Moving in, and a Summary of What We’re Doing

When we arrived in Tanzania in November of 2007, we “temporarily” moved into the corner house. It was supposed to be a short term solution while we renovated the blue tile house. Well, it’s now May 2009 and we’re renovating the blue tile house. Jeff & Jan arrive from Kitchener on the 19th (yup, that’s Tuesday), so we are scrambling to get things ready. As of right now (T-6 days) we are painting Natasha’s room, finishing the painting in the office, done painting the master bedroom, finishing up Jacob’s room (unless we decide to re-paint some walls… sigh). The stair railing is on (nice!), and the entire dining/living area is filled with stuff. The kitchen counter tiles are off (widening the gap for the stove), the cupboards over the fridge space have been raised (who knew we had a fetish for enormous appliances??) and tomorrow I’m hopefully going to find replacement tiles for behind the stove (where we ripped it apart to widen the gap…)

In the same breath as all that, we are working hard on the ADR for Nipe Jibu (re-recording the spoken lines in studio), we are getting the studio ready for the live instrumentation and mixing activities that will start on the 27th, and we are looking for a pro studio to do our final mix (any takers)? We’re also working on getting US Visas for the 9 Maasai we’re sending on tour in the US this summer, working on the budget for that trip (would you like to contribute something? Let me know!) and thinking about the stage presentation. We are also starting new ISOM training centers, working on translating the next semester into Swahili. Finally, we are days away from sending the Cheza! project (the incredible Sowers Group cd) to the printers to be produced for Africa. But all of that is a story for another day. We’re busy, but the scope of the projects we’re working on baffles me and I’m humbled by the opportunity to be a part of these projects.