Home, to me, is a place of comfort, relaxation, healing, safety. While I love road trips and traveling, after a few days I feel the pull... nothing beats the feel of returning home. When I’m sick, all I want to do is curl up in bed under the covers, toasty and warm, with occasional excursions to the kitchen for hot tea or broth. I’m lucky — my house is nice and warm and well insulated; I can have a steaming hot shower at the touch of a faucet, and hot tea/hot food with little effort on my part.
Now, imagine that you have multiple chronic illnesses, and you’ve caught a nasty bug; could be flu, could be pneumonia, either way, your energy is completely sapped and your mentally fatigued. That would be bad enough in the best of circumstances; if you lived in a nice house like mine that was able to provide some small amount of comfort to you. But imagine trying to function, day after day, when you live in an old RV and the winter winds mean that the water hoses freeze and you don’t have hot water (and even when you do have water, you have to go outside (in the freezing cold) to light the pilot for the water heater to get about five minutes worth of hot water. Add to that the fact that brownouts, an electrical cord sold as suitable for outdoor use that was not, and years of weathering on said cord caused an electrical fire that would have been fatal had it occurred slightly earlier, when people were sleeping, and you can start to imagine, perhaps, how while survival in such a place might be possible (at least for a while), it is certainly not conducive to good health.
This is the situation Aji & Wings are in. Their manufactured home was repossessed in 2010. The RV has been ‘home’ since then, but as the years wear on, the RV is no longer suitable for long term habitation. Aji & Wings are getting older, chronic health issues are still there, compounded by the difficulties of day to day living in the RV. They haven’t been able to shake the bug they picked up at the end of last year, because how can you get healthy when you don’t have a warm bed, hot water, and peace of mind? Crowdfunding a house is their only chance to escape this situation. They have the land — ancestral land from Wings’ family. Thanks to earlier fundraising stages, the shell of the house is built, and drywall is up. There is still interior work to be done — flooring, fixtures, appliances, (re)wiring.
The good news is, we’re less than $2000 away from closing out this stage of the fundraising. Even better — we have a pool of matching funds from several anonymous donors that totals $1000! I’ll have more ways to help below the fold, but first — here’s the link to their YouCaring page.
