June 15, 2006
The Crazy House
The house we live in unlike anything I have seen before. A really cute house but, it’s long on form and woefully short on function. Four bedrooms, two baths, living, dining, kitchen, pantry, alcove, two terraces and a big yard make up the place we call home for now. I worked with a very successful architectural firm in San Antonio and of course am married to an engineer so I know just a little bit about how a house should be constructed. Whoever built our house and every other one we’ve visited here is definitely not clear on the concept.
We have windows that rattle because they don’t fit the frames correctly. The front doors that open onto the main terrace are glass and have about a two-inch gap between the bottom of the door and the floor, a virtual welcome mat for lizards, dust and mosquitoes. We have fluorescent lighting on the exterior of the house and in the kitchen. There are times when the lights flicker for twenty minutes before staying on. It kind of gives the feeling of being in a 1970s disco right in the middle of my kitchen. Speaking of the kitchen - - the cabinets are not uniformly sized and some don’t stay closed. I affectionately refer to the stove as my Easy Bake Oven. I’m not a very tall person, but this stove is small even for me. In fact, the stove is precisely 32 inches high (and yes, I measured it). The refrigerator is another petite appliance. It’s a perfect kitchen – for Gary Coleman!
The bathroom fixtures are a constant source of aggravation – leaking, slipping, sticking, you name it. The floors are all white or near white tile and need to be mopped frequently just to stay on top of the red dust that blows in daily. The shingles while awfully cute rattle incessantly at the slightest gust of wind – imagine rain on a tin roof.
The house is surrounded by an iron gate and a cement wall that are about ten feet high. Walking around the single-family neighborhoods, you can only see the roofs. We have no idea who our neighbors are and could live here two years without seeing them. Concern for personal safety is very high as evidenced by the gated and guarded homes. It can be pretty spooky at times. On the one hand, we here in security briefings that Rwanda is probably the safest country on the African continent but on the other hand, they have guards, gates and a strong police presence on the streets. I’m not sure which one drives the other – safety or security.
June 16, 2006
We finally had satellite TV installed – not without some drama, however. Before the process can even begin someone has to go to the cable company and pick up the installer and bring him to the house. The technician arrives with the equipment to be installed but, alas, no tools. The dish was to be installed in the yard atop a pole and the cable would be run from the pole into the house. Just looking at the equipment, I knew he was ill-prepared to perform the installation. For some reason, it took him about an hour to decide he did not have everything he needed to be successful. He finally asked me for money to go buy the concrete and pole, promising to return the next and “finish” the installation. It seemed to me that since he never started, the appropriate verb would have been to “begin” the install – but I digress.
The next day we start all over again – driver goes to pick up the installer and brings him to the house. Now he needs to dig a hole in the ground. Do I have a shovel? Of course not; he improvises and uses a garden hoe. In my writer’s mind, I see a story unfolding so I park myself on the terrace to watch. This skinny little man looks to be no more than 18, and that’s probably generous. I’m watching him swing this garden hoe for all its worth trying to get a deep enough hole to accommodate the pole. Because he was wearing flip flops, I flinched every time the hoe got within striking distance of his feet but I couldn’t make myself turn away. When he looks like he’s at the point where he might begin using the concrete, I go around to the back of the house for a pail and offer it to him. No, he motions, he does not need the pail. Granted, I am no construction aficionado but I do know concrete needs water to perform and the user needs to mix the two in some type of container.
The guy then dumps the concrete under the spigot where we connect the water hose and mixes it right there in the grass. The next step is to scoop the freshly mixed concrete in his hands and run relays until he has enough in the hole with the pole to make it stand. Once the pole is secured in the ground, the next obstacle is how to get the cable from the yard to the house. Of course, the technician has no ladder so Ken has to bring one home from the job site. Once the install is finally finished, I am only too happy to give the guy money for a taxi and get him on his way.
Not the Garden of Eden
By now we’ve hired a guard, gotten all of our furniture moved in, have appliances installed and can watch TV when we have electricity. The next thing we need to do is hire a gardener. In Kigali, everyone “knows someone who is a gardener”. We had a couple of false leads – people who did not show up for interviews and incomplete referrals for the drivers on the project. This went on for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, Mother Nature was quietly turning our yard into a meadow before my eyes. The owner of the house had helped me negotiate a trash collection contract with a local company a couple of weeks ago. It just so happened that I decided to read the contract over a cup of tea one day last week and though it’s written in French, I was able to figure out that the company also does gardening. Silly me, I figured we probably could not go wrong if we hired a business instead of an individual. Nothing is ever as simple as it could be here.
After our experience with the satellite TV installer, we knew some of the basic questions to ask up front like does the gardener come with his own tools and whether we would be expected to provide transportation. One of the administrative people in the office speaks the local language and a respectable level of English, so she often gets used for translation services. Through her, we did a couple iterations of the gardening contract and arrived at what we thought was a mutual understanding of expectations. The gardener showed up on day one at 1:00 instead of 8:00 and put in about a half day’s work. The second day he showed up at shortly before 7:00 and proceeded to clean the exterior of the house – mopped the terraces, washed the pillars, washed the window ledges and glass doors. Needless to say, I was quite perplexed since the contract stated clearly what the gardener’s responsibilities would be. I like a clean home, probably more than many, but we were paying for someone to care for the yard not the house. I determined that left unchecked, we would be paying for part-time gardening and part-time house cleaning. Not acceptable. We made more phone calls to the company and this time I wrote the contract and laid out exactly what I expected. This morning, the president of the company stopped by the house in what I interpreted as an attempt to salvage the account. The gardener and the supervisor are now working in the yard. We shall see what happens.
July 3, 2006
Tomorrow is the 4th of July and not surprisingly, it doesn’t mean anything here. The guys on the project will work their regular 10 hours. There was a barbeque at the Ambassador’s residence this past Saturday but again, it was a regular work day for these guys so no one went. Anyway, happy 4th to all of you. I think the first holiday Ken will get off of work will likely be Thanksgiving or Christmas. By that time we will be weeks away from our six-month vacation. Yea!
On a pleasant note, I met an American woman who along with her husband is a Missionary here in Kigali. They are affiliated with Skokie Valley Baptist Church in Skokie, IL. Fortunately, she lives just a few houses away and we just connected right away. She's taking me to a local orphanage later this week to do some volunteer work. So, I'm happy to report that it looks like I'm finally going to be able to do something that I consider socially meaningful. Will keep you posted.
Keep those cards and letters coming!
