Housing Options

Finally! A picture of my house, with the terrace (yea, the gardner has failed to show up in a while...). There are 5 similar houses up here on this pice of land. One was unfortunately damaged by the hurricane (the roof literally blew off) so no one lives there of course.

And below is a view of the lagoon from the house. Please note the construction site... A new house is about to be built.  Not too happy with it, but they seem to work once in a while (when they feel like it) so it could take a while before the new house is up. This is actually how far they have come since mid February!
In the back we have a view of the mountain top.

So, I like my house and I think we were lucky when we were house hunting. As I have described before, it a 2 bedroom house with big kitchen and living-room, which is kind of divided with a bar-desk-kind-of-counter. I will work on those pictures! And then of course the terrace where we spend all our evenings. The sun sets to the right of the Motu (small island) on the picture above which we have a nice view of from the terrace. It's beautiful!

Now, most of the locals live slightly different. If you look at the picture below, my first though was "it's a shed". But then I realized someone actually was living there. Please note the blue tarp which is wrapped around the "terrace" part in front of the house... (I know, small picture, but I hope you can still see). This house is located on the other side of the fence which separates the two areas.

Then to another house, which is located just as you reach the bottom of the hill. It is constructed by various pieces of sheet metal for roofing! I am not an expert, but I don't think A/C is necessary here as there are plenty of air ventilation holes all around.

Please note the stick in front of the bike, which holds up the door, and also the crocked door to the right!

This is how many people live here in this island, or something very similar. But I don't think they are poor (well, I guess they are not rich either, but it's not like they can't afford eating). I believe the locals are very materialistic though. It's not about the house they are living in, it's more about the big truck, the big flat screen TV, (the beer) and so on. And I think they are happy with what they got (Hmm.... something to think about...). 

Also, several family members (and generations) seem to live together. I guess you kind of have to when only one one or two people work per household (now, question is -are they too lazy to get a job?, -can they get a job?, -do they want to get a job?). So, unless the family needs to buy that big monster truck, or the new, even bigger flat screen, only enough people seem to work to make sure there is food on the table.

This island is very much behind the rest of the world in many ways. I am still astonished on how they live here, but they seem to enjoy their life, which you can see (and hear) through their music and songs.

Cheers my friends!

Camilla