Home sweet home

Deb here - yes, we admit it; we’ve been bad at updating the blog. Apologies. Here’s the first – all about getting our home set up here in Kampala – and we hope to add more updates soon ;)

wicker furniture

So, we live in a great two-bedroom apartment on Kololo Hill. It took a while, but we finally feel like we have really set-up our new home with furniture, curtains, plants – the whole lot. And we’ve recently acquired a roommate, Melissa, so we are having a blast.

Setting up a home in Kampala can be either really fun or really frustrating. It depends where you sit on the ‘design your own furniture, make your own curtains in Uganda’ scale of home decorating. We found it really fun, most of the time. Our couches and coffee table are stained wicker. We got them from a part of town called ‘Gabba Road’ which is essentially a road lined with stalls of people selling all matter of handmade furniture: wicker furniture, soft couches, beds, tables and chairs, etc. You just walk up and down the road trying to find what you like while trying not to look too interested. However walking up and down the road with Stu yields many people interested in us. Since Jesus was a carpenter, and most Ugandans think Stu is Jesus, we had many people wanting us to ‘bless’ their furniture. But we did go looking for furniture with my ‘Ugandan Father’, Haj, who is a private hire driver I was introduced to through a colleague. Haj takes me around town at night and in the rain and is a very sweet ‘father’. He always makes sure that he is dropping me somewhere safe and that Stu or a friend is waiting at my destination, otherwise he waits with me. When I told him we were looking for furniture, he insisted on taking us to make sure we got good quality at a good price. Which we did – and we had a blast together. Just picture me, Stu and a 60 year old Ugandan man walking amongst hundreds of half made couches deciding on which is the most stylish and would suit our apartment the best and which fabric is most durable and easiest to wash. It was kind of like the three stooges! We purchased a coffee table, a two-seater, and two one-seater brown stained wicker couches with an ‘african print’ fabric.


Then we headed to ‘Port Bell Road’, another area of town to get our bed set and kitchen table. Port Bell has a row of carpenters who can make just about anything you want. They are quite good a reproducing items from a picture. It was very funny when we said we were looking for a bed and the carpenter pulled out an Ikea catalogue!! We decided on a sleigh-bed type design with two bed-side tables. I also designed a dressing table, stool and mirror combo. Our kitchen table and chairs are also quite beautiful in dark chocolate brown. The last piece of furniture we’ve had made is a high buffet table (?). I actually have no idea what it’s called, it just a narrow 18 inches x 4 feet table that is bar height, I think. Either way, it looks great against the wall!

At my 'dressing table'

The final touches to our apartment were to get some curtains made. It’s very expensive to get ‘real’ curtains made from the furniture/fabric store (and they are quite heavy and outdated), so we decided to go on our own curtain making adventure. We found out that the beautiful African fabrics can be found at Kyembe (chi-em-bay) Market. So Stu and I headed off with our window measurements. Kyembe Market is like a hardware store meets electronics store topped off with a fabric store. Except I use the word ‘store’ lightly; it’s actually a mesh of streets and alleys with stalls crammed into every space. Some stalls sell all manner of hardwares for building or fixing; others speakers, car radios and televisions; and others fabrics and sewing machines. We walked around, trying not to stick out, as not many ‘muzungos’ (white people) shop in this market.

We ended up at a tiny shop about 10 feet by 6 feet stacked floor to ceiling with the most colourful and beautiful fabrics. We were greeted warmly by Sakira and the 8 other women in the shop who were busy sewing on their old Singers. I was in heaven. First, we had to pick the fabric, which is actually quite hard and I, of course, was being picky with the colours. Shakira pulled one fabric after the other off the shelves and we had a fun go at, “no too green, no too brown, too printed, not enough print”, etc, etc. We finally settled on a fabric for the bedroom, only to find Shakira did not have enough of it, so she sent someone on a run through the market to find more. In the meantime, I had to explain to Winnie the tailor/dressmaker (who’s mother coincidentally is named Deborah, so we were instant friends) that I wanted curtains with loops. “Loops? Why loops, what about hooks?” was Winnie’s reply, and we had a debate on the aesthetics of loops versus other forms of curtain hangings. In the end, my loops won out. Then we had to give the measurements. We measured our windows in centimetres but Winnie works in inches, so Stu started on a lesson of converting cms to inches. Then we had to figure out how much fabric we needed and how best to use the 6 yard bolts to make curtains approximately 2-3 times the length of our windows (standard curtain making procedure...Mom knows what I mean!). I was utterly confused and there was Stu, knee deep in fabric, arms outstretched, going on about “lengthwise, rotate, sew, cut”... I wanted my curtains to look great; Stu wanted to get the most curtain out of the least amount of fabric. My attempts to match the pattern between the two curtain panels was thwarted by Stu’s desire to squeeze 18 feet of curtain from 18 feet of fabric not taking into account seams, hems or...the loops! Geesh... Just picture the two of us and 8 Ugandan women stuffed into a tiny colourful space going around and around in circles of centimetres, seams and loops. We attracted an audience. In the end, we settled on something, but I wasn’t quite sure what.

Winnie, Deb and Shakira in the fabric shop at Kyembe Market

Our balcony and plants as the sun is setting

I went back to pick up the curtains a few days later, and they were absolutely great! Shakira and Winnie are now our go to gals for anything tailoring and I’ve taken my roommate there for curtains. We have a blast with them and have plans to make many more things for the house.

So there you have it. Home sweet home. Now you just need to come visit so you can see our furniture and curtains in person!

Kisses from Kampala,
D and S