In America, I was not the mom with the cleanest house around. I may have
had one of the most interesting houses. You never knew what you’d find on
the dining room table when you came for a playdate. Perhaps a big skeleton
set with all the organs strewn around, waiting for assembly. On other
days, some sort of home made cooking show with piles of fragrant herbs
assaulting your nose as they clashed in unexpected ways. My house was more
creative than clean, but certainly safe and clean enough.

Here, I find my sanitation standards dropping by the day. Since I arrived,
a whole month ago now, I have been trying to make a home of this house we
are in. The kitchen has kicked my butt. Between rats, ants of all sizes,
water leakage, it is a job. Trying to find places to store all the food
that will keep rats out is a job in itself. Making sure all those places
are clean enough to store food is another. Every morning, anything left out
of a truly closed cupboard (of which we have only one) is liable to have
dead bugs, rat droppings, and lizard poop on it. In america, should any
one of those be present in my kitchen, it would mean the end of my eating
anything for breakfast. Even a dead fly on the counter would spell doom to
my appetite. Here, just to get breakfast ready, I have to wade through all
kinds of disgusting stuff. Another thing I quickly discovered, is that my
American habit of cleaning up disgusting things with something disposable
(like a paper towel) doesn’t work here, where we have no such disposable
things. Gross. Also, we don’t have anything but COLD water unless we heat
it on the stove in the big kettle. There goes one of my other favorite ways
to make things clean easily, nice hot water and lots of cleaning agents
(also in short supply here.)

Now, when receiving my tray of fresh eggs from the market, I barely notice
that all but one or two has a healthy serving of fairly fresh hen poop on
it. Just part of the atmosphere of my kitchen. Those eggs will sit out on
my counter (no refrigeration needed for such fresh eggs) long enough to add
rat and lizard poop to the hen poop and of course some bugs will expire on
them as well. That’s why you cook eggs, you know. Just brush it off and
crack them right into that pan. Yum.