Finally, success!

During April we have a break from school, so I have had considerably more time to mess around with some domestic projects. This post doesn’t really have anything to do with the culture in Kenya or our work, but it might give you a feel for how creative we have to be while living here. I realize the amount of pride I have in accomplishing these things is completely out of proportion to their importance in life, but just bear with me – it’s the little things that make you happy when you live in rural Africa!

Project 1: Display photos

I have been working on this for months and months, never finding a decent way to display photos of family and friends on the wall over our desk. We don’t exactly have bulletin boards or a big magnetic fridge, and even if we made something like a French message board we couldn’t hammer into our wall. The house is built from coral blocks covered in plaster and then painted … pretty much the enemy to hanging anything.

Last December, after much thought and internal debate, I figured we could put up 3M-type sticky hooks a few feet apart, hang some string between them, and then clip the pictures and cards to it with clothespins. It looked really cute, but fell down less than 12 hours later, ripping huge chunks of paint off the wall. I was rather discouraged after that and of course got busy with school, so we have just been staring at a splotchy wall for the last few months.

Finally, with more time on my hands and a little internet research, I realized we needed a picture rail. I figured since we can't attach a rail to the wall, we could hang one from the ceiling. Thankfully we actually have a ceiling in our room, which is not standard in Kenyan houses. I was just going to nail into the ceiling and tie string to it, but Chris suggested nailing into the side of the ceiling frame so the string would stay better. Then we tied the string to a big stick, tied more string and ribbon hanging down from the stick, and clipped the photos to the hanging pieces. It worked perfectly, so here is our nice new contraption and display, made entirely of items found around the house and yard:





Project 2: Make cookies

Without an oven, it is rather difficult to make cookies. Though I have managed to make a decent cornbread and coffeecake on the charcoal stove, the cookies were never quite cutting it. So I explored no-bake cookies, and found a great recipe that uses ingredients I could actually get (including cocoa powder rather than actual chocolate, which is harder to come by). But for a while I didn’t have measuring cups and I sometimes can only access certain kinds of butter or peanut butter, so it took a few attempts to get it right:

Attempt #1: Margarine + not enough oatmeal = too soft. We ate it with a spoon out of the saucepan, and it tasted like fudge. Pretty good.
Attempt #2: Real butter + full amount oatmeal = too hard. We crumbled it over homemade yogurt and it tasted like chocolate chips. Also pretty good.
Attempt #3: Margarine + full amount oatmeal = darn close to perfect. We spooned it into balls like you’re supposed to, and it tastes like cookies. Very good.



Overall I don’t think anyone minded that I had to make this recipe 3 times lately … and I’m thankful that no matter the consistency, we can find some way to eat it!