House of Horrors...

As we entered our second full day of torrential rains, the house was springing leaks in new places with every passing hour. The plaster coating on several parts of the ceiling was beginning to bubble. I had been hit with a falling piece of plaster from the ceiling at the top of the stairs the night before. Now the dining room was leaking like a sieve, and it seemed that we had our own personal rain forest inside our house. Jokingly we changed the words of the old country music song "Is it Raining at Your House" to "Is it Raining IN Your House". We prayed that the sun would peek out as we prepared for our day out on the road.

Aunt Lori and I worked futilely at connecting her laptop to the internet for about 45 minutes and then we took a drive up the coast toward downtown Natal. The beaches were beautiful. The water looked clean and blue despite the overcast skies. We found the "Centro de Turismo", which was an old prison that had been transformed into an artisan shopping center. Each old "cell" had been turned into a separate shop for an artisan looking to sell their product. Aunt Lori spent about two hours in one of the shops that sold hammocks, blankets, pillows and table cloths. She found a product that was made of a certain material that she thought would sell wonderfully in the United State. She was interested in finding out who made the hammock so she could find out where they got their material. She thought that this would be a good "second project" for the co-op that was being run in thr building adjacent to the hall.

SIDE NOTE: This co-op is a group of women from the hall that meet between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM and who take raw materials (right now just wooden products such as bird houses, coffee filter holders, napkin dispensers, picture frames etc...) and paint them to turn them into beautiful looking finished products. I have personally seen these products and I will say that they are the type of thing that would sell at Pier One or The Pottery Barn for $25, $30 maybe even $50 US dollars. Down here they go for a mere R$15, R$20, or R$40 (between $7 and $20 US dollars).

They are funded for the time being, but after several months the funding will cease and they will be expected to support themselves. It is beginning to break even now, only two months into the project, and each of the women has just become licensed artisans by the government within the past week. Now they are able to sell products on their own in a shop or on the road. After these women are "cut free" from the program and go on their own, a second group of women will be brought in and a new co-op will begin. This second group will likely be women from the neighboring community of the hall, who will get the same training in becoming an artisan as the first batch received. Aunt Lori is hoping to purchase some raw materials or cheep chairs that could sell for more than R$40, which would produce more income than the smaller objects. Uncle Mark is also planning on possibly teaching the men how to create the wooden products on their own, rather than purchasing them, which would cut the overhead material cost considerably. :END SIDE BAR

William, Uncle Mark and I spent about 15 minutes total in all of the shops and sat out the remaining time on an old wooden bench in the courtyard. All I could think of was the Brad Paisley song "Waiting on a Woman" as we waited for Aunt Lori and Caroline to finish what they were doing in the one shop. We had some entertainment though, as one "locksmith" had been attempting to get into an ATM machine for about 4 hours now. Two armed security guards had been standing behind him with their hands on their guns. We sarcastically named this locksmith "The Genius", due to his apparent lack of skill in his own profession. Once the girls finished, and William purchased his hand crafted native blow gun, we got in the car and drove back to the house.

We had dinner with Luis, Lillia, Pietro and Luiz's mother (more on that during my next post). I got another headache and lied down in bed. After everyone had gone home, the rest of the family prepared for bed. Caroline had lost her tooth and put it under her pillow, hoping for a visit from the "tooth fairy". However the events that unfolded next probably kept the tooth fairy as far away from our house as possible.

William had just gotten into bed and I was starting to doze off when I heard a "FIZZZZZZZ POPPPP" noise. I opened my eyes in time to see the ceiling fan above our heads spewing sparks across the room. All of a sudden the fan burst into a blaze of flame as I stared in shock as the orange glow threw more small ambers into the air. I jumped up and quickly turned off the fan. The blades slowed and the fire died off. This small electrical fire had been caused by the motor of the fan blowing due to Pietro's rapid flipping of the switch earlier that evening. William had slept through this entire event, and I was scared that he would wake up the next morning and turn the fan on not knowing of the events of the night previous. I informed the rest of the family not to turn on the fan under any circumstances and then went to bed. In just 5 days here in Natal we had experienced major leakage, falling plaster, a dysfunctional alarm system and a flaming fan. What future surprises will this house at 1254 Rua De Lagosta (Lobster Road) have in store for us? Time would only tell...