A message from the (domestic) front …

It has taken time but we are getting the domestic side of life organised.  Steve is now the chief cook and bottle washer and I am trying hard to leave it to him.  But you know how hard it is to break old habits!

For those of you who wanted to see more of our house:

This is the living room.  We have a three piece lounge suite and a bookshelf that is hidden under the cloth (on the right) to keep dust out. We watch episodes of “West Wing” and “House” on Steve’s laptop in the living room and we eat our meals at the little table.  It is a very pleasant room.  The front verandah is off the living room but it is too dusty to sit out there.  It might be a good spot to sit when the rain starts in earnest.

 The main bedroom is quite big.  Our bed is smaller than a double bed so it’s lucky we’ve both lost some weight.  It is quite comfortable and we are now used to sleeping under the mosquito net.  The wardrobe is tiny and I have it for my clothes.  Steve’s are on a sofa in one of the spare rooms.  We have two spare bedrooms both with small double beds.  We are waiting for the landlord to have the mattresses recovered so they will be useable by visitors.  Our little refrigerator is in one of the bedrooms as there is only one power point in the kitchen and we need it for the stove, kettle and toaster.

 This is the kitchen.  The sink drain does work but we still wash up in a basin as we can’t get a plug to fit the sink! The water filter works well.  We are limited in what we can cook by the two hotplates – that let Steve off making me a birthday cake this year.

And the pièce de resistance – the bathroom!  It has two major pluses -

it is inside and it functions.  So far cold showers have not been a problem, the weather is quite warm and the water is not icy.  The squeegee helps the water run in the right direction to get to the drain after showering.  (I wish someone would teach plumbers about gravity!) The least said about the squat toilet the better!  We mightn’t like it but we are managing.

The backyard will one day have another house in it.  The foundations are there as well as piles of bricks and sand.  There are many plants, including vegetables, growing in each of the ‘cells’ of the foundations.  We have been eating home grown eggplant and tomatoes.  We should also get potatoes and sweet potatoes later in the year.  I have sown some watermelon seeds so maybe they will grow when the rain comes.

 

Steve spends a major part of each day in the backyard.  Already 80 bird species have come to visit.  New ones appear regularly so the novelty has not yet worn off.  Maybe when it does he’ll get more into the cooking (or maybe not!)  A 2.5 m brick wall surrounds our yard giving us some privacy. 

We have close neighbours only on one side – a group of families, two shops, two hair salons (men’s and ladies’) and a video viewing saloon which I think also hosts small political rallies for the Centre Unity Party.  The shops sell rice, sugar and maize flour by the kilo but also wheat flour by the kilo and dried yeast by the spoonful so I have been able to make flat bread.  The ladies who run the shops were sceptical when I said I planned to make chapatti with the flour and yeast.  I gave them some when it was cooked and they were very impressed though said I should have used salt!  We converse in a mixture of English, kiSwahili and kiHaya.  The little children who live next door like me to use kiHaya.  They give me gifts of stones and pieces of wood so I’ll say “kisinge” to them.  There is also a carpenter next door who made me some wooden cubes for dice.

On the corner of our road and the main road, about 100 metres from us, there are some small shops that sell a limited variety of fruit and vegetables and also soda (Coke and Fanta).  Today one was also selling meat.  A side of what looked like goat was hanging up out in the open air and the sales lady would have cut a bit off for us if we’d wanted it.

In the other direction, about a kilometre away, there is a small settlement with about 12 shops selling most of the things we might need though again the fruit and vegetables are limited to what the shop keepers have grown themselves.  The market in town has much greater variety but at our local shops we don’t pay the mzungu surcharge.

So far the only meat we have bought to cook is frozen mince steak from the Fido Dido Grocery where we also get other western items – peanut butter, jam, pasta, instant coffee and tea bags.  The meat has been very nice in pasta sauces.  Buying a small fridge has made the food buying/cooking/storing process much easier.

So far the change to living here has been surprisingly easy.  We feel safe and welcome (or relaxed and comfortable!) in our home and work communities.  I am sure we will have some difficult times over the next 10 months (the time is slipping away so quickly!) but so far we are very content.