All the Matatas

It started going downhill when I was caught in a hailstorm on the way home on Friday. 

A hailstorm.

In Central Africa.

At first I thought someone shot a spitball my way which, while odd, is at least understandable.

Then I realised it was God.

So I ducked into a shop which contained clerks desperate to eat fingernail-sized hail off the streets like it was manna and quail (apparently this happens about twice or thrice a year here; I will never, ever understand this country). 

Thankfully, they mostly ignored me (except to talk about me in Swahili every so often).  A half-hour later, I continued on through the drizzle and mud for my last night in our palatial apartment, from which most of my stuff was already moved.  I partially felt terrible that Carrottop and Captain had to move my multiplying luggage themselves. 

A small part of me is still vindictively chortling. 

We officially settled in to our new place on Saturday, which is also when the Queen of Sheba arrived for a visit.  As she was mainly concerned with minimizing my problems in favour of how horrible it is in her village, we talked at each other about news of the past few months in rapid-fire pidgin over the course of the weekend.  We bonded over the frigidity of this city (I’m back to one blanket, flannel pyjamas, and socks) and it was like she’d never left.

Butters continues to be my comedic relief, though his laissez-faire We’re in the Congo, so get used to it attitude is royally... obstreperous. 

I’m (usually) inwardly screaming about the fact that our apartment consists of Ye Olde Crypt (where I will most likely live if we end up staying in this apartment), a bathroom that opens into the kitchen (which has an outdoor sink), a spacious living room (with a balcony overlooking something I don’t care about), a normal bedroom, and a master bedroom with a lovely ensuite and balcony (which I also don’t care about). 

Butters, on the other hand, is-is... eating and... just... living like it’s all normal.

I may actually throttle him one day.

I was cautiously excited on Saturday because it was fun to go shopping with BFG and Carrottop and buy new things for the apartment and think about organizing it all.  I didn’t sleep well on Saturday night, but this is standard Kermit operating procedure in a new home, and I wanted to be awake if water arrived in the middle of the night anyway (ha).

I started getting ready for church at 4am because a hunchback began ringing bells in our Notre Dame equivalent before dawn so, hey, why not.  I actually prefer this wake-up call to our old ones (the Muslim call to player, a large body of men screaming Ha! Hoo! Huh! as men are wont to do, and a rooster that never could never make it past COCK-A-DOODLE-HURK, but not for lack of trying). 

At that point, I was still trying to pump myself up about this new place.  So I know when a place feels like home; so I’ve been extraordinarily blessed in all my homes so far, including two apartments in Korea; so I don’t have this knowing at our new apartment.  So what?  We’d be fine. 

It is now Monday morning, and I see it all in a different light.

I have not flushed since Saturday night because I’d rather use our minimal bucket water for my body rather than down the toilet.  I used ¾ of one bucket of water to wash 5’6” of me plus 3’ of hair.  The next night, I used ½ a bucket to wash.  This morning, I unwillingly donated the remaining ½ bucket to the needy, and I’m certain God will demand an explanation in heaven.

I will tell Him that the hell hath no desperation like unwashed bra and underwear. 

I am once again living out of bags, boxes, and a curtain rod (which is functioning as a temporary shelving unit), and I have an obsessive compulsion to clean things, but there is no water and everything. feels.  so. dirty.  As a delicate hint, I left a new toilet brush outside the bathroom (i.e. in the kitchen); it was still sitting there this morning, smugly guarding the Gateway to Cholera.  

In the kitchen, we have a gas stove on a wooden table, a garbage can, and two plastic shelves (and a new toilet brush).  Our counter space used to be a six-inch square on the top of what I am forced to loosely label a fridge.  It has now expanded to about a full foot of area as Butters has moved our small water filter to a more precarious home on our gas tank.  I don’t care, as he has been filling it with Unwashed Bucket Water à la Floaters and I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.

[Before you (or BFG) have time to judge me about my water filter misconceptions, I must tell you that both a pharmacologist and a pharmacist have indicated their general mistrust of filtered water.  The pharmacologist is now a Pastor, and only gives foreign guests bottled water, and the pharmacist (if he is forced to used pipe water) boils and cools it before putting it into the filter.

I am right.  I am never wrong.  Congratulations to me.  Opa!]   

We are surrounded by Congolese families (which is nice), and their screaming children (less so).  Butters has a problem with children playing and being happy outside his window, while I am subjected to a constantly crying infant outside mine (to be fair, it may be two conscientiously taking turns being miserable). Due to the fact that we must live in sin for a month, I have had a Talk with Butters about identifying me as his big sister to anyone who asks as he usually emphatically denies any relation between us.  I realise he has a perfectly functional white one back home, but we’re all having to adjust to unfair things like adults.     

And, like a normal adult, I begged him to help me find five blessings about our apartment.  As I mean-spiritedly vetoed ones like We haven’t had an earthquake since moving in, I have a pink curtain in my room, and We have a light switch that needs to be balanced in the middle to turn off, we couldn’t actually identify five at the time.  However, I think I got the last this morning:  the power’s been pretty good, we’re in a great location (except that Butters can no longer easily access a bar and white people's parties), and there are no mosquitoes, ants, or lizards.

On the other hand:  I didn’t want this apartment, I have no plants for personal joy, all my bathroom fixtures are crooked, and the designs on the ceilings are not consistent, which is wreaking havoc on my possible undiagnosed mild OCD.  In addition, next month may see us moving into the third floor of this apartment building, which is another exercise in pointlessness that will mean less water (though less than 0 water will be difficult).  

Butters really wants the view.  

Since this whole move has assaulted my concept of efficiency and rationality, I’ve already retreated into my emotions (stubborn frustration) and clocked out – but I’m hoping that the arrival of our new roommate and a move to an apartment with a sunny Solitary Confinement chamber in place of Ye Olde Crypt will make me feel better.   

The final straw was when I thought I lost my ipod this morning.  I’d woken again at dawn to bells and the blessed sound of my taps hissing.  Unfortunately, hissing is all they did – though I swear I heard running water downstairs.  As I don’t want to begin a good neighbourly relationship by ripping out their pipes with my teeth in a feral rage, I’m assuming it was an auditory hallucination (which is entirely possible at my level of irritation).  But my sanity was hanging by a thread – the missing ipod almost drove me to skip work, figure out where to find an internet cafe and how to use it, and book a one-way ticket home.  By the time I found it, I’d even planned in which suburb of Edmonton I’d have my white-picket-fenced house.

Now I just have to go say a final goodbye to my Egg Lady and the nice older Indian gentleman who has noticed me walking home the past week and called me on Saturday because he was worried he didn’t see me. 

Could he be a serial killer? 

Absolutely.

Is it more likely that he’s a perfectly normal incredibly paranoid brown man?

Yes.

And right now I need all the reminders of home I can get – I’ll work on being clean and alone later.