actually.

Can you believe it didn’t even register that we don’t have a dishwasher until this moment? Like I said, things aren't too bad... The cooking schedule means I only have to prepare dinner once a week, if that. In all honesty, I like the arrangement quite a bit. The campus grounds are gorgeous, and once you sit back and accept that things in the house don’t have to look perfect, there’s actually a tremendous sense of freedom.

I’ll admit that the curtain situation needs fixing—the gray blanket taped to my window isn’t cutting it. But it feels nice not to have to worry about the little, usually meaningless, things all the time. In Langley I couldn’t even have a dinner party because my mother was troubled by the ongoing renovations. We’ve had guests here for dinner three nights in a row. There are upsides to the situation.