Thursday, February 17, 2011

The roof is on fire!

Literally. I got a new roof(or at least, 1/2 of a new roof) last week and the only thing to do with the remains of my old one was to set it on fire! A few weeks back some neighbors of mine and myself stood around contemplating how many leaves it would take to replace my entire roof. It's been leaking in around 14 different areas throughout the entire thing, and it seemed like the best time to take care of a problem that mother nature was only going to make worse. At first, they said, "400! that'll do the job for sure!" Then after a few minutes, they went up to 450 leaves, and by the end we settles on 500 just to be extra safe. The type of leave I bought is called Wagara and is given the title of best leaf available out of the 3 they use to make roofs.

So, my 500 leaves of Wagara come piling in one day and suddenly all the men are standing around a little nervous saying, "ohhhh....that might not be enough." A week goes by and finally, when we're half way done with putting up my class A roof, we run out. Go figure, HALF WAY. Oh well, at least we didn't tear the whole thing down but instead went little by little sort of knowing in the back of our minds it wouldn't last to the end. To finish the thing I need another 400 leaves, and I'm just not sure that's going to happen. The rain is back and the dry summer is saying goodbye. I'm also not super wealthy, and Wagara is not super cheap. I have about another week to decide for sure if I'm gonna go for it, so may the roof gods smile upon me and grant me some grand roof discount. In the mean time, enjoy my fire and leaf photos.


Boating in the 4,000 or so leaves ordered in the bunch between community members. Also, in case you were wondering, yes, they all ran out early too.
Lying in oja heaven.



Emiliano wanted me to take his photo in front of the fire with his youngest Liliana.