New Housing Arrangements - Part I

Upon our arrival we discovered that we were not to be housed in the same hut that we used last year. Initially, the reason for this was not clear but would be apparent later. Our new home was the "Adapesco" or fishing building built by the Japanese in 2002 to promote trade relations with Panama. It is a wooden building resting on concrete pilings at the edge of a tidal marsh where the locals find it convenient to dump trash. It is breeze-less, humid, foul-smelling, mosquito ridden and situated adjacent to another shack that has one of the few gasoline generators on the island (which they run from 6 pm until midnight). Turns out these are some of it's better qualities. Amongst it's few few saving graces is that its has (seemingly) solid planked floors and walls, several rooms large enough to accommodate us, and has a bathroom with a sink, toilet and shower stall. Water comes in through a spigot at knee level in the shower stall. Flushing the toilet involves partially filling a 5 gallon pail and dumping it into the bowl. Where it drains under or beyond the building is anyone's guess. No bed frames, just a mattress on the floor. A desk and filing cabinet in my room. No chairs. Open frame windows - no screens. Unsanitary contaminated well on the east side.

 

My room is the first window on the left, Chip's room is in back of mine, the student's room is to the two windows on the right (note tidal swamp at the right side).

 

The "Old Well Out Back" - Our rain tanks have replaced this for this most part, but it is still occasionally used.

 

Another view of my corner suite.

The neighbors.

Interior view of my room. Given the sparsity of the furnishings that the room comes with, I am as always, indebted to my buddy Rich Maletta for the folding tripod camp chair that can be seen tucked beneath the desk. While not exactly the most comfortable chair I have ever sat in, it proved to be quite the luxury in the few spare moments I had or when I needed to perform my role as team medic. I had debated whether to take it along or not but I am so glad that I did. Same goes for my solar camp shower; since we actually had a stall with a spigot from the roof tank water source, with the addition of a nail, a pulley and a piece of cord a fairly competent shower could be had. I found that if I turned over the flushing bucket and used it as a shower chair I could cool off and get passingly mud free at the end of a work day. Living large.

 In the next installment I will explain why we are now here rather than at the old guest hut.