In April 2008 Ethan and I were about to hit the road for Pause, to Begin, and the lease we had on the house we were renting was going to end pretty much the day we returned from being on the road. I needed to find a place to live and so I made a phone call about a listing I found in the classifieds. The landlord, Colin, wanted a 6-month lease, something I told him I couldn’t commit to, and he understood.

I thought that would be the end of our conversation but Colin paused for a moment and said I sounded like a good guy. He offered another place, a waterfront cottage, that I was welcome to rent out if I was able to find it. “Crazy,” I thought, “if I can find it?” He said it was very rustic. No bathroom. Dirt road. Not really finished on the inside. The only binding agreement was that if the place I sold I had to move out within a reasonable amount of time.

I made my way to the cottage on April 30th, 2008, and immediately fell in love. The video below is from that day.

While living there the hot water heater stopped working. I went to the studio where I worked while Colin and his guy came down to see what the problem was. I came home later that night and saw a post-in note on a photograph I had hanging on the wall. On it was written, “David, where did you take this picture? It is my home. Hot water should be working! Call me. — Colin”

Then I had that feeling where the hair on your arms stands up, the feeling that something unexplainable has just happened. I had photographed Colin’s home without knowing it and here it was hanging in his property that I was renting.

The cottage ended up selling and I was sad to see it go but happy for Colin to have the money. He said I was welcome to live in an even more rustic place on the opposite peninsula if I liked and that he would only charge for the cost of electric.

I visited the place, an old trailer on the water, and initially didn’t think I could live there. It was too rustic, too tough to mentally endure for months. But after much debate I decided it was worth it to save money to put towards Uganda.

Living there was very difficult but also beautiful.

The bed I slept in was surrounded by mosquito netting because of the spiders and mice. The only heat was from a small but strong wood stove that I didn’t keep running during the daytime for fear of burning down the trailer. When I came home from work at night the temperature inside the trailer would be whatever the outside temperature was, and many times it was well below freezing. I’d start a fire in the freezing cold and sit on my bed wearing my down jacket. We had bitter cold early winter storms and they slammed the trailer hard. The wind would blow so fiercely that snow would enter beneath my door. In the mornings there would be a small pile inside the door and I’d shovel it out. The electricity was so weak that if I plugged more than 2 things in the circuit would blow.

But it was somehow beautiful and I have many fond memories of living there. In many ways it made me appreciate so much and realize how simple life can be if we allow it. In the morning I would wake up, look out the bay window, and see lobster boats hauling in their traps from the tidal river, the Saint George. Two hundred feet away were 2 nesting bald eagles with an enormous nest that produced 2 hatchlings in the spring time. While walking next door in the morning to shower I would regularly see 10 wild turkeys. During sunsets the river would glow pinks, purples, and oranges. Countless times I would sit on the banks of the river and take it all in with awe, listening to the water rise and fall, the fog horns off in the distance.

Before I left for Uganda, I gave Colin the photograph of his home that I had hanging on my wall in the cottage as a way of saying thank you for letting me live in the trailer for 4-months free of charge (a savings of $2,000). He said he was going to hang it in one of the vacation condo’s he rents but later decided to keep it for he and his girlfriend and hung in their living room. In my mind I couldn’t have asked for it to have a better home.

You see, making my way to Uganda was serendipitous in a lot ways. I made sacrificies and worked hard to make it happen but I also had a lot of luck with great help from many friends along the way. In the end that made all the difference. Thank you!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Posts with pictures, Uganda: the Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.