Accommodations

Since we have arrived in Africa, our accommodations have varied greatly.  We started in Joburg at the Branch Office where we stayed in a temporary residence, a single wide trailer, that was built for the many international servants and volunteers coming to work on the branch projects.  We were just there for 4 days.  Then we stayed in a caravan at the base for Group B.  There are currently four Kingdom Hall Construction Groups in South Africa A thru D.  We are with Group C...for cool!  After one day we left Group B and headed to Nelspruit where the branch rented a home from a brother.  The home was still inhabited by the current tenant so we stayed in a motel-style lodge for a month or so until the house was vacated.  When the house finally was empty, we spent a week or so renovating, painting and cleaning so that it could house the 12 of us.  It is a beautiful home on a very verdant property. (sorry no photos of the house right now)  The sister who owns the property grew up there and her father planted lichee trees over 50 years ago.  I ate my first fresh lichee here and am now officially addicted!  The first KH we built in a township called Nsikazi, was about 45 minutes from the base home in Nelspruit.  Now that that is complete, the next project takes us 3 hours from Nelspruit to the town of Ermelo.  Since it is much too far to commute from our base home, we are now living in massive Campmor tents in Ermelo.  We have 5 tents to house the 12 of us and a mess tent as our dining room.  We have set up our base camp in the backyard of a neighboring KH about 10 minutes from the new KH construction site.  An existing empty garage attached to the KH is our temporary kitchen and laundry.  We have built temporary showers and toilet stalls on the apron or walkway of the kingdom hall.  It is actually pretty cool!

NELSPRUIT -Motel Room and Office...shared bath and shower outside across parking lot

Pushed two single beds together... and still hadn't unpacked our bags since leaving Guam!

NELSPRUIT - Finally moved into our room in the house and pushed two singles together

Bought a few things to make it homey

JOBURG- Base Group B one of the main buildings

Individual trailers set up as housing Group B

ERMELO - Our tents are set up behind this KH

The Frooch Tent...see swingset of playschool behind the tent on the left?

These tents are of the best quality.  There is a 5 person dome and then an extension where Jared is sitting here.

The dome...with two single airbeds pushed together on a platform.

Group kitchen and laundry set up in the garage

Temporary bathroom area

Temporary toilets...we bought new sinks and toilets at least

Showers are to the left, three tin stalls

Our camp...our tent in the far corner on the left

Of course we are constantly moving things around in the tent especially since it's been raining and we have to keep things from sitting under drips. The brick patios look cute, but there intended purpose is to keep as much mud and water out of the tents as possible.  One addition that makes our tent special...

yes a mini fridge and espresso machine.  It can get to over 100 degrees during the day and below 30 on rainy nights so all things sacred are securely placed in the fridge.

Our tents will probably be our primary place of lodging for months to come.  We will go back to Nelspruit occasionally and stay at the home and any of you who come to visit can stay with us there too!  Of course there is plenty of room in our tent so the choice is yours.  There are of course challenges to living in a tent... like noises (the mining trucks on the main road, the guys in the tent 6 feet away, the guys in the tent 12 feet away, the birds at 4am, the daycare center in the yard directly behind us...I wear earplugs), weather issues like extremes of cold and hot, insects especially mozzies, and losing running water or electricity.  But you know how you always wanted to camp in your backyard as a kid to sleep under the stars?  Remember how excited you were at the prospect?  Yeah well... anyway it is a lot of fun and keeping things simple, we are accomplishing what it was we were sent here to do....