Home Sweet Home??

As the dust settles on the post Kenyan election brew ha ha and our move to a new house I am starting to find the time to write again. Moving, how should I say, in a word, was – painful. It’s amazing that like hard drive space real space is something to be filled; if you got it, you will fill it and we had plenty of it at the other house so we filled it. The ‘new’ house is about half the size of the old one. We did a good job of filling that huge house with all sort of stuff that we are now having to say ‘hmmm, where should THIS go now?’. So there has been two weeks of that question. The two car garage here is packed with boxes and furniture.

The house is older too with all that implies. And we have discovered some seriously bad plumbing problems. Like the toilet system was never vented properly. The embassy quickly had guys in to fix most things but many remain.

The yard was a mess. Neglected for years, the landlord gave us carte blanche to do whatever. It’s been fun to play landscape architect here. I can actually afford to hire four fulltime gardeners to do the work while I get to design. It is the beginning of rainy season so we have had to work fast to get things done. Most of the entire yard was dug up and grass was planted. Now when I say grass was planted I mean they went to village where they allowed us to buy their grass, we dug it up and hauled it to the house, then planted it all by hand. We bought bricks and made a trim for a new garden spot and laid a foot path. Soon the yard will be teaming with flowers and vegetables.

As we are doing the finishing touches of hanging art and stowing books Kayla and I both remarked how this house, even though it has problems, seems more like a ‘home’ than the other one ever did.