The House on Boom Street

You’re staying at the manse? Oh, that is a mission!

We were standing outside of the church after prayers on Monday night, talking with some of the youth our age, when Nicole made that bold statement about where we are living. We laughed about it, but honestly, it’s probably true. Well, at least it feels true right now.

The manse is the house on the church property where we are living for the next 10 months. Apparently people have been moving in and out of this house for years so that the upkeep of the place has, well, let’s say not been kept up to par. At all. And sometimes in the mornings, it is a challenge to get out of bed knowing that I am going to have to spend a majority of my day in this house. Here are some things that get me depressed:

The manse is actually divided into two houses. We live on one side while Congo refuges live on the other side. Unfortunately, the “wall” that divides the two houses isn’t really a wall. By that I mean that it is really, really thin. So I hear them talking or the children screaming every morning. Ugh. (And their conversations probably aren’t very loud the wall is just that thin). (They are currently watching Toy Story and we can hear it loud and clear).

Mice have been dominating this house for years. Years. There are mouse droppings everywhere. The carpet and cabinets reek of mouse poop. Kyle killed one the other day, but then later on we saw two on the counter. They are very bold and do not care about the food we left them on our trap. (Actually, if they avoid it forever we might try to budget for a cat. Now that would be fun).

Mice droppings actually leads me to my next point: I am one of the people in charge of the budget and well, money has always stressed me out. Yet, we were not prepared for this house to have nothing in it when we came. So since we had to buy practically everything, our budget is really, really tight now. That alone stresses me out but I really want to get more cleaning supplies to ride this house of the smell. But we might have to wait until November.

We feel very trapped here. None of know how to drive shift or on the other side of the car and road. Plus, “our car” is really crappy and needs some serious work so we are completely dependent on others right now. Public transportation here is pretty nonexistent especially compared to Chicago living. It’s been hard to get used to that. To make matters even more complicated, it isn’t really a good idea for us to venture out and about. So we have this awkward balance of trying to be safe and smart as well as not living in fear. Today, Connie and I were headed off the church property to go up a few blocks to the post office when a man who works here came walking towards us. He then told us that we shouldn’t go at all because it was not safe for us to walk a few blocks at 2 in the afternoon. We eventually convinced him that we knew where we were going (we did) and that we’d be okay (we were), but it’s pretty discouraging to think that all the freedom we had in Chicago is completely gone now. I feel really stuck.

I know we’ve only been here a week, and as time goes on we’ll be able to make this place more like home. Just look at the flat at JPUSA. I hated being there at first, but by the time we had to leave I was really sad. (Thanks to JPUSA living sharing a room with two other girls seems like nothing compared to being crammed in with 7 others). So I know that as time goes on I will eventually come to love this place too.

But for now… it’s going to take a lot of effort…