So the morning we finally got our first lie-in in a while. I ended up not waking up until nearly 9:00 and was treated with the news that there was not very much urgency. Our plan for the morning was to pack up all of our things from the house we were staying in and move them to the new house in preparation to stay there tonight. We alternated packing and showers until all of our things were loaded in the car.
On the way to the new house Jenny and I had been instructed to find a suitable Christmas tree for the house. We stopped at a garden centre and had a look at some of the trees and I can reassure you they are nothing like the Christmas trees you will see in the US or the UK. They were a bit limo and scraggly, and for K300,000 we decided to pass and instead find ourselves a real African Christmas tree.
Lesley was going to be a little while longer so we were given the task of running some food errands. Jenny directed me (because I have no sense of direction) to the nearest Pick and Pay shopping centre where we spent quite a long time browsing a Chinese shop before spending an even longer time shopping for groceries in Pick and Pay. We finally realised that if we didn't get on our way soon Lesley would think we had gotten lost. Before leaving the Pick and Pay we presented our receipts to a promotional table just inside the shop where you get a sticker (that once you collect enough can be redeemed for kitchen knives) for every K35,000 you spend, we got 14!
By the time that we got to the new house Lesley had already been there for a while. Jenny got to work with Lesley doing more of the unpacking while I got to work on some of the DIY jobs I had allocated myself. The first task was to polish a set of silver cutlery that belonged to Joe's family. I had remembered to pick up some silver polish at the shops and was keen to clean the cutlery because it hadn't been done in 7 years! It was quite rewarding to finally see the cleaned set but it was a long and tiresome process. One of the things we didn't pick up at the shops was wood glue to fix some of the furniture that had been a bit battered in transit. Jenny made us some sandwiches for lunch before we set off to a different shopping centre to find wood glue, a square pin plug, some cable to extent the cord lengths and a soldering iron.
Jenny once again had to come with me or I would have gotten lost. We first stopped in a Midas where they had everything we needed except the soldering iron. Lesley had also sent us with a small shopping list of random cooking bits she needed for the new house, so when we finished at the hardware store we drove to yet another Pick and Pay to finish the shopping list. Jenny used me as a human calculator for most of the shopping, asking me to do countless conversions and asking me what products were best value per kg. Before leaving the shopping centre we spotted the Lusaka Casino, where we will probably spend an evening sometime this week. The traffic getting home was a nightmare but eventually we made it back to the house and I got started on another one of my tasks.
Since we still had no tree for the house Jenny and I set off with a saw in search of a bare branch that we could use to hang ornaments on. We found quite a nice branch on a dead tree so sawed it off and continued searching the nearby area for something to use as a base. A few minutes later we stumbled upon an empty oil can that we filled with rocks to prop up the branch, we returned to the house victorious and pleased both Joe and Lesley with our find.
Lesley and Joe have quite a large liquor cabinet that Joe's mother bought in Harare many years ago and it's not in the best condition. Every time that you move the cabinet the base, feet, top, back, moulding and trim all fall off and you have to spend the next hour putting everything back together; I was determined to fix this. Disappointingly I found out that I lacked some of the tools required and would have to wait until tomorrow to lay my hands on a saw. About this time we were getting hungry for dinner, but remembered that we hadn't picked anything up from the shops! So Jenny and I got sent on yet another run to a closer Pick and Pay about 1km down the road to fetch pasta for dinner. Upon returning we ran into Lesley and Joe's landlady just outside there house and had a wonderful chat with her. She told me it was no problem to borrow some of the tools I needed for DIY and told me to collect them from the gardeners tomorrow. once we finished our chat we relaxed over drinks and Lesley made us a wonderful bacon pasta dinner before we went to bed.
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