My House

My first day in Ranong Chris took me to see my house’s twin sister. I have to admit, I was a little taken aback. First of all, nobody had provided any information about my housing arrangements, so I didn’t know whether to expect a bamboo hut or a hotel room. I later discovered the reason for this: another American – a grad student named Dawn, will be arriving with her “team” of researchers. I was told she will have very specific needs, many of which will remain to be known until her arrival (Amazing how one can be so vague about “specific needs”). Therefore, my arrangements have to be flexible, as I may be expected to move to make way for her team at the end of the week. I honestly don’t mind – one home is as good as another for my purposes here.

Scenes from my street

It was difficult to get a sense of the place that first visit because I was distracted by rows of whirring sewing machines, and women dressed in colorful fabric. The project has been leasing the space out to a women’s group as part of a microfinance endeavor. The women make Muslim headscarves during the day in an effort to stimulate the lagging post-tsunami economy. From what I could tell amid the flurry of sewing activity, the apartment contained two rooms, a bed, a sink, and a toilet.

The next day I threw my weight into a heavy steel grate door and stepped into the adjoining unit – my new home. Immediately I noticed a few obvious differences from the sister apartment: 1) An absence of sewing machines, and 2) the addition of a small table, a few plastic chairs and a fan.

My house is the unit on the left

The bathroom probably deserves its own blog entry. The floor has a drain and the whole room functions as one multi-use shower/toilet facility. Currently there is no running water in the whole house. Someone must have anticipated this and left a huge garbage can full of water in the bathroom. I’ll have to figure something out when the water starts running low. In the meantime, I scoop a bucket into the drum if I want to wash my face or take a shower. Then there is the toilet. As far as I can tell, Southeast Asians don’t typically use toilet paper. Instead there is usually a hose next to the toilet and water somehow takes the place of paper (I still haven’t totally figured this system out yet). My toilet has the hose, but again, no water. Kind of a problem when you have no toilet paper…. Needless to say I’ve had to apply some fairly creative improvisations. By the end of my first night in the house I was still puzzled about the issue of flushing this strange new toilet. I looked everywhere, but could not for the life of me find any sort of flushing mechanism. I later learned that this is a gravity toilet, meaning you just have to dump a bucket of water to flush everything down.

The most confusing bathroom ever

So there I was in my shower/toilet bathroom, fleshiest body parts exposed to the relentless mosquitoes as I dumped cold water from a garbage can over my soapy head, pondering all the possible places one could hide a toilet flush button. Suddenly the air rang with a loud eerie chant. I froze in surprise for a moment before realizing it was the evening call to prayer. The undulating song echoed through the streets and the walls of my shower room with its bewildering toilet. What a humiliating and beautiful reminder of the distance I have traveled to be here.