Life in our Yard

Although there was a fence around our yard at some point, it has been slowly disappearing as neighbors take little pieces of it to cook evening meals. Its unclear to what degree this is unacceptable here, although people say it’s bad behavior, no one really seems to care, not even our land lady who eventually gets stuck with the bill for replacing the missing sections of bamboo fencing. Without any real barrier to impede pedestrian traffic our entire immediate neighborhood walks through our yard at some point each day. Taking shortcuts through people’s yards is the norm here, and we do it too when we’re about town. With no formal streets or walkways, it would be impossible to get around without intruding on other’s property; people here hardly see it as intruding, although oftentimes we feel that way as non-stop streams of people trickle across the dirt patio in front of our house every day. Kids will often pause for a while to stare at what their foreign neighbors are doing. We’ve become inured to it so it hardly unnerves us like it did when we arrived over a year ago, plus we attract less attention now that our novelty has faded. Outdoor cooking still draws major crowds, and everyone has an opinion on what we do wrong, which they express continuously throughout the process. We get animals too: pigs, chickens, ducks, and the occasional goat wander through looking for anything green to munch on. Insects also loiter our premises. We usually only notice the colossal specimens, like the gigantic spider that spun a web so strong between two of our trees we contemplated hanging laundry on it and the snails that grow larger than the size of a fist. We’ve had to ban soccer games and drum/dance practice in our yard mainly because of the noise and dust levels produced, but we still permit the less intrusive games, like marbles or tag. We still get plenty of noise from so many daily activities occurring in such proximity to our windows, but it usually simmers down enough by sleeping time to not be a problem. Having a public thoroughfare through our house has its disadvantages, little things disappear from time to time, nothing noteworthy, but always an unpleasant discovery none the less. Passers-by also trample plants, or eat them if they are of the herbivore persuasion. Our latrine gets frequent unannounced drop-ins who rarely clean up after relieving themselves. Our clothes line has been inadvertently snapped by neighbors who don’t seem to realize a piece of twine can’t support their body weight. Despite our American sensibilities and tendency to feel like our personal space is being invaded on a constant basis, it is nice to be able to see so many people while simply sitting on our porch. Sometimes people will surprise us with fruit or sugar cane just because they were passing by on their way home from the fields. We certainly don’t feel isolated and it makes integrating into the community a breeze, something totally necessary for achieving Peace Corps’ cultural exchange goals.