Remember the blog about mold? Apparently it’s really bad for your health. Who knew? Actually, we knew, but didn’t do anything about it. Looking back, we’re asking ourselves why we didn’t have anything done about it when we first got here but we think we ignored it, crediting it to living in Peru and doing with less and this is just what the house is like. It was part of the culture shock…like maybe everyone lives this way. Well it turns out, people in Peru don’t normally live with mold either.
Two days ago I found mold growing on our clothespins and then discovered it on some of my luggage. Not good. I sent our organization headquarters an email about our worries and my mom called them as well. Our director called us yesterday and told us to pack our things immediately as we needed to move out of this place. I’m still not sure how they weren’t aware of the problem before, but whatever.
After the kids left (blog post on the kids later), we started packing up. As I start packing I find that EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF MY LUGGAGE has mold growing on it. One was pretty bad, as well as my backpack, but the others only had small patches. I can’t exactly put clothes back into a moldy suitcase to store, that would defeat the purpose. So all of my belongings are now in black trash bags and large ziplock bags. It’s like I’m homeless…wait, we kind of are. We had to move all the kids stuff downstairs and clear all the rooms here.
The plan (at the moment) is for a guy to come this morning (supposedly at 9 although it’s 10 now) and get an estimate on the cost for the work. He’ll probably be able to start the process of getting rid of it next week. We are camping out on the first floor for the weekend and then will move in with a family next week. This weekend was bad/ good timing. Bad because it’s Carnival and everyone has family in town and no room for us and stores are closed for a while…but good because they kids won’t be here until Tuesday which gives us another day to get things moved around.
Last night we camped out on our mattresses in the front room with all the other stuff. It kind of felt like camping. It’s a good thing we’ve been here a month and are feeling safer here because there’s NO WAY I would have done that three weeks ago. You couldn’t have paid me to sleep down there. I was still a little nervous about it but was overall fine. The only thing I have to complain about it that I slept between Brit and Noelle and our mattresses acted like a trampoline with everyone rolling to the middle. I woke up around 3:00 with Brittany literally against my right side and Noelle on my left. The only space I had was what I was occupying. I almost got out, let Brit roll into the middle and then jumped on her edge. I settled for trying to push them away and after a while they both subconsciously got the hint that I had no space haha At least they kept me warm :)
This morning, while I was in the shower, Noelle had a run-in with Feliciana’s husband. He was wondering why all of our stuff was downstairs and when she told him a guy was coming in to get rid our mold he got pretty angry and told her that they didn’t have money for this (since they don’t even have the money to finish the third floor (which is the cause of the mold)) and he could take care of it once we left. He then proceeded to (just like Feliciana) SWEEP our ceilings!! Mold and moldy paint and all kinds of grossness were spread EVERYWHERE. I’m writing this blog post with a mask over my face. It’s kind of hard to breathe. He told Noelle that he better not come back and find a man here working on mold. Just when I thought we’d established a good relationship with them, this happens haha Well I’m not going to be his friend about this. We need professional help.
Currently, Noelle is spraying bleach water on the mold in the rooms that he didn’t sweep. We’re pretty sure we’re doing everything wrong as far as the removal goes but we’ve decided it doesn’t matter since we’ve been breathing it in for months. We’re not going to get any sicker or any deader in the next 24 hours…actually I guess we could because now the mold has been disturbed. Not our fault.
Saturday Evening….
Well the guy came today to take a look at the mold (despite Jony not wanting it) and was quite taken aback by the amount of it. He wasn’t too thrilled with the fact that we can’t exactly fix the problem because our home doesn’t have a roof…hence all the water that comes in. There’s no plan for when the roof will get put on either. It’s been like this since July. He suggested we put little tubes all over the top to get the water to drain out the top (this is what they usually do when construction is going on. He also said he’d have to scrape off all the paint from the ceilings and then repaint them. He’s going to use this paint that has plastic in it so the mold won’t come back in two or three months and we’d have the problem all over again. The other major problem with the upstairs is that there’s stuff all over the floor. Piles of dirt and rocks etc. These hold moisture when it rains which causes even more mold. So we need to completely clear the floor of anything. Now, the Catch-22 with this is that Peruvians don’t like you moving their stuff (neither do American’s) and everything up there is Jony’s. I don’t think he wants us cleaning his space but I’m not sure how we’re going to get him to clean it up when the “enemy” is the one who wants it clean.
Our spray bottle broke after spraying two rooms. I paid s/10 for that! Nowhere around here sells empty spray bottles so I had to buy a full one of cleaning solution and then we transferred that to an empty yogurt bottle.
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| Going through each and every article of clothing to check for mold. |
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| Aleksi and Ricardo taking our beds apart to bring them downstairs. |
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| My sad, moldy luggage :( |
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| Sleeping in the front room with ALL the stuff...the wood in the back are the beds. And notice my makeshift curtain :) |
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| All I own stuffed in various bags. |
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