In my "studio"

Friday, June 20th

I spent all morning painting the signs which I had stenciled in Arusha earlier in the week. It’s really nice to have my own place because I can do whatever I want—like turn the sitting room into a studio! The brush set I got had about 12 different sizes and the smallest ones came in really handy.

The biggest challenge in painting the signs was that I have the arts and crafts skills of a third grader, but at the same time I’m a huge perfectionist. Yes, I’m admitting it. The solution I came up with was to use the smallest size brush and to work really, really slowly. And I think I did a pretty good job! I painted the MIT wheelchair class logo in the corner of each one, and then the name of the shop in big letters, with the phone number of the “shop owner” at the bottom. I’m still hoping to paint some small graphics that represent each business but I’m going to practice on paper first.

I opened my window that looks out to Kilimanjaro and left my signs to dry, while I headed into town to KASI. I had been in Arusha for a while so it had been almost a week since I had seen those guys and I definitely missed them. They are hiring a few new employees so they were busy doing interviews, but I still popped in to say hi and to make plans for next week.