This looked rich and wonderful and kept the sunlight out as well as the mosquitoes. There was usually no partition in thatch houses, but at times a bedroom would be fabricated using large pieces of carton from carton boxes. One or two hammocks would always be stretched across the houses. To begin with, every home looked alike- a square or rectangular house, a front porch as close as possible to the front of the yard, a zinc roof and wooden windows and doors hanging on hinges. Usually the back room served as a kitchen and an annex was built to serve as a bathroom.
News still spread like butter on hot cakes.
There were no televisions. So what, people found many interesting things to do, except that international news and developments reached us very late. Our homes back then did not have these elaborate sound systems and music boxes. No tape players, no compact disc players, no boom boxes. Instead there were small record players operated by battery only that could be heard at full blast from the sitting room to the kitchen, but could not in any way annoy the next door neighbor.