Our House

It seems to me that a big part of knowing someone is visiting their home and seeing where they spend a sizeable chunk of their day. So since we can’t have you over, I thought you might like to see some pictures of our house instead. And, for all of my engineering-minded friends, I’ve included a floor plan from AutoCAD as well (a previous intern drew the plans). FYI, if you click on the pictures, they should pop up full-size in a new window.

Amanda and I live in the EMI office compound. This picture shows the front of the house, which faces northeast. The house construction is typical of larger buildings in Uganda: concrete strip footing, concrete block walls, concrete floors, and a clay tile roof. The tan parts of the exterior are actually a sprayed on sand-mixture that is quite sharp. On the inside, the floors are ceramic tile and the walls/ceilings are smooth, white, plaster. The house is big but seems poorly planned because there is a lot of wasted space, like in the center of the kitchens. The utilities in Uganda are plagued with problems. The 240 volt electricity is on a 24 hour on/off rotation for Kampala, although we are quite fortunate on our side of “the hill” because our power is on more frequently than it is supposed to be. The water that comes out of the tap is “poison water” according to Amanda, but I think it tastes fine after we run it through ceramic filters and remove all of the bacteria.

It is very common for many people to live in one room that is approximately 2.5m x 2.5m. And by many people, I mean 5-8 people, a mom, dad, kids, babies, uncles, whoever (this is first-hand information, by the way). So Amanda and I are quite blessed to have our own bedroom and bathroom, even if we have to walk outside to go between them. The first picture shows the exterior of our “complex.” From left to right, the doors are for our living room, bedroom, and bathroom (we don’t really use the living room much). The second picture is of our bedroom. Right now we’re sleeping on two twin beds that are pushed together. It’s kind of a bummer because we can feel the sideboards but we’ll be getting a full size mattress soon. The mosquito net is for real, too. The first night we didn’t tuck it in and Amanda got bit seven times, so now we tuck it in every night after we both climb into bed. The shelf is nice and very useful. Yeah, not much else to say about that. And to the right of the shelf is our clothes rack, even though it’s not visible in the picture. We both keep our underwear (called “pants” in Uganda), t-shirts, socks, etc, in our carry-on bags underneath the bed. The bathroom looks quite a bit different than what you and I are used to, but it feels luxurious from my perspective. It has a flush toilet and a hot water heater for the shower. We keep our “sink” stuff in a purple shelf on the left hand side and our “shower” stuff in the shelf on the right. It’s kind of important that you keep the toilet seat cover down when you shower or else it looks like a young male with poor aim tried to go to the bathroom. We were a bit paranoid taking our first few showers because we really tried to avoid getting the water in our mouth. We would blow air out of our mouths in an attempt to keep the water from getting in, but I think that's mostly stopped now. The only other comment I would like to make regards the toilets. So in America, toilet manufacturers have to design toilets to use as little water as possible. I remember reading a story about people going to estate sales specifically to buy toilets that used more water becuase they provided a more powerful flush. Well, here in Uganda, there is no apparent effort to conserve the amount of water that is flushed down the commode. However, these toilets routinely don't flush everything away. Fortunately, I'm passed the point of embarassment now because the same problem seems to affect everyone.

Ok, so here are AutoCAD drawings as promised. The first picture here is of the ground floor. The Hoyt family (Steve is the eMi EA architect) lives in the dotted area. Amanda and I live in the area that is diagonally hatched. The other interns live in the other outside dorm area. The second floor is primarily eMi offices, with the exception of Janet’s bedroom suite. Amanda and I have also moved all of our cooking stuff (which is basically bread, peanut butter, and bananas) to this upstairs kitchen as well. I’ll take some pictures of the office area in a couple of weeks once the orientation activities are finished.

Thanks for dropping by!