When I finally got to unpack my bags and fully move into my hut (five weeks after I initially got there, remember all this fun stuff? New roof, etc?), I nested. I realize now, that I nested a lot more than most PCVs do, but I needed to make my hut a happy place for me to live in. And it is; as my friend who visited me from America told me, I have a very “Amanda” hut.
Upon returning from Spain, I attacked my hut full-force for some fall-time cleaning, and happened to come upon a collection of photos I brought with me from the States. In my initial nesting phase, I made a rectangular collage on the wall of my hut (about 4 ft across by 3 ft high or so) of some of these photos and fun magazine clippings I had come across in the Kolda regional house. Upon completion, my host-mom and I decided that the college was good. Peace only type good. And almost every day since then I get to answer twenty questions about who is who and where everyone is in each photo and who is married etc etc etc. Return to the pile of long-lost-America-photos: glancing through this stack made me realize that I want to look at these photos as well, every day, just like the other ones in the initial collage. Only problem was that the way my original collage was set up kept my hut very balanced: big world map to the left, desk, book shelf, toilet kit, big photo collage to the right. But I wanted to put the “new” pictures up. Need and spacial equilibrium weren’t in consideration anymore. So, an hour and a half later, voila:
- (View from my bed. I had to combine four photos to create this, therefore the jumpiness.)
Clearly, now the collage kind of oozes its way around my hut wall. A bit overdone. Not totally necessary. But in a country where wearing yellow sequins on top of your shiny yellow fabric is considered totally necessary, I’ve decided that an overdone collage that makes me happy is better than a zen-themed one that is missing some of my favorite smiling faces.
