The descriptions I was given of my house seem pretty accurate, and I will try not to be too repetitive here as I have already described bits and pieces of my house. But I know everyone at home is curious to know what my “hut” is like. First, it is not a hut. The inside:
I was pleased to find that the top half of my walls were painted a teal color, which really helps to brighten up the place. These pictures are of my smaller room. As you can see, or maybe not, it’s still a pretty good size. As you can also see, I have no furniture except my “bed”, which serves as an interesting challenge since I can’t readily buy furniture in village and I can’t very well bike furniture to my house. Can you rent a donkey cart for a day?
My hanger area is just outside my bedroom door. It’s a decent size, about the size of my little room, and I can easily keep my bike out here during the day and sit in the afternoons to catch a slight breeze or keep the petites from crowding my front door. The square looking thing in the corner is a rabbit pen! Or an attempted rabbit pen. Rob had a rabbit that he was given as a gift to eat and decided to keep, and Roger built him this pen for the rabbit (it originally had a tin roof). Unfortunately it was not kitty proof, and the rabbit’s first night in the pen he was attacked by a cat and died (which is odd since I have yet to see a cat in village, maybe because people eat cats around here). I’m not sure what I’ll make of it, since I cannot bear to lose another rabbit after Mr. Big, but for now the children like to sit of it when they come to stare at me.
There are two downfalls to my hanger. The first is that there is no door. This means I cannot shut the petites out. I’ve been trying to teach them that if I am outside, they may be under the hanger with me; this is not all that bad, sometimes they sing or play games for me. But if I am inside they may not be under my hanger, and, for the love of God, they cannot crowd around my door and watch me. This has been hard to convey since I cannot shut them out and since only a few of the older ones speak a little French, most do not even speak Moore, and I cannot ask or explain to them my boundaries. Shooing them away works sometimes, but often is confused for a twisted game of peek-a-boo. Not having a hanger door also allows animals to wander about at will. When it rains I often have goats or dogs seeking refuge under my hanger. While I’ve never seen a cow or donkey actually under my hanger, they are often in my courtyard and I have to skirt around them to get to the latrine. Also these little guys often come to visit a lot: 
The other downfall to my hanger is that I have to go out and around it to get to the kitchen, since my rooms are not connected by a doorway. Unfortunately there is only one entrance to my hanger, and it’s not in the direction of my other room. My other room, or the big room as I often refer to it as, is quite large for my standards:
I tried to take a panorama of the whole room, but could really only get about half. Buts lets just say I’m pretty sure you could fit all of Katie’s house in my big room. As you can see, the big room is nearly completely empty. Thankfully Roger brought me tables, so I’m not cooking on the floor, but it’s still pretty comical to cook in the big empty room. The down sides to the big empty room, besides being empty, is that there are no real windows and no screen on the double door or the ceiling vents, meaning bats come at night. I don’t mind them though, they eat the mosquitoes, that also come in at night. Hence sleeping in the little room. I am starting to mind, however, Jared, my mouse, who also comes in at night. He was alright, kind of cute, until this morning I found mouse poop in my Special K, which cost more then 3 or 4 dinners and I can only buy it in Ouaga, which I’m not okay with. Biting into my tomatoes and cheese is one thing, but NOT the Special K! Anyways, back to my house, I have high hopes for the big room, once I figure out how to get a big kitchen table and maybe some chairs. It would be perfect for hosting holiday gatherings, like Thanksgiving (Except for the whole biking-in-all-necessary-supplies-since-I-can’t-buy-anything-here part).
Just outside my house is my latrine and douche. 
Right in front of my house, or I should say just down the path, is the marche and dolo bar, which happens ever 3 days. It’s just past that building with the blue door that claims to be a telephone (there is no electricity here… how can there be a telephone?), where you can kind of see the stick and thatched roof hangers. On a good marche day I can buy eggplants, corn, okra, tomatoes, and limes. I’ve also seen hot peppers, what they call “local eggplants,” and I once saw cabbage and these small yellow round things that I’m not sure if it was a type of melon or squash. Next time I think I will buy one and experiment. The marche ladies only speak Moore, so buying from them includes a lot of pointing, nodding, and them picking the correct amount of money out of my hand. The dolo bar (bar as in log benches under thatched hangers) is always popular on marche day, but despite the only butcher being in the dolo bar I try to avoid that area. I haven’t quite the courage to try the butcher, perhaps because he is drinking dolo while cutting up unidentified meat on a rock slab outside, or to try the dolo (local beer). I’ve been told there is also two boutiques in that area, that look exactly like the building in the photo with the blue door, with the very, very basic necessities, but I have yet to go to either.
Other then that I only have two neighboring compounds. To the front left of my house is the Chief de Village compound. I’m not sure how many people live there; there seems to be a swarm of children and maybe his son, who is at least in his 40s, and every morning at 6 a.m. there are 2 or 3 women out front pounding something in giant mortars and pestles, I can only assume for To. The Chief himself is an older gentleman, somewhere in his 60s I would guess, and seems to always be sitting in a chair under the big tree on the left in the left-hand picture below, wearing a bright orange hat (the hats that are not hats that Muslims wear, I can’t think of what they are called). He and most of his family, including a number of the children that often find themselves in my courtyard, only speak Nounie.
My other neighboring compound is off to the back left, and I have yet to meet them or figure out who lives there. They keep to them selves, or maybe it’s empty? I couldn’t get a photo, but I snuck the Chief’s house from my window. While I don’t really have neighbors, I’m still right in the middle of “town” because I’m near the marche and right off of 2 heavily used paths. I can’t share what the outside of my house looks like because I don’t want anyone to know I have a camera, but I do enjoy the fact that there is actually a sign out front that it is a cereal bank.
The CSPS is a short bike ride away, and there is a primary school that is also a short bike ride away. My village itself is very small, around 800 people, but the CSPS serves about 10 other neighboring villages as well. The first week I could find a bar or two of cell phone service, but now all the spots I found seem to be dried up and I’ve resorted to biking 5K to the main road to make any phone calls or send a text message, and even then the reso is not great. I am, however, very lucky to have close PCV neighbors. I see Katie once or twice a week; we started visiting each other every Sunday to have lunch together and make upcoming plans, then I try to make it once a week to the marche in her village, since it is bigger then mine. We also head down to our district capital about every 2 weeks, more or less, to go to a grand marche and the post, as well as seeing 2 or 3 other volunteers. Overall, Village is not a bad set-up!
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