And what about a house?...

I got back to the e-mails this morning to find both good news and bad news - the good being that I'd come to an arrangement to buy the landrover for my work that I'd looked at with a fundi on Saturday morning. So once I've sorted the money transfer for that, hopefully we'll be out of the car hunting market for a while. And whilst I'm sure there'll be ongoing maintenance issues for both cars, the hardest part will be over there. But the bad news was that we've been given notice to leave our very comfortable (but only ever temporary) accommodation that we've been staying in so far. We've got until the first week of November to leave. Which reminded me that the house situation has not been updated here for a while. Yes, we've both been on a few more rather fruitless trips to see various properties (it wasn't only the 6" of dust that put me off this one, but that didn't help!), but no real update. And the reason is really that things have been somewhat in abeyance: a couple of weeks ago we saw a house we really rather liked: right size house (room for visitors!), very nice garden (plus tortoise and chickens - perhaps I did mention this one at the time?), most furniture we'd need, a reasonable price and not too bad a location. But the lady showing us around was not the landlord, but the current tenant. And she hadn't told the landlord she was planning on leaving yet, because she's in the latter stages of adopting a (second) Tanzanian baby. So we've been waiting on her to get everything through the family court and let us know what's going on - but because she gets so much hassle from corrupt officials phoning to ask for a bribe to help smooth things through, she's not been responding to phone calls or texts and we've been sitting around waiting too. Meanwhile, rather half-heartedly looking at other places... So, the situation that seems to be emerging is that she will, if we like, recommend us to her landlord when she tells him she's leaving (which is a good start at least), that the final paperwork for the adoption should be sorted in a day or two and that the US Immigration department will give her information about getting back to the US with children tomorrow. But whatever happens, she's not going to have gone before we have to leave here. So we either duck out and go for a second (or third) best option - assuming they've not gone already - or we have to find somewhere to sit it out for another month or so. Which I don't mind doing, if it's a reasonable place and we know we're definitely going to the other house before too long. But finding somewhere temporary fairly sharpish that fits the bill could be a challenge. So, if anyone has any spare property in Arusha sitting idle for the next few weeks, do let us know... I'm sure we're not going to end up on the street, but it would be nice to have a home before long!