Venting Session from Michelle

Today has been one of those days…

Frustration is at war with optimism in the battlefield of my mind.  I wish I could say my positive spirit is pulling through but admittedly the irritations are getting the best of me.  The source of my discouragement comes from feeling helpless as we confront some bumps in the road.

Last Thursday our refrigerator broke which means all our food spoiled within 24 hours.  We called our landlord in the morning and she sent two men to come take a look and try their best to fix it.  I realize we haven’t really described our kitchen situation on this blog yet so more details to come, but for the moment, this fridge has been a source of concern since the beginning.  When we first opened it, it was literally covered in a black-gray film with an odor that could knock you off your feet.  We quickly realized that film was mold and immediately did our best to communicate our desire to clean it out before our first trip to the market.  We are trying to be sensitive to Esron’s lifestyle and not be the typical foreigners who come into a place and demand everything changes.  It is a hard balance with needing to be healthy and protect ourselves.  It took us about 2 hours to wipe out a modest size fridge (think glorified college dorm room size refrigerator) and it still wasn’t up to our standards.  Each shelf on the door is permanently attached, conveniently trapping the mold behind a paper thin space between its two plastic pieces.  It is a piece of work, let me tell you!

However, we made the best of our fridge situation and felt thankful that we had one at all.  When it decided to stop working, we expected to have a solution within a few days at the most.  We know Grease is a busy woman, running businesses in Kigali, but she seems on top of things and got the guys to come out the same day.  When they couldn’t fix it, they asked us for money in order to get the new parts they needed.  Nate politely told them to call Grease because the money isn’t our responsibility.  It seemed to all work out so they were scheduled to return Friday afternoon to finish the job.  Well, they didn’t show up!  We gave them until early evening before calling Grease.  Unfortunately, Grease’s cell phone appeared to be dead or not in service.  This lasted the WHOLE weekend.

This wouldn’t have been so stressful if we had enough money to simply cut our losses and enjoy some fine dining around Kigali.  Timing can be EVERYTHING!!  Now, it is one thing to not want to spend a lot of money, it is a whole other thing entirely to not actually have the cash in hand.  At this point we had not been able to transfer money over from our U.S. bank account and we had just found out that Nate’s paycheck won’t be deposited in our Rwandan bank account but instead in our bank back home.  So we were living off the cash we brought from the states and only had $30 left.  Our backup plan was to loan money from IEE or to get reimbursed for some IEE expenses covered up front.  The challenge being the money from IEE was also not in the bank on Friday so we would have to wait until Monday to access it.  That means we had to make our $30 last us through the weekend.  It was a stretch (especially since we wanted to go out for a Valentine’s day meal on Sunday) but we made it through with $2 to spare.  Not knowing what was going on with the refrigerator and being out of touch with the person responsible for the refrigerator was so hard for me.

Monday was a good day!  We were able to get some cash AND were able to connect with Grease.  She was in South Africa on a business trip and had no idea the guys didn’t show up to fix it.  She said she will call them and send us a message later in the afternoon.  We never heard from her and the guys never showed up.  Truth be told, we are secretly hoping she will just buy a new refrigerator since this is so old and is in such poor condition.  Why bother spending money on it?  Anyway, fast forward to today, THURSDAY, and no one has shown up to work on it, and we haven’t seen Grease either.  It isn’t easy living without the comfort of having a place to preserve food.  I have called her almost every day and no progress has been made as far as I can see.  I feel completely helpless in solving this issue.
Other outstanding issues I am trying to work out are establishing internet access at our home, setting up a working cell phone, and finding a job.  So many things feel connected to each other so today I am feeling overwhelmed with the lack of efficiency.  The job search has been difficult without the time to surf the web and we are feeling the need for a second income to pay for the internet access to begin with!  Then, when I return home after running around all day trying to make progress on things like these, all I want is a cold beer to soothe my soul and that isn’t possible right now.  These are the acute moments I miss the comforts of home and friends who will listen to me rant followed by some laughter as we shed some light on the situation.  All I can do is let go and be patient.  A hard lesson for a control-freak to learn. =)

Imana ibarinde kandi ibahe umugisha.