Jim & Leslie's Adventures

Mar 3rd, 2009 Safety First!

We, in Canada – especially in smaller areas, take safety for granted. We lock our doors – if we remember – and occasionally pay attention to a “boil water” notice on the radio. No big deal. In the cities we pay attention a little more, perhaps not walking alone at night.

Here safety is a big thing. Every dwelling is locked up tight. Almost every property has a wall around it for protection. When a new place is being built they will first build a wall around the property, otherwise their building materials will disappear before they can finish! Only the very, very poor have no locks, since they have nothing to steal.

Many communities are “gated”, that is there is a gate to access the area and there is a guard (sometimes a couple of them) that open the gate for those who have business there. They carry clubs. Other guards roam about in the community. The missionary home we are staying in is in one of these. That is the first line of defense.

The next line is the wall. The wall here has a door in the back and one in the front. In the front there is also an entrance for the car. The top of the wall is spiked to make climbing difficult. Although the home here does not have it, some walls also add broken glass or razor wire to the top. The gates all lock from inside so that they can only be opened with a key. If anyone does climb in, they can’t open the gate to the outside, and they still have to face the next line of defense.

Bouba, the watchdog is the next line. You saw him in the blog earlier (my lizard hunting partner). Most here are quite afraid of dogs, so Bouba roams around inside the yard to scare off potential trespassers.

Now the house itself. All of the windows are barred. It is decorative, but also very secure. Way too much work to go in that way! The doors are locked. But that would be no guarantee on its own, so they also have an steel grill to make them secure. That is every outside door in the house!

After that, every room can be locked. When we go out, or at night we all lock our doors. Inside the room we have cupboards that lock too. Passports and other valuables get locked in there. How many levels have you counted?

On top of that is the health security. The home has double-filtered water and we drink lots of that. Apart from that – or bottled water – we don’t accept water from just anyone. Marvin & Penny know which places are mostly safe, but generally we wait to get home.

The same is true of food. The streets are full of vendors selling delicious smelling things, but the risk isn’t worth it. Apparently some things are fairly safe, if you see the food come out of hot oil, but … better safe ….

Even when it comes to laundry. Clothes are not hung out to dry, but are done in a dryer. The reason for this: mango worms. The flies will lay their eggs in clothes hung out to dry. If you wear the clothes the next day, they can hatch and burrow into your skin. Removal can be nasty. Needless to say, everything gets a good ironing! That’ll show ’em!

We certainly will not be taking our liberty so much for granted in the future!

Posted in The Really Big Trip by jimt with 6 comments.