34. THE BIG MOVE

Our house for the next couple of months

I woke up and I had very serious doubts about the whole move. It is a big step and for a minute or two I had the urge to run for “civilization”, but that feeling did not last long.

We are slowly but surely moving out of the main house and into our own “house” and then today, of all days the water tanks from the borehole are low, so no cleaning and no gardening possible.  It is all actually a very good thing; we came up with some brilliant new ideas and at least the one half and upstairs are already livable. Upstairs is a loft bedroom with a spectacular view, also good for star watching.  

It will take a bit of adjustment; we still have to build a kitchen! We will actually be sleeping over there and still spend most of our time in and around the house, so we will obviously still be using the kitchen in the main house, but we will have a lot more privacy, a home to retire to at nights, all by ourselves with an actual door that can close.

It (our new house) is really very basic, but that is the whole process of integration, most people seem to live in the main house in the beginning and then move to a more private space, but all the dwellings are a work in progress in various stages, some have bathrooms, some don’t, some have kitchens, others not. Still others need other work, you then occupy this space and built something to improve the place, and I am making it sound like there are millions of houses, there are currently 7 permanent dwellings. Then, once you have learned something about building and you have the recourses and/or finances available you built your own place, you do so and somewhere along the line you become a member of the community.

Most of the natural buildings here at KD are cob with a wattle structure, both these materials are freely available, it just needs labor to process the raw materials and then obviously you need windows and stuff, I see a lot of glass bottles and old motor car windscreens being used with great effects. For now we will practice by building a kitchen.

We will also have to invest in solar, for energy to charge laptops etc.

An all in one, portable solar system, cat not included.

There is a leek somewhere in the water system, because the tanks empty out as quick as they fill up. We are all going on a bundu bashing mission tomorrow to find this leek, like most old farms, some the pipes are old and mostly nobody really knows where they are. You just look for wet spots in the grass, it should be easy to find at the moment, seeing that it is so dry.

A new volunteer arrived over the weekend; Greg will be staying with us for (at least) six months (why does that sound so familiar?).