March 2,2011

Well I have finally shifted to my flat, as they say in Zambia. From the outside of the building things look very nice but once inside, it’s a whole different story. There are 4 elevators, 2 of which have been broken since at least last summer when I was last here. The other 2 work “most” of the time. I learned a valuable lesson yesterday..the lifts are turned off at 10 pm. My good friend Judi (who lives on the 1^st floor) is pregnant and was put on bed rest because she started having contractions. She still has 6 weeks to go and I decided to take her a meal for dinner. I made her 2 shepards pies and brought along a French loaf as well. After having a great time together with her family and some friends I started off for home only to realize that the lifts were off meaning I had to take the stairs to the 7^th floor. I quickly noticed that many of the lights are out in the stairwells, thus it was even too dark to see the stairs. As I was passing the 3^rd floor I stepped and something and it seemed to run away. I was convinced it was a rat but didn’t want to know. My friend, who was escorting me home took my phone which has a small light on it and went back down to see what it was. I reluctantly followed behind to see what it was, only to discover that it was a small corncob. Ha-ha, we laughed hysterically.

The hot water heater is broken and I am told it will be fixed next week, we shall see. I told Judi about it and she laughed, she said that she had the same issue and they just hired someone to come fix it and then 3 months later the maintenance guy for the flats came to fix it. So the water is ice cold, well when I have water. I have also learned to keep the bathtub full of water as well as extra buckets. The water goes off without warning too many times to count in a day. I asked the maintenance guy about it today and he said it is on for 20 minutes and then off for 20 minutes if the reservoir is full..but I have no way of knowing when the reservoir is full so a lot of good that info does me. Ha-ha

And the place was filthy, I wont even mention the things we found when cleaning. The 1st day of cleaning it took 4 of us like 6 hours to get it halfway decent. Then I hired a lady to help me clean a few days after and we spent another 5 hours cleaning. I am finally getting use to doing laundry in Africa. Hand washing, line drying and then ironing (to kill any possible Tutsi fly larva so that they don’t burrow into my skin) I paid an exterminator to spray for roaches and lets just say cleaning up the casualties was hmm gross but better dead than alive..eh.