what is it?

The building is complete, we have moved into our hut and we are so comfortable we have decided to stay here an extra month.

 

So what else is happening at HutLand (as I christened our little cluster of huts underneath the banana trees)? What is it about this place that is going to make it so hard to drag ourselves away?

 

It's sitting in 'The Snackery', drinking tea and eating cookies as we take a break from whatever work we find ourselves doing, to listen to the jungle and have a wee chat.

 

 

 

It's being with the kids: painting, skipping, wrestling, walking or crafting. Or even sometimes, if they are being extra adorable, sitting through a Malayalam movie complete with singing, dancing and cartoon sound effects. 

 



 

 



 

 

It's filling our shopping bags with kilos of tropical fruit that costs less than a cup of coffee at home. It's listening to the coconuts fall from their trees in the neighbour's yard and then sneaking over to try and find them (the day of this picture was a particularly successful harvest).  

   


It's watching the boys play football in the mud and listening to them sing with glee as they beat Will at chess too many times for his ego to handle. 





 



 

It's the incredible food Sudha cooks in her tiny, airless, wood-smoky kitchen, day after day, for all fifty of us. (Of which my camera is not up to capturing properly, but it really is delicious). 

 

 

It's all of these things. And it's listening to the kids sing at prayer time and giggle at most other times. It's working in the morning on whatever project we have (it always, always, always involves digging and moving stones) and seeing the monsoon roll over in the afternoons, ushered in by grumbling thunder.

 

There is lots going on here at the moment, both physically and in our heads. Issues that are here and things that have followed us on the .com, all the way from Australia. Projects that we have started already and things that are still being thought about. Plans for what next? after we leave Our Home. Sometimes at night, when I inevitably wake up for whatever reason and try to gather my thoughts and put them in their appropriate boxes, my brain feels like those people you see in the supermarket, clutching a whiny child in one hand and 3 heavy bags in the other as they frantically try to catch the oranges that are rolling all over the floor after having fallen from the fourth split bag.

 

But then in the morning the sun shines into our hut and we eat breakfast looking over palm trees to the mountain skirted in morning cloud; we work and eat and sit with the kids, see their smiles and hear their laughter. We drink tea. And we are thankful to be here. I really don't know how we will leave.