Hut Sweet Hut

Buckets are such a big part of my life here. I've really come to appreciate a good, sturdy bucket, especially one with a nice lid. Here's my bath bucket (with fancy sieve/soap caddy), my food storage bucket, and my gaz tank. 

My nice burner broke the other day and this little one (the only kind available in village) that doesn't have the nice pot-guard that my other had. I use my gaz to heat up water for coffee and instant oatmeal most mornings, and during cold season I'll heat up a little pot of water to add to my bathing bucket to take the edge off the chill of cold water. Some volunteers just leave their bucket out in the sun all afternoon, but because of the shady mango tree (which is great and I love) next to my hut I've had very limited success with that during the cold season. Right now it's quite hot, and I'll just leave my water buckets (which are exactly the same as my food storage and dish storage buckets) in the coolest corner of my hut and hope they don't get too warm.

This is my wooden table. It pretty much looks like this on any given morning, with my silver water filter, various mugs and water bottles, sunblock and toothpaste, and random this and that. It's a really nice table, I like it a lot. The metal water filter is nice, too, it keeps water much cooler than the dark plastic filters that some of the volunteers have.

The table has handy shelf for stacking all sorts of things, and there's a bamboo (or whatever it is, everyone in village calls it bamboo) rod for hanging clothes to dry or keeping stuff away from the rats and bugs on the ground level.

I store clothes and things in my trunks, and then I store important things in my little suitcase because it zips up, which keeps dust and critters out. The oatmeal cans also help with the bug situation, it's easy to sweep under the trunks when they're propped up, and that keeps ants from building trails along the fine cracks in the cement, and keeps the spider population in check, too.