V is for Villa

Vaguely do I remember our trip to Algiers, but some things just stood out- like the Villa we lived in and the hotel in Paris we stayed at overnight. I couldn’t sleep. Can you blame me? A new country, a different bed, new jammies, and jet lag. It was all too overwhelming for me. I think my aunt and my mother were so tired of hearing me and my noisy cousins they had to tell us to go to bed more than once. I was only 5, but I remember looking out the window of the plane exclaiming “I see God!” but all I saw were clouds and blue sky. 

For me, it was an exciting adventure, but to my mother, a vexing experience! If she had not pointed out the vermin such as mice and cockroaches, I would have never realized any of that. Of course, I had never seen a mouse or a cockroach before. It was a beautiful vacation Villa in my opinion! The whitewashed facade was a few steps away from the Mediterranean in a tourist center. We adopted a cat, Minou, who took care of the rodent problem and the cockroaches soon left because they were being overrun by humans, that, or my mom poisoned them all. We soon found out we had lots of company: with the frogs croaking and the crickets chirping.

Our Villa had a lovely little kitchen garden; a terrace and was built like a horseshoe; on one end a bedroom and a bathroom with a separate room for the toilet. Then, another big area where my mother decided to put four bunk beds . Close to that was the front door entrance leading to the kitchen, and around the other end, we had a living room with windows opening on to a big veranda. [here I am on the veranda with one of Minous litter ] There was a cool firepit outside where the bugs gathered at night and a yard wrapping around the entire villa. The thing I didn't like was the grass. It was camel grass; big and chunky, ugly camel grass. It stained your clothes, but the surroundings were waiting to be explored and we couldn’t wait to go to the beach. I spent the majority of the time outside. And “all was right in the world.”

Disclaimer: This post was first published for Alphabe-Thursdays back in 2011