Flat-pack queen and garden goddess

It has been a week now since the truck with our furniture and appliances arrived from Uganda, and since then we’ve been spending no less than 12 hours a day (some time 14 or 15) trying to get things in order to move in. The bulk of my time (and the bane of my existence) has been putting together loads of flat-pack furniture—you know, Ikea/Target-style press board dressers, etc. Back in the States, I wasn’t too keen on this stuff because there is inevitably at least one piece where the holes are drilled incorrectly and, let’s be honest, I certainly don’t have the wrist strength to drive in a gazillion little screws to make the thing all fit together. It’s even harder here in Africa when the diagrams for assembly are incomprehensible (even to a reasonably intelligent engineer). After a week, I have 3 of 4 wardrobes completed (the first took 2 days to assemble!) and 4 of 8 desks put together. I also expected to put together bed frames, but we quickly realized that the store had shipped us queen-sized bed frames and California-king-sized mattresses. Since it’s not like we can go down the street to do an exchange—shipping them back to Uganda would cost more than they are worth—we’ve just been sleeping on the mattress on the floor. But since it’s the first time we’ve had a spring mattress to sleep on in 3 months, I’m not complaining!

With the truck of goodies also came everything to make a functional kitchen. I spent an entire day on Thursday washing dishes and trying to find a home for the pots, pans, and small appliances, no small task considering that I have approximately 6 square feet of countertop space and about half enough cupboards. With everything in place, I then set out to make a birthday dinner for Francis—though his bday is the 4th, since I had no means to bake a cake or good meal, we opted to observe his birthday 10 days later. It was so nice to be back in a kitchen with a handmixer, measuring cups, and frying pan!!! I’d planned on making frosted brownies and was lucky to find fresh eggs in the market. I also made a tomato and pesto lasagna, with basil from my own garden. The food was almost as good as the enjoyment of making it!

Speaking of the garden, everything is “going gangbusters” as my padre likes to say. We have enough green beans for a meal about every three days, the first batch of peas should be ready to pick any day, and there are four cucumbers that should also be ready soon. We have a few marble-sized tomatoes and some golf ball-sized watermelons. I’m expecting the beets also to be ready soon, but I think the carrots and onions need some more time. The eggplant and peppers look healthy, but still no signs of fruit—it seems, though, that it’s a late bloomer ( and I’ve only planted it 2 months ago). I’m not sure what to make of my sweetcorn—it all looks healthy, but I’m afraid that it tassled too early. The tallest stalks are about 5’ tall, and even some of the 3-footers have full tassles. I have been warned that the 12-hour days (as opposed to the Midwest’s 16-18 hours of summer sun) may not be enough to produce full ears, but the thought of crispy, sweet corn-on-the-cob is worth the effort of trying. The only real disappointment (outside of my strawberries which never germinated) is my zucchini; the plants look healthy and they get huge yellow blossoms, but so far absolutely no fruit! Now that we’ve begun to see what grows well, the gardener and I are working this week on expanding the garden by about 50% so that we can get the next batch of crops in. Now that we’ve had crunchy, fresh veggies, we want to ensure that we will always have some!
[Above: Peter the gardener with our 3rd batch of beans]

Not too much else to report here. Furniture assembly has delayed my job hunt a bit, though I did have a pretty promising talk with an NGO the other day. I’m hoping that by the end of the month the house will be in good enough shape to throw a party for all of the kawajas in town …and not let anyone leave until someone agrees to hire me.