Here in Addis the next best thing to IKEA is Treesavers furniture. A guy called Daniel makes furniture out of heavy duty card board shipping boxes, so we have been to visit him a couple of times. In fact we already had some of his creations from friends who have left or had finished with some things and have painted them to smarten them up a little (plus they were all rainbow coloured and I really, really hate yellow). Painting them was pretty easy and white paint easy to get hold of, so that worked well for Lil's room.
The table, chair and toy storage are all cardboard, as is the toy kitchen that is in the cupboard :-)
The boys want their old second hand one painted red though and I have not been able to find red paint anywhere in Addis so that hasn't happened yet! But we just collected this lego storage tray for under the boys bed and this play tray for their football games :-)
It is pretty easy to find Daniel's home, once you know where you are going!! It is a couple of rooms deep, almost entirely full of storage boxes, shelf units, book cases, dolls houses and any other storage solution you can possibly imagine - as long as you can imagine it made out of cardboard boxes covered with coloured paper. Most of it is multi-coloured and very bright and cheerful. He sells at the NGO craft bazaar that happens each month, but also will make things to order which has been pretty handy for us!
