Howzit

Aerial view of Port Alfred and the Kowie river

Hi, Welcome to my blog. The idea behind "It's Tough In Africa" is to document my journey of building my own home using whatever natural material or recycled parts I can find and also post some interesting stuff from around the web. I don't have any building experience but I figure I'll learn what I need to know along the way.

I do consider myself a bit of a handyman but I was never born with a natural gift to make or repair things, in fact, I actually own a small computer business so I'm more "Geek" than I am "Tim the Toolman Taylor". My interest in DIY has always been fueled by my curiosity and passion for learning new things plus the fact that I'm a cheap bastard and can't bear to part with my money if I know that I can fix or make something myself. It also helps that I did woodwork at school, at the time I totally hated it but ironically it has turned out to be the one thing I learned at school that I've actually used in the real world.

I grew up in the small coastal town of Port Alfred where I spent my days surfing, fishing and playing every sport our local school had to offer. I'm the youngest of a family of 5 and also a twin. After school I joined the police force. In my day we still had conscription so you had to choose either the army or the police force, I decided on the lesser of the two evils and ended up staying for 3 years, not exactly my cup of tea but I did learn a lot about myself during my stint. After the police I went overseas to the United Kingdom like every other young South African does to try and earn some foreign exchange and travel the world. I traveled and surfed in Indonesia for just over a month with a couple of mates and then ended up coming back to Port Elizabeth, South Africa where I got married, had a beautiful daughter, started my own business, got divorced and had to reboot my life in the space of a few years. Life has a funny way of working exactly how you hadn't planned.

So here I am, a few years older and none the wiser. I'm in the process of moving back to my hometown of Port Alfred with my girlfriend of two years. Our plan is to live a more sustainable life, build our own home from scratch with no skills and a fistful of dreams. The idea is to document what we're doing in the hope that other people might learn from our experience. To start off we're going to rent a small cottage on a farm that belongs to friends of ours which should allow us to practice skills like growing vegetables, before we launch into building our own place. I'll also be posting a whole bunch of stuff that I think is interesting or useful. I hope you'll come along for the journey.