UNDER THE MANGO TREE--Tamsin Barzane

When Saminaka was born in 2008, I built (with the help and advice of the kind and skilled Readly Oh) a small Nupe compound. It was my first foray into the construction business, and I had Readly show me how to create a round house with a Nupe style door and window opening. Then I was ready for bigger fish! I made an old-style Nupe palace katamba, the grand round entrance building with support posts. By rights, it should have had opposing tall doorways for the entrance and egress of chiefs on horseback, but I was already struggling with megaprims, Tokoroten and sculpted posts, and a temp rezzer that would allow me to pack 50 plus prims into one box.

The Nupekwo compound had three or four houses that stood empty for a while, but the delightful Cymindra moved in, and since then the tenancy has changed very little. Recently several others have chosen to move it, so I added a few buildings. I like my six tenants tremendously, and am proud they've chosen to like in Saminaka, even though they don't actually spend much time in their cramped quarters.

Contemplating them made me think of the nature of "home" in Second Life, and our curious human impulses. I have an SL home, and acquired the land within a month or two of signing up. I fell in love with the terrain, and the fact it was part of a five-sim package, much of it open water. I knew my two neighbors, and made two other local friends.

The plot is an odd shape--very difficult for most houses. I kept trying to squeeze and rotate, never thinking of asking the estate manager to manipulate the shoreline! My first domicile was much to big to decorate within the prim limits, so it always looked empty. I was about to buy one of Barnesworth Annubis' Moroccan homes just when my friend Chan tired of hers, so she dropped it onto my land. It was perfect--until I messed up its open/close Moorish windows and somehow locked all the doors--and because it wasn't mine, not much I could do! But I managed it.

I recently decided to try to build more, and am trying out a modified structure from Mali as my house. It's unfinished, and still unfurnished--a measure of how little I use this "home." Yet I don't want to get rid of it, even though there's less open water, and no longer an unimpeded view. Why? I'm not slexing it up between the sheets, or throwing fabulous parties. It IS nice not to change clothes at the bottom of the ocean, but that's not it either.

And I've been tempted. I bought it before land became virtually free except for the tier, and know I'd never get its costs back. Still, it is a kind of base, and I've grown affectionate towards it. It's "my place" and it's in an idyllic environment. And as I turn the heat on for the season and look out at the unpulled weeds on a vacant lot, or a building that needs to be pulled down, the idyllic home holds a beacon of warmth and welcome.

So maybe that's what the tenants feel, too. I pledge to create fun activities and make their environment full of beauty, because I feel pleasure when I see their little lights on the mini-map. I want them to know that Saminaka will remain interesting, refreshing and stimulating, while winters may roar around them, or their own living room turn into a maelstorm. Welcome home!