Good news!

Quick update. A weird (but excellent!) thing happened yesterday (just the universe keeping in tune with Bongo Flava week, I guess). In the morning, we had to go into town to get the grandfather who died a few days ago from the mortuary to bring him back for his funeral. All our Tanzanian fundhis wanted to take the day off to attend his funeral so we decided we'd pay them for the day off and Daz would take a day off himself.

Except Daz never takes a day off. So instead, he drove into town with Shona to the meet the guy who sold us the dodge plywood. To our surprise, the guy seemed genuinely interested in our dramas and talked through all sorts of solutions, after agreeing not to charge us for the 50 sheets we hadn't yet laid (but he'd maintained the fee for the sheets we had laid). Towards the end of the meeting, Daz walks into the guy's showroom and sees all masses of brilliant hardwood planks - grevillea or cypress, take your pick. All of the planks were cut into tongue & groove so they slot together easily when you're laying them. The perfect solution for the Kesho floor - and maybe even the walls! When Daz got the quote for them, he quickly worked out they'd be only slightly more expensive than the plywood we'd planned to use (would look HEAPS better)...and far less expensive than the Kenyan plywood. It will be easy for us to plant grevillea to offset the non-eco-friendly purchase - in fact, if you've been reading this fluctuating little blog, you know we're already growing about 100 grevillea seedlings that we saved from being ploughed up by the Faming Co-op boys. We think we might still use the green Kenyan ply on the roof...Or ask this guy to make us more of his Tanzanian ply but to make it with the proper glue (ie not water-based glue!) - a great suggestion from our always-there eco-tect Rob-Not-Dentist Watson. Anyway, we're no longer walking the plank! Instead we are buying the plank - and thanking our lucky stars that a funeral set us on the right path... As Daz said, "I would never have taken a day off work to go and look at wood right now... so I would have stressed about that for a month!"

Of course, strange that the guy selling us the ply didn't at any point mention that he had a whole showroom (at a different site to the one Daz first went to) of alternative timber products...but anyhoo!

Back on top,
Beck

xx