I know people have wanted to see house pictures, and believe me, I’ve wanted to be able to show them!  But until now, it has pretty much been the same as it was when we left for Canada (ie, empty).  We ordered a bunch of shelving, tables, a couch, a bed, etc, and it was finally all ready this week.  Mike went to pick it up, and now we are working at organizing the inside.  Its really exciting!

So, there are more pictures to come, but for now:

OUR BED!!!  It was wonderful to not be sardines last night.

We are also working on the outside: doing some beginning landscaping so that the next rainy season we can start our own gardens, and getting a fence done.  The fence will help our house be a little more secure (a little harder for thieves), help keep our dog in (we don’t have one yet, but soon), provide a base for a hedge of flowers and fruit, and help diminish the number of people who just stare into our house when they go past (considered very rude in this culture, but somehow its OK if you are looking into a mzungu’s house).

It also appears that in my attempts to not inundate people with pictures of Beatrix, I have posted too few.  I’ll try to do better at that, starting right now:

She does this a lot, especially when she wakes up in the morning.  She’s strong = try doing it yourself!

Two of the guys and I (Mike) have been working this last week on our second installment of an underground watcher catchment tank (and system).  As we’ve been working we’ve had ample time to dream big and discuss the merits of food… and particularly meat.

After a few days of discussion, we concluded that what we have been missing for oh-so-long has been smoked meat.  And that the best way to address that failing would be to immediately  (or the next available weekend at least) begin building our own smokehouse in order to get that homemade beef jerky in us as soon as possible!

The afternoon of this decision we went shopping for meat, and subsequently had a meat cutting party.  Each of us made a different marinating sauce and cut the beef into appropriate jerky-sized pieces.

Then on Saturday, we started building a small mud house with two separate rooms: one for the fire and the second for hanging the meat.  We mudded it well, made some meat-hanging frames, created a tin roof and left it to cure for an appropriate length of time to avoid damaging our structure.

After waiting a whole 12-15 hours, we began our first attempt at what could be an incredibly satisfying or monstrously disappointing operation.  After hanging the meat from frames and starting the fire we waited most of the day while the jerky smoked.  But our patience was rewarded with amazing teriyaki, honey-mustard, and pepper beef jerky!

Sunday evening was filled with dreams of smoked hams, cheeses, and sausage, in what will likely prove to be a team building hobby and possibly community building project.