Where's the closest IKEA?

Life here isn't only about cat bites and other wild creatures! Today, after finishing off helping to layout and design and check a Dinka calendar, Jackie and I put on our IT hats and went and figured out why the Internet wasn't working in our new house. Seems some creature had gnawed away at the fibre optic cables. I hope that pesky rat hasn't developed a taste for fibre optics... we changed the new cables and powered it up... and voila. Wireless internet again. It's crazy how many times we've had to change these cables in various places on this compound over the past several months! At least we're getting good at it!

Once we had the Internet going, we hauled over our cleaning supplies and started with a fury on getting our house ready to move in! There are quite a lot of things to be done, and in some ways, it feels like we're going backwards in the level of renovation and niceness of that house compared to the level of niceness in the guesthouse. But with a little elbow grease and some help from who ever happens to come along, I think we'll be able to whip it into shape quite quickly.

My first task was to finish the second coat of paint on my bookshelves, which I salvaged from the old store house. The bookshelf belonged to someone from our organization 30 years ago, and they kindly left their bookshelf in the store house when they evacuated here in the early 1980s. So I rescued it, and I know it will be put to very good use!

When I went to the one and only hardware shop here to buy the paint with Richard last weekend, the choice of colours was pretty limited. There was army green, lime green, white or blue. Guess what I chose?! I took this photo after the first coat, but it's already pretty bright blue! At least it will brighten up my room. I'm actually thinking to get some funky cloth from the market to make a sort of curtain on the ftont, which will help keep some of the dust out. Plus, the fabrics here are SO beautiful! I can't wait to go shopping for that. I also need some curtains for the windows, so I'll also get some fun African print for that...


Here's Jackie and Sunday in our new living room.
A little sparse yet, but hopefully our truck will come tomorrow or the next day with a bunch of furniture and house bits that we've bought from various people in Uganda who have left to go back home.

The house has been renovated and a lot of work has been done on it. but it still does need a lot more work. So I started one project today! I'm repainting the kitchen cupboards:
Sunday likes being in photos, so she's in a bunch that I took of our house today! So here I am, a bilingual education and literacy specialist, hard at work: (if you look closely just under my elbow on my right arm, you can see the extent of the cat damaage.)
Actually, it's a lot of fun getting this house ready. I just wish that I knew more about electrical wiring, plumbing and carpentry! Because there are some serious issues that a simple coat of paint is not going to fix... but I'll do what I can for now.

But man, what I wouldn't do for a good old spree at IKEA, or even Home Depot! Oh the things I could do with some of that stuff! But as it is, we're probably going to end up with a set of plastic patio chairs around our kitchen table and I'll have to get pretty creative to find a way to hang my clothes... I guess I've finally found a hobby! I'm sure home-development could be more than a full - time hobby!