Base

Here are two pictures of base – my home for the next few months. The building to the right is the house which has bedrooms (bunk beds), some squat toilets and a couple of cold showers. In front of that is the covered meeting / dining area. The corrugated iron doored next bits are the pantry and kitchen (including the little kitchen just for the cooks). Then there is a washing station for kitchen stuff. Then hand washing. The next bit with the little roof is the dish washing station: organic waste; rinse tap; bucket for scrubbing; bucket for rinsing; bucket with bleach (since we’re using cold water); drying rack. The shed with the corrugated iron doors (in both photos) houses the two dry toilets (not squat). The next shed with the tarp doors are the three bucket showers. There is now a water heater on the wall at the side. It is gas powered and gives water of about 50 degrees centigrade. Half a bucket of hot water plus about half a bucket of cold is about perfect. Hidden beside that is the laundry area (the housekeepers will wash clothes for us for a very reasonable price (but won’t do socks or underwear so we do those ourselves)). Then the drying lines. The picnic table is the smoking area. The fire pit is on the side behind the tent you can see (and there is now a dart board there too). Then we have the tents of the people who are camping (rather than sharing a dorm room). There are definitely pros and cons to the two different accommodation options. Each person in a tent has an allocated bunk in the house in case there is some sort of emergency (eg lightning storm) that means we’ll have to shelter in place in the building. Behind me (so not in the photo) is the men’s urinal. And that’s base.

There’s a balcony area on the second floor that we can use for yoga, etc. That’s quite nice. We can’t go all the way up on to the roof as it doesn’t have a handrail around it and that will be an insurance and paperwork nightmare! In front of the building there’s a little driveway area that has concrete so that’s what I’ll be using for my dance classes and people sometimes do workouts there. And there’s a sign out board there too, when we go off base (but back by 8pm curfew) we sign out so staff know who is not on base, where they’ve gone and approximately when they’ll be back.

Base is great, but we’re making it more and more comfortable as we go. There is a wellness space in the house that will be getting carpet soon and some cushions and a cozy lamp and that can be a reading space or chill out space and we’ll use that for movie nights (we have a projector). As various other base improvements occur to us we can make them happen.

It is quite a nice space and we’re all finding our ways of sharing it. Most people here have done this sort of thing before and are generally really good at being respectful of each other. It’s a lovely little community. I’m definitely enjoying base life. Quiet hours are from 9pm most evenings (10pm on Fridays – since Saturday is a day off) until 6am. Most people are up between 5 and 6 (though some are up even earlier) each morning and we are working hard all day, so it is important that we can all get enough sleep. Despite the curfew and quiet hours, we have a lot of freedom when we’re not working, we can go off site on a Friday afternoon (because Friday is a half day) and then come back on Saturday. Living and working together is fabulous, but does need consideration and respect for each other. Some of us will be here for several months!