| | Kenya has been a country of first times for me. It makes sense that when you enter a new culture you will experience things for the first time, like foods, music, smells, clothing. I can now add buying curtains to that list.
For the first time in my 33 years, I bought curtains. It was a stressful time. The measuring and re-measuring. Realizing that I should have measured in meters and not inches when it was too late. Trying to sort through bolts of bright vibrant colored curtains looking for simple and plain. There's a reason I've never done this before.
When we owned our home in Michigan City, we had cheap venetian blinds in every window. We had two curtains in that house, one in the kitchen and one in the nursery. Jeff's mom bought both of those for us otherwise those windows would have remained naked.
When we moved to our apartment in Mishawaka, we continued with the venetian blind theme. But the little living room had a large sliding glass door that opened out to a pond. Apartment policy said we had to put up a neutral colored curtain within two weeks of moving in. Jeff ran out and bought some beige curtains to put up there. I could have cared less.
When we first moved to Kenya, the house we took over had curtains in all windows except the kitchen. I was more than happy to leave them all right where they were. But now our apartment has huge windows. We live on the bottom floor and frequently people walk by the windows (especially the large sliding glass doors) and look in to see what we are doing. We've solved the issue in the bedrooms by hanging Maasai blankets in the windows with clothes pins. It looks tacky since none of the blankets match, but it does the job.
On Friday I went to Nakumatt to finally pick out some nice calm neutral bland curtains for the apartment (especially for the large sliding doors ~ Maasai blankets are too small to cover them). One thing I've learned through this fabric buying experience is that there is no such thing as calm, neutral or bland when it comes to fabric here. There are a lot of crazy ugly designs.
In the end I found one last bolt of beige-ish fabric with some small floral designs. I was trying to stay away from any pattern, but that's completely impossible here. In the kids' bedrooms, I bought kikoy curtains. They are bright and colorful, but cheap and that was the biggest selling point for me.
I'm looking forward to having curtains. It would mean that I could wear shorts around the apartment without worrying about offending one of my neighbors. Or that we could have some guests over and talk in the living room without the gate guard walking by to look in and see who we have over. Plus I think our furlough replacement couple will be happy to have us take down the Maasai blankets and return the clothes pins to the laundry area.
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| | Posted 5/18/2009 1:08 AM - 8 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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