Turns out that my bed wasn't really full-proof, after all. Since the last adventures of getting a bed frame built, the L-shaped metal pieces on the sides that hold up the wooden slats have decided to bend. A lot. In fact, if you have more than one person on the bed at the same time - or if you happen to move wrong - the whole slat slides down towards the floor... with the mattress along with it. Makes for interesting times!
The trouble in fixing it has been: 1. We don't have a drill. Our neighbors do, for which we are forever grateful. And we appreciate their generosity in using it! 2. The power is on and off at random hours and times. We supposedly have a schedule (and thankfully, now that it's rained a bit more lately, we've had power more of the time), but on the nights we have power, we've been so excited to cook and do something in the LIGHT that fixing my bed was not a priority. 3. We got the bolts from across the street... but drilling entailed going through the metal L-frame 8 times = not fun! 4. The trick, for my allergen-laden nose, was to do this all when my sheets were NOT newly washed, so I could breathe that night in bed.
With special much thanks to our guard Amani, and after much squealing, squeaking, and shrilling of the masonry drill bits, we finally got all this accomplished yesterday afternoon! After which time, we set about drilling holes in our cement walls to put up hooks.
We accomplished the task, with a few mishaps of the wrong-sized drill bits, in my room after a couple of tries. Then we moved upstairs to Marie's bedroom, on the same wall exactly above the spot where we had just drilled. She drilled two holes using the same drill bit, put in the anchor - and discovered the holes were too big! Since they had just worked downstairs, we were a bit confused... but found the smaller size drill bit and got the holes the right size. (this, after having the same power outlets that worked 2 minutes before not work any more, and the next one we tried only worked when we turned off the adjoining power plug... crazy). So we drill the holes, put in the anchors... and the same hooks that had fit into my walls downstairs slipped right out. We even tried switching the hooks - and hers worked fine on my wall.
Turns out that the cement work in our house is not as good on the second floor as it is on the first. So, it seems, the rules for one story of our house in putting up wall-hangings does not apply to the second. At any rate, it provided for a lot of much-needed laughter... some strange looks from our third roommate... and a not-so-successful Swahili lesson a few minutes later. Seems all our brain power had been used up on our nyumba (house) adventures of the night!
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