Day 65 Friday 2

Today we are going to the building materials place. We walk down to the Training House and meet with Nomiq and Mrs. P. and then we are at the building materials warehouse.


Mrs. P. drops us here--she has other errands to run, she will come back after while and collect us.


Mrs. P. has done a great job putting together a list of all that we determined it would take to complete this project, along with a budget of how much each item should cost, so it should be a straight-forward time of picking up the materials. The tile acquisition was easy enough, but then we moved over to the paint side of the building. I love paint, I made my living with paint for more than 13 years. I know paint. What they have over here is not paint. The majority of all painting that is done is whitewash. Almost a watercolor paint. They call it “emulsion” and they use it everywhere, even outside, and it washes off in the rain. Also, it only comes in white, but they have small containers of coloring that you can tint your emulsion with. Great.


Is there a better grade of paint? Yes, they call it “paint” and use it almost exclusively for doors and window frames but almost never for a wall. It is a heavy duty oil-based enamel, and it comes in several colors, but only about 15. A couple shades of red, light blue and dark blue, etc. I sure hope it mixes well, I got a 500ml of black, red, yellow and medium blue, we’ll see what we can do with these and three litres of white.


The language barrier is a tough thing to get over or around, especially with slightly specialized technical terms, like those used in building materials and remodeling practices. I would like to know about some plumbing options, but I cannot get our interpreter to understand what I am asking about, so he is unable to ask the salesperson about it, so I was getting frustrated and just decided that this would be one time to walk away and attack it another day.


We got our tile and  thinset and cement and paint loaded up and we headed back to The Training House.