Lavish embellishments. Wow! Talkin' bout a second story to our garage and a luxury home addition that will nearly double the square footage. In light of all the blog conversations last week about full disclosure of lifestyle choices and the stuff people buy, esp. ministerial people, I thought it fitting to tell you everything that we are doing to our home. I know we are in recession and money is tight but we have been waiting to splash out for a number of additions to our home, including a second story on our garage to house all the extra vehicles, and a lavish pop-up roof to give us more sleeping space in Africa.
We have been waiting until we got to Africa to open up our roof so that we can sleep on top. Its been a little cramped with 9 people living in this truck and the roof top area will greatly increase the square footage by about two thirds. And not having air conditioning means that any ventilation we can find will make life much more comfortable in hot climates.
9 people? Well, actually, apart from our family of 7 and Donald and Alana who are traveling with us, we keep collecting people and dropping them off. There were 13 of us travelling in our truck when we arrived here and about that many staying with us now.
The fully collapsible pop-up roof will give us plenty more space for everyone to sleep. We are also putting some rails on the roof so people won't fall off and it will be easier to tie some spare wheels and stuff on the roof when we need to.
Another luxury addition I should mention is the second story on our garage. With 9 bikes, we had to get creative and make use of our height. We now have 7 bikes of the back and we keep 2 inside the truck.
We are also getting some rust removed from the truck and some metal things that rusted and fell off are getting wielded back on. While the work is being done, the mechanic is letting us stay in this little shanty-penthouse, along with some other travellers and young hippies who are camping out with us. It doesn't leak very much at all - just in a few places - but nothing that some strategically positioned saucepans dont take care of. The place is buzzing with people. New travellers turn up each day. Yesterday a group of Lithuanians walking across Africa turned up and we all ate together. Very cool.
