One of the many reasons we wanted to live in Africa was because of the huge yards. One thing I didn’t anticipate though was all the ‘extra’ projects that would stem from having a yard. Granted, I am not doing the gardening or manual labor, but it has been exhausting nonetheless.
Most of the stress has come from the contractors we hired and the many challenges of getting things done in Africa. One of my biggest frustrations here is that information is very hard to locate. It’s usually in someone’s phone. You’ll be asking around for something and someone will say, “Oh, I know Paul, he does grills. Here’s his number.” No website, no references, nada. And you don’t even know who’s going to show up (if, in fact, they do). It is not uncommon to have an appointment time set for someone to come give you a quote and have them show up 5 hours after the scheduled time. Africa time, I guess.
Take our grill, for example. We didn’t bring one because we had been told that it was hard to find an adapter for Africa’s propane tanks. Upon asking around I was told about the ‘grill guy’. I had even seen one of his grills at someone’s house, so I had some idea of what we were ordering in advance.
The grill itself is pretty cool. It’s a charcoal grill that’s been welded out of a barrel. The only problem was that we had a communication error the first time around and ended up with the wrong grill. The second grill we got had rust on the grates and one leg that was uneven. Upon asking to have it fixed, I was told that there was nothing they could do about the leg and that I should just take a scrub brush to the rust. Not quite the answer I was hoping for, but such is life.
I also hired a carpenter to do a few projects, the first of which was a swing set. I was told it would take 2 days, tops. It took 7. It isn’t the end of the world but what concerns me is that we also hired him to do a 45 sq meter deck. The wood itself just arrived on day 7, apparently because there was no power at the sawmill, so they couldn’t cut the boards. Seriously, how do you run a business if you don’t have consistent power??! Given this slow start, I’m estimating 7-14 days for the deck. I’ll keep you posted.
I am shocked/fascinated by how manual it all is. The photo above shows the anchoring posts for the deck. Each one has been hand shaved and will now be inserted in the holes shown below. Some of the wood arrived today, but I was disconcerted to see that the floor planks were 1 x 4 instead of 2 x 4’s… fingers crossed that we get a deck that won’t cave in when we have our first party!
There’s no end in sight for projects, as November and December mark the start of rainy season, hence planting time. Below you’ll see the beginning of tilling the soil (all done by hand). Sod doesn’t exist here. Instead, each individual blade of grass is planted. I can’t even imagine how long it will take to plant our entire yard. It sounds too crazy to be true but I’ve been assured that’s how it’s done here.
Thank goodness that on the frustrating days when I run into issue after issue, I have these sweet smiles to keep me motivated. They are loving their new swing set and sandbox. Don’t even ask how long it took me to find a sand supplier…
I know I’ll look back and laugh at all the hiccups, but man oh man am I feeling spent today and missing the efficiency of the States. Alas, tomorrow is a new day and I have Halloween to prep for! Off to bed now. I’ll write again soon.
