Our house in Nanikai

(See "Disclaimer" for this one!)

When we first moved to the Gilbert Islands August 1976, I was eleven. We moved into a two room clapboard house with a corrogated steel roof. I think the back room wall was shared by the next door "apartment," but I don't know for sure. It had another little building right behind it made of cinderblocks and the same roofing. I think that one had two tiny rooms, one for a shower (?), and a cooking room. I remember cooking rice on a one burner stove (kind of like a camp stove) between the house and the kitchen room. (I don't remember using the kitchen room at all.) Mom taught me how to make rice by putting in water enough to measure one middle finger knuckle above the rice level. Huh. I do it much more scientifically now - with a measuring cup. But I digress.

The front room was used for living in. I remeber mostly Mom's coconut fiber mattress on the floor on the wall between the two rooms. Mom was pregnant with baby number seven, my sister Emma, who was due in November. (That meant there were six others of us already!) The other room had two large tables taking up most of the room, (see diagram). On the other wall we lined up our suitcases, which was what we lived out of for the next two years. No dressers, just a suitcase. Mine was a really big brown one, with maroon corners rivited on the edges. The tables were for sleeping on. They came up to a little above my hip. There were tightly woven mats on the tables, for softening, (a bit, anyway), and for comfort. I think we used sheets, but it was too hot for much else. We had mosquitoe nets hanging from the ceiling, which we had to sleep under. There were big wooden windows in either side of the room, which we propped open with a 2x2 board, for circulation.

The bathrooms? There was a strip of toilet stalls out back, that everybody in the neighborhood shared. Yep, believe it or not! I don't recall whether we had our own "assigned" toilet, or who was responsible for keeping them clean - thoughts a mother has now!

We did have electricity in that house...I'm pretty sure. It was our house later, on the school campus, where we did not. We had running water -- only in the kitchen, I think, and the toilets. On the map I'm guessing at where the water tower was, but those were a part of life. (On the school campus we only had wells, honest!)

Outside there was sand - everywhere. A few tropical bushes & things grew here and there, and then there were areas that had been decorated with coral rock, kind of like we do with gravel. (Kind of their attempt at landscaping.)

Out front there was the road that ran down the island from end to end. Keep in mind that this was an atoll, and at this point it was 300 yards (did I get that right Mom & Dad?) from the ocean side to the lagoon side of the island. So out our front door, we could see the lagoon on the other side of the road. Out the back door, if we went a little ways, past the bathrooms, we could see the ocean.

The lady who was loaning us her house was Nei Rona. She was a school board member of the school my dad had come to be headmaster of. Her husband, Tawai, was a government employee, and thus had been provided this housing. They agreed to move into a thatch hut out back, by the ocean side, while we lived in their house. (Actually, their hut or "fale," made of native materials was LOTS more comfortable than ours!)

Here's a picture of me, sitting outside the back of our house, on the coral rock gravel yard, holding Karen and my baby sister, Emma. (So the picture must be circa February 1978.) If you look carefully, you can see the cinderblock of the toilets on the left and Nei Rona's house behind that.

I was in heaven there. Lots of safe places to play. A beach wherever we turned, actually we LIVED on it! I think we had somebody helping wash the clothes for us, and cook meals too, while Mom was on bedrest the last while...but that's all for another story.

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Editor's Note: My dad posted a comment with SO much more info I decided to make it a separate post.