This Old Hut

It's hut renovation and construction season here in Salémata, and people are building huts all over the place. These new huts are near the Health Center and the roof thatch is already all stacked up and ready to go.

Mariama, one of my host mothers, is having a new hut built. It's square instead of round, which I think is fancy.

Hut in Progress

It's also time to start mending or replacing roof thatch, before it gets ungodly hot or too close to the rainy season. People go out and gather tall grass, bundle it up, let it dry out in the sun, and then tear off the old roof and re-thatch the whole thing. My host family says that my roof (which I'm pretty sure is mostly made of spiders at this point) is due for some repairs, possibly a replacement, which will be interesting. (This photo is of one of our neighbor's huts, I'm not actually sure who usually sleeps in it.)

Partially Un-Thatched

There's a nice hut getting torn down and rebuilt pretty close to my compound. They're about halfway done right now and I really like how it's basically a cross section. Every time I walk by I think "Anatomy of a Hut."

Some people choose to get a little more creative with their renovations:

The Pink Hut of Salemata

(I think the guys who do the painting for the castle got to use some of the leftover paint.)