Old Pics from the Philippines - Part 2

We stayed in the bedroom on the second floor of Sweetie's parent's house.  To say it was hot up there when we went to bed is an understatement, (there was no air-conditioning, and sometimes the fan didn't work because of brown outs - the electricity was being shut off due to a "drought"), but by morning if you weren't under at least a light quilt you would be chilly.  The air temperature where we were, (Zamboanga del Sur, Mindanao), wasn't actually that bad, it's just that during the day the angry tropical sun cooked anything it could see.

To make the Kano "comfortable" we had bought a small mattress, and some mosquito netting.  (Old Grump is EXTREMELY paranoid about being bitten by mosquitoes!)  But until about midnight, when it began to cool down a bit and the roof and flooring of the house had given up the heat they'd absorbed from the sun, sleeping up there was like trying to take a nap in a sauna.

Kuya peeking out the window of the second floor bedroom

One of our goals for this visit was to remodel the house, adding a downstairs bedroom for Lolo and Lola, and replacing the odious "CR", (comfort room), with an attached outhouse.

A view of the CR from the second floor bedroom

Another view from the upstairs bedroom

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the infamous CR itself.  Old Grump absolutely HATED this room!  Imagine having to "do your business" in the tropical heat in a tiny little outhouse where your head bangs against the roof, and the walls are built out of scrap pieces of wood and discarded burlap bags, (yes - BURLAP BAGS!), with gaping holes scattered about here and there that were so large you could wave and say "Howdy!" to your neighbors as you sat on the toilet.  Ugh!

The (un)Comfort Room

Of course, when Grump prattles on like this Sweetie just rolls her eyes.  No one else in the village, (and that would include young girls, who are renowned for their fussiness), had the least bit of problem or complaint with this CR, which was actually a fairly nice one, as at least its walls were straight.

Regardless of whether the CR was acceptable or not, we had decided to replace it with an attached CR so Lolo and Lola wouldn't have to go out in the rain when they "needed to go".  This would be part of the remodeling, and like I said earlier, but attached to the new downstairs bedroom.

The remodeling work begins

You may notice that ALL the work to the house, including digging the pit for the new CR, was done by hand.  Digging a ditch in the tropical heat is tiring, to say the least!

Digging a ditch under the tropical sun

Lolo watching the progress of the pit

The completed CR pit

The additions to the house were built with something called "hollow block", (termite proof!), which I assume is equivalent to what we call cinder blocks.

Like I said earlier, all the work was done by hand.

Eventually the new bedroom and CR were complete.  We had hoped to put nice wooden shutters on the bedroom windows, and do some work on the kitchen, (at a minimum replacing the leaky roof), but by then we had run out of remodeling money, so the work had to stop.