So after organising a good deal of the unpacking In previous days today was the day to do lots of little DIY tasks to fix many broken things in the house. Lesley had booked Jenny a haircut appointment and planned to do all the christmas food shopping in the afternoon, leaving me at home for the day to finish my projects. We also planned to get many of the necessary items to make the new house feel like a home. Jenny and Lesley were planning on walking some dogs for a local shelter early in the morning but decided against it when they slightly overslept. Instead Jenny and I had enough time to run to the Game shopping centre for all the items on our shopping list before her haircut.
Our list of items included a loaf of bread, a plastic box to be used as a cold smoker, paraffin, citronella oil, a plastic rack for the smoker, and a soldering tip. After 30 minutes of searching the store we only managed to find the plastic box and the bread; and when we turned our back a store employee took our unattended shopping cart and put all the items back! We had to get another cart and re-acquire our items before hurrying back to the house so Jenny could go to her hair appointment.
When we arrived back at the house I was ready to finally fix the drinks cabinet. Lesley remembered that Jenny and I needed yellow fever injections 10 days before returning to South Africa and today was the last day we could get them. So instead of doing my list of jobs I had to go with Jenny to get the injection before her haircut. Lesley dropped us off at the doctors while she went to get petrol and, being an idiot, I forgot to bring the passports from the car. We needed to present the passports to get the injections and luckily Lesley realised our mistake and brought them back to us. We sat in a small office at the doctors waiting to present our ID and pay for the vaccine. We paid our K250,000 ($50) each and were told "to get your vaccine just go to the shipping container under the mango tree". TIA -- This is Africa.
We had no issues getting our vaccines and the women who were giving the injections were very friendly and funny, jokingly telling us that the injection works for 10 years so we couldn't drink or smoke for the duration haha. Lesley came back to pick us up and we dropped Jenny off at the hairdressers, once she was in her appointment Lesley drove me back to the house so I could finish my jobs. Having now acquired wood glue and a proper saw from the gardeners I was all ready to finally fix the booze cabinet. While Jenny went back to fetch Jenny and head out for the food shopping I cemented the base and trim of the cabinet back on to the best of my ability. I also fitted a plug to a juicer Lesley had found, and was in the process of extending the cable to the microwave when Jenny and Lesley returned with a mountain of shopping.
It took a while to unpack the car and put away all the shopping. When we finished I convinced Jenny that we needed a new soldering iron for the smoker because ours no longer turned on. We went to Mica to get a soldering iron and looked for the rest of the supplies to build the cold smoker. We bought a 100 watt soldering iron but couldn't find any of the other supplies, including a plastic rack for the items to sit on while being smoked. We walked a short distance to a Spar in the same shopping centre to see if they had any suitable racks. Our search came up empty handed but we eventually got the correct plastic rack when Jenny stole of of the shopping baskets from Spar so we could cut it in half and fit it in the smoking box.
Relevant supplies in hand we returned to the house where I assembled the smoker and Jenny decorated our very African Christmas tree. It turned out that after an hour working on the smoker the soldering iron wouldn't even turn on, it work initially but decided to stop working as soon as I wanted to test it with wood chips. Jenny continued decorating the tree while Joe made us a dinner of flat smoked chicken (not using my smoker sadly) and we all had a hearty meal before calling it a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment