Tiny House Tanzania-Ceiling in the Kitchen

As you can see above I am still tinkering with the new camera filter settings and trying some different things out to see if I can get some cool sunset photos.

It has been a long time since I have put up a blog on the tiny house adventure here in Tanzania.  I wanted to jump back into things but work on the site has kept me busy as has the new requirements on residence permits here in Tanzania.  Just to give everyone a heads up about a current need for prayer, they changed the residence permit to require a work permit to go along with it even if you are not doing any "work" like doctoring, teaching or running a business.  In the past I had a simple residence permit for a missionary and that was all I needed.  Unfortunately they created a new website with all this information without updating the current residence permit site so as I was preparing off that site I knew nothing about the new requirements.  We have submitted for the new work permit which I have to get before I can even submit my residence permit paperwork.  I am somewhat apprehensive about being approved for a work permit since I don't fall into the normal categories just the one where they want an extra $500.  My bigger concern right now is that we can get both done before my current one expires.  I had allotted a little more than 2 months for the one permit. Finding out about the new requirements and getting the paperwork submitted took 3 of those weeks so there is a good chance I may have to leave Tanzania while the residence permit is being worked on.  It has caused me to put off some things and move up the schedule on others just in case and to make sure the site is ready for the team in June (and yes I have an alternate plan in case this pushes close to their time it will just be a slightly more expensive fix if it goes on that long but I have been blessed with great support (amazingly great support) and that can be handled as well).

Now on to the house.  Getting back from the states one of the first things you have to do is clean the house and I mean clean it like taking everything outside and wiping everything down before it is brought back in.  The problem is you have all the food and any supplies you bring back from the states not to mention new gadgets like the dog groomer shower which works great.  So it is once again a balancing act inside the small space.

Why do you have to clean everything and why do work to put everything in sealed containers so much.

The bat and critter droppings inside the kitchen for the month I was gone.  this is just what was on the floor in one room.

They chew on everything

Including the giraffe I was making.  They have eaten into quite a few of my clothes especially socks

So I want to control some of this activity.  First I want to work on the droppings but to control that you either have to kill them all or put in a ceiling.  I have killed a lot of them but no where near all of them and more just move in to fill the vacancy.  I can't really put a ceiling in from the traditional standpoint because they only used about half the number of trusses they needed for the ceiling and did not run any boards along the top of the wall.  Added to this there are no mid boards running down the house where I could attach ceiling panels to.  So I can spend about a week, a couple hundred shillings and a lot of frustration to add the boards in to attach the ceiling panels to or I can get creative.  Who wants to guess what I did?

Each room only has two trusses spaced further apart than the ceiling panels and as I mentioned no boards at the top of the wall or mid boards that would run where the light is.

In the middle of the house is the brick wall that has no boards or trusses at all to attach the ceiling panels to.

So I bought the blue plastic sheeting they sell everywhere and I am trying to use it as a ceiling.  I used the staple gun I bought late last year to attach it to boards I had to work with.  I can't attach it along the wall but I did run it between the two trusses in the kitchen.  

The hope is that I will cut down on critter activity in the house and more importantly trap their droppings before they stain my walls or form large piles in the house or most importantly all over my kitchen "counters" and food storage.  I am trying it out in the kitchen first to see how it works.  This might be a good time to tell you about the most important learning tool I have developed over the years-failure.  It has taught me so much more than success has.  I will say the temperature in the room was about 5 degrees cooler than the bedroom because I am blocking some of the radiant heat from the tin roof.

While I had everything out of the house I also laid out my flooring I bought last year but could not get to.  I want to get it flat but the only place to do that is in kitchen.  It is a rolled linoleum product that looks like wood floors.  Probably the least ostentatious rolled flooring product you can find in Tanzania.  

I will hopefully get to glue it down next week and see what I need to do to fill it out.  The rolls are slightly less than my floor so I will  piece some of it together.