Time in Sierra Leone so far....The first house

I knew keeping this blog thing would be impossible for me...but here I am again, trying.

To Recap:

We moved to Sierra Leone from Sheikh Zayed, Egypt on August 2, 2012. We made this trip as a family. My husband, Mo, our almost 3 year old son, Jackson, and our almost 6 year old Chihuahua, Colossus.

The first house we lived in was a nightmare. We cried almost every night. It was in Goderich and in the ghetto. Once we turned off the main road we traveled on an uneven ditch-filled, water pipe busted, "local" road.  We drove past tin roofed shacks where the local poor people lived and the local dunk men would often shout at our car demanding money for the "security" they provided for us. This was never the case. My husband every now and then would roll down the window and offer 5,000 Leones to them. This seemed like a nice gesture but only encouraged them to increase the harassment. Once we made it around the final turn a red, rusted, wired held together gated greeted us. This was our new "home". Once inside the gate the local black and white dog named Blackie would greet us. We parked the black 1996 Nissan Pathfinder on the uneven terrain and then walked up to the house through another gate. Our house was very small. Usually you would describe a house as small and cozy but that latter word is not one to describe this. The house was hot, dark, dull, uncomfortable, insect ridden, and depressing. Of a typical 30 day month we did not have electricity 25 of the days.  It was too small to move around in even with our small family. There was 2 bedrooms a kitchen which only one person could fit semi comfortably in at a time, a dinning/living room, and a tiny bathroom in which the door could not be opened fully due to hitting the sink. The landlord (half Sierra Leonean/half Lebanese) lived on the same compound and across stoop from us. There was also a "security guard/gardener" that lived on the premise too in a one room shack.

While living in the house we hired a maid to help with the house work, even though the house was tiny the bugs would overwhelm me. We had her come into the house Monday to Friday and used gasoline to mop the floors to keep the ants and other crawling critters away. Nothing worked though and the landlord often told us, "This is Africa what do you expect?"