First Saturday. Finally a day to stay home, rearrange, do laundry, and feel human.
There’s something about laundry that makes any place feel like yours. Whoever said “home is where the heart is” clearly also understood the grounding power of domesticity.
The house is modest and clean — compact, functional, a bit like student housing in Halifax. No frills. It does the job, and I find I don’t miss the frills much.
To help you picture the community: imagine if you left a Caribbean resort and actually lived within the town itself. People are genuinely content. Children approach you openly and without suspicion. The prices on everyday items — a chocolate bar, a can of soda — would stop you mid-reach. But there’s a quality of presence here that the south trades away for convenience, and I’m noticing it.
The kids here are something I wasn’t prepared for: friendly, curious, unglued from screens, interested in everything. It’s refreshing in a way I didn’t expect.
We’ve volunteered to help at the school wherever we’re useful. Three hundred students enrolled, with attendance being an ongoing challenge — not because families don’t value education, but because the conversation about what education should look like up here is still being worked out, carefully and not easily.
We’re figuring out where we fit. That takes time. I’m better at starting things than waiting for them to take shape — that particular patience is still a work in progress for me.