The Simple Life

San Juan Ostuncalco, Guatemala. All our worldly goods fit on the back of one small truck.

A bed, crib, wardrobe, stove, one small cabinet, card table, and four metal folding chairs. Life doesn't get much more simple than that. No refrigerator meant daily walks to the market (thus helping the language learning process). We did have running water, though it was outside. Our one precious amenity was a flush toilet which sat in a separate room from the stall where we hung the solar bag for showers.

The folding table was by far the most useful piece of furniture we owned. Using it as a kitchen counter, I prepared our meals. After scrubbing it down, I would cover it with a tablecloth and we would eat there. After meals, Jim would haul in water, heat it on the stove, and pour it into a plastic bin on the same table, where we would wash the dishes. After drying the dishes and putting them back in our one small cabinet, storing leftovers on the windowsill for cold storage, we would refill the wash tub with fresh water heated on the stove, and bathe the baby. Later we would dry off the table and convert it to a desk for language learning.

Looking back, 1986-1987 was like a year-long camping trip. Washing clothes (including cloth diapers) by hand in cold water outdoors and hanging them out to dry just added to the "simplicity" of life. Somehow it wasn't very romantic. It was just hard. It didn't help to have "real missionaries" come visit and tell us how blessed we were to have tiles instead of a dirt floor. To me it was simply miserable. Simplicity is definitely overrated.