Compund Sweet Compound

"We'll meet back at the compound", "I need to get to the compound", "See you around the compound". No, these are not lines from a bad movie, these are everyday utterances here. David Koresh eat your heart out.

The compound is about 15 meters square, the walls rise about 6 feet, the buildings approach 12 feet, roofed with corrugated iron. The north and east walls are both topped by rings of razor wire. The gate is made of heavy steel, with a series of unappealing spikes surmounting it. The gate shuts with a clang of great finality.

The south wall houses the kitchen, a few staff lodgings, and in the corner, the pair of bathing stalls and lavatories. On the north wall once finds the dining room, the three volunteer dorms, and a few more staff living quarters. In the courtyard on the east side are a pair of clotheslines and a large, black polytank, containing all the water for clothes washing and bathing.

My room is a basic affair, just a bunk bed on a vinyl floor, small mirror to the right of the rear door, two power outlets, and a bare fluorescent bulb hanging from a wire. I've set up my mosquito netting on the bottom bunk with parachute cord; the top bunk I'm using to stage my gear. I keep a fan close to the bed, without any airflow it can become rather stifling.

On account of the heat of the rooms, most idle time at the compound is spent on the trip of concrete stoeps in front of the dorms. Each porch is separated from the others by a waist-high whitewashed concrete abutment. Tom, the German volunteer who lives in the room behind mine, had rigged an old speaker up to a headphone jack and placed it in the corner of our stoep. I added a cheap shortwave radio and my ipod, now our eclectic mix of Dr. Dre, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Tom Waits, Snoop Dogg, Alabama 3, and the BBC World Service have become welcome diversions.

A fine red dust constantly drifts over the compound, it's a constant fight to keep it outside. Withing an hour, a book left out on the porch can pick up a cinnamon-like coating. The roads in Teshie are unpaved, and as such any motor traffic kicks up a plume of that same red dust. It's disheartening to feel that you're getting a nice, even tan, then it all wash off in the evening.

I've been keeping track of time by two calendar systems. The first, more accurate one, is a hand drawn calendar I keep taped to the wall. The other, which is less accurate but shows a great deal of class, is an ever lengthening row of 1.5 liter water bottles I've drank during my time here. I have plans to reenact great battles of the civil war, utilizing the Voltic bottles as the Union, while the Aqua Fills will serve as the Confederacy. Maybe a whiskey bottle can fill in for Grant?