Our Home: part 3

Life in Africa is supposed to have a slower pace. People typically take it easy more often than in the United States. Apparently we either are the exception or at least feel like the exception. Life has felt filled to the top lately, so much so that we have not even made time for updating this here Blog! So, we’re behind a bit and will attempt to catch up in the coming weeks!
Earlier we began giving details about our home. We shared about our compound and our bedroom. We’ll begin our catching up by sharing about our living room. Soon you can look forward to the joys of our bathroom and kitchen!
The living room also serves as our dining room. When we got here we had a separate dining room, a tiny, bare room with an empty echo. So we decided to combine them and moved our small, 4 person table into an open space in the living room…and voila, just like home in the US! The room is dominated by one very long and very low-to-the-ground couch. There is also a matching loveseat and two matching chairs. They are all a dirty gray, not our favorite color. But because we love each other, we sit only in the love seat. The rest serve as “eye candy” to distract you from the remarkably white walls. Above the long couch is our artwork, which we purchased at a price that was 90% less than the original quoted price, yet was likely still too much. It’s a very brightly colored painting that depicts the story of Queen Sheba and King Solomon (Short Synopsis: They fall in love and have a child who eventually returns to Israel and steals/borrows/receives the Arc of the Covenant. Or so the Ethiopian version goes.)
On the floor of the living/dining room is a large rug that is not soft. Actually, it’s more like a mat. We have our first ever glass-topped coffee table and a TV that is the same as our one in the US (Meaning: HUGE!). Along one wall are windows and a door that opens onto the driveway that serves as our patio. Facing these windows is our table with its plastic, green and white checkered table cloth. Other than eating and occasional TV, we don’t spend much time here. But it is nice to have room to host people.
After describing it, our house may not sound like much, but it is exactly what we need. Recently we received a bit of perspective about the house. A young man I (Keegan) had been getting to know from walking around invited me to see his house. We walked less than a block from our house into a field full of shack houses. Danny took me to a tiny room that is his home. It is one room, perhaps five feet square, with a straw mat on the dirt floor that serves as his bed. There is no running water, no bathroom, and one little light bulb. Imagine your closet made out of tin, but without the carpet. Cracks let in the cold night air and the roof doesn’t stop the rain. Beside his “bed”, Danny showed me his possessions—a backpack with one set of clothes and an old walkman. Even Danny is lucky in comparison to the many that sleep with only a plastic sheet covering them. We don’t have to go far to find these clear reminders of how greatly we are blessed.