house!

Big news of today - we have agreed to rent a house! From the overwhelming response (ahem..) to our vote we ended up going for the one available now and engage in some super bargaining to get the price down. This decision was partly also based on the fact that the house we preferred was then not going to be available until some time in January (and who knows how much longer after that). Still, after Mama's practice haggling over wellies in the market this morning, she beefed up her performance to go for the house and managed a 20% reduction in price in seconds, so there we are. We've agreed to take it after a few things have been done to it for us (cover the big holes in the garden, put a bath in one of the three (it's a big place - come and visit!) bathrooms, etc.) and have said we'll be there at least until next summer. Lovely living/dining room opening onto a veranda and then the garden. So we'll move out of here on Monday to the house we're going to sit for a while and will set about finding some furniture and things (an oven would be handy) before we move in. As I say, it's a big house - four bedrooms, including a guest wing(!) - so visitors are strongly encouraged.

It's in an area called Il Boro, up a rough road (correction - a good road by tanzanian standards) on the north side of Arusha, the start of the lower slopes of Mt Meru. Hence it is considerably greener than the south or west parts of town. We already know a couple of people who live nearby and apparently there are lots of Mzungu (white) families up there and even a mums and toddlers group somewhere.

It's certainly nice to be done with the house hunting (and the associated waiting around for people/keys etc!) and we look forward to making it our own. The disney princess stick arounds lovingly chosen by Kitty before we came will finally find a wall to inhabit!! Domestic housewife that I am (yes - we've switched authorship mid-blog) I'm looking forward to accumulating some kitchen equipment of my choice and having more than half a shelf of fridge space!!