AUTHOR: JILL
Some things you might not expect about our tribe: We freeze here! Every morning we get up, we snuggle with blankets and wear house shoes! At night, we make a fire in our wood burning stove! It’s even cold enough to have a poinsettia tree right outside my window.
This area is full of food! Every day, people bring us either sweet potatoes, greens, pumpkin, cabbage, sugar cane, or bananas. We still have supply flights that bring us flour, sugar, etc., but it’s nice to know we could survive if we had to.
We are “off the grid!” We don’t have electric bills…we use the sun’s energy! Our solar panels (8 of them) and big batteries power our lights, fridge, and freezer. We don’t pay water bills…we collect rain water from our roof. Our 3 stage water filter helps make it very clean…funny taste, but very clean!
People pretty much wear the same outfit every day! It makes it kind of easy to remember people…”Titius, tidy red shirt!” You see somebody far away on the mountain wearing a green shirt, you can pretty much narrow it down who it is! So we try to do the same thing! We rotate between about 3-4 shirts and skirts… BJ usually wears pants though 🙂
Everyone has several houses! Our people hike up to the bush for a season when these “karuka” nuts fall. So, everyone has a “bush” house. Then, they go down to the river during coffee season. It’s a hike here too, so they have a house where they sleep. Some people have a garden house, because their gardens might be far away. And then they have one in the village too. This helps us, because our house is bigger than theirs, but we tell them if they put all their houses together, it would equal ours!!
Just a few little facts about Wantakia that most of you wouldn’t know! Please email me any more questions you might have. We love it up here and are having a blast getting to know these people, who God has led us to minister to! Pictured: wood burning stove, poinsettia tree, awesome ikea chair, cute curtains Mel’s mom made!