Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

I thought you might like to hear some of the stories from my travel home during the middle of a global pandemic.  Some of you may have seen some of the photos on my facebook feed, but I have some more that did not make that feed.  I am also going to talk about what I am doing now that I am at home and in self imposed quarantine before I go to stay at my folks home.  I am also going to ask for your help to decide what I should be doing on the blog during what will be an extended break. Let's start with what was happening in Tanzania before I left.  The government had encouraged people not to gather in large groups and given some basic guidance along those lines.  They closed all school and  universities.  They required everyone coming in to Tanzania to go into a 14 day quarantine at a place the government set up.  This meant expensive type hotels that many of the Tanzanians returning after being overseas could not afford.  The government howev...

Trying to keep the blog balanced so I am going back to Tiny House Tanzania episodes.  This one is about the Kitchen and Sitting Room area.  I may cover some areas I have already touched on but it has been a while so hopefully you will not mind. To start off I purchased a small handheld sewing machine while in the states and have used it to hem my curtains in the house finally.  It is nice to finally get them off the floor so it is easier to clean the edges.  It also makes them look nicer.  I also had enough scrap material to make a window topper for the kitchen window. The kitchen area is one where I have to do as much as I can to keep things organized.  The house built for at this site does not have the critter problems I had at the previous house.  I still keep the food in containers as much as possible because it keeps insects out and I use them to keep things organized.  As mentioned in previous episodes, organization is vital t...

One of the great things about a tiny house is the fact it takes a lot less time to clean because there is less house to clean.   In many ways that is also true here in Tanzania.   There is a lot less house to clean, sweep, and mop up.   Cleaning up is something you also tend to do more regularly-at least for me.   For example, I don’t have a lot of dishes, pots and pans because I don’t have a lot of room to store them.   Because of this I tend to wash my dishes right after each meal.   I will need those same items for the next meal. There is one way in which cleaning a Tiny House in Tanzania is a bit more difficult.   I want to point out I am specifically talking about one in Tanzania and I expect cleaning a normal sized house in Tanzania would take a lot longer than it takes for me to do this same task in my Tiny House.   The area in which I am talking has to do with cobwebs and insects.   We don’t have air conditioning, so the ho...

Before we get into heart of the blog this week, I am excited.  Why?  For a lot of reasons.  First I finally got my first celebrity retweet about them reading a story to our kids That’s so cool!! https://t.co/XIMSV18lnG — Katie Leclerc (@katieleclerc) August 27, 2018 So that was really nice.  Second the headmaster asked me to teach the religion class while they were singing their praise songs  It was on the Fruits of the Spirit and he wanted me to teach it because some of the words were difficult for them to pronounce.  I also got to teach Fractions to our Standard 1 class (mostly how many pieces of pie are left and so forth). This week we had Chris Pine reading Clark the Shark to the class which I in turn got to use some of that story and its lesson when talking about the Fruits of the Spirit.  Reading with Barnabas has become a big hit at the school. On to the Tiny House Tanzania episode-Bedroom The bedroom's biggest problem is wel...

A tiny house in Tanzania, really most any house not in a city, is what we call "off-grid."  This means exactly what it sounds like.  We live off the electrical grid, the water grid, the sewer grid, the trash pick up grid.  It is vital to do your planning considering this situation. The cats story will be at the bottom but since facebook uses the first picture in the blog I needed to move it up. Windows.   Any house built out of anything other than mud and sticks here (and yes there are still a lot of those being built here) needs to consider how to get air circulating and bringing in light during the day.   Windows are the key to those two concerns.   Tanzanians are also security conscious.   It comes from the belief if you don't guard it or permanently attach it to something, then it is fair game to take.   I even have to watch my laundry while it is drying on the clothesline or the boys herding goats too close to our line will snatch...

So I promised some stories about being creative on the Tiny House Tanzania that I think even Zack from Tiny House Nation on FYI Network would be proud of.  This week I am going to talk about the bathroom.   I made the decision early on to switch to a tile floor throughout the house instead of the concrete topper we normally use.   The tile helps in several ways.   First it is easier to clean especially with a mop.   Second it tends to feel cool all the time giving you at least something that is cooler on hot days.   Third it allowed me to remove the shower pan in the bathroom and go with the tile floor as the shower and just put in a floor drain.   Removing the shower pan, gave more room for the toilet by allowing me to move it inches into the shower pan space.   In most bathrooms here the toilet is so close to the shower it gets wet and my bathroom was going to be the same way.   So I decided to capitalize on that and ass...