"Accommodations"

Creativity in making do

Last weekend, we started moving our things into the house we’ve rented. It didn’t take very long because we don’t have many things. We’re in a neighborhood called Kizungu, which is roughly translated as “where the white people live”. The house is clearly not recently built and has seen some things, but it’s got just enough space for us and all of the things we need.

The real work started once our stuff was in the house… the work of figuring out what things we needed to get fixed and which things we needed to somehow procure to start making this a real home.

The hot water heaters here are all mounted high on the wall in the bathrooms (we’ve got two of them) and hold I’d guess 15 gallons or so of hot water. You flip on a switch to get them going and hope they’ve got things heated up in about 30 minutes, then you can plan on about 10 minutes of hot water for your shower. At least that’s how we were told it was supposed to work. Bekah tried one the first morning and it produced approximately 2 minutes of lukewarm water. I tried the other and got maybe 4 minutes of hot water.

The showers are built such that they spew directly into the room and floor here. No shower curtains, or even really a place to mount them. You just blast yourself and it goes literally everywhere in the room and a little out the door into the hallway. Many of the markets sell these squeegee broom things and so we bought one for each bathroom and to clear the outside porches when the rains come. According to Tucker B., one of our favorite people and an intern at VVA, here the “squeegee is a lifestyle”.

We hired an electrician to help us mount our Starlink satellite receiver on the roof because I don’t have a ladder or any tools to mount it at all. When he arrived with only a small tool bag, I was confused because I’d confirmed with him the day before that he’d have a ladder. He doesn’t speak much English, but his pantomime climbing confirmed he understood me as well as his response of “It’s no problem”.

I handed the Electrician the satellite receiver and left him for a bit to address the needs of the plumber we’d also brought in to look at the hot water heaters. The plumber is an older gentleman who only speaks Kinyarwanda and French. Though I had absolutely no idea what he was saying, he just kept on talking to me as if the sheer quantity of his words would help me understand. At the end of the day, all I understood from him was “C’est Bon?” (It’s Good?). I grabbed that like a stray dog on a porkchop, walked him around the house to all of our various plumbing needs, made animated points at puddles, and emphatically said “NO c’est bon”. He got what I was saying.

I went back outside to check on the electrician. There was hammering. Why would an electrician tasked with mounting a satellite receiver be hammering to start the work you say? The man took spare pieces of wood, a bag of nails, and built a roughshod ladder right there in the yard.

I was stunned to see the fabrication. “You made a ladder! Are you sure this is going to be safe?” He stood up and smiled at me. He said, “I make accommodation. It is not safe, but only accommodation.”

He went on to use said ladder to mount the roof, discovering along the way that the penultimate rung was a booby trap designed to take him out. But this wasn’t his first rodeo and he was able to catch himself and skip that rung to climb onto the roof. You can’t make this stuff up. He was all smiles and laughing. I nearly had a heart attack just watching it.

I’ve started to lose count of how many hurdles, speed bumps, and annoyances in life here are simply solved problems in the States. If I needed to get on my roof, I’d ask any of my helpful neighbors like Ken, Mike, or Kyle to borrow their ladder or go buy one myself.

Our good friends here, Steve and Claudia G., shared a relevant story about their time living in Kenya in which they were invited to bring a potluck dish from their culture to share. Steve suggested a southern favorite, Potato Salad! All well and good until the realization that they’d have to make their own mayonnaise, their own mustard, and their own pickles - which they did!

This experience continues to teach us a number of things like these about flexibility and managing our expectations as a family. It’s helping us grow through the struggle and I can feel it building up our agency as a family. Though it’s difficult not having a break from all of these “teachable moments” of life here, we had a beautiful respite with dinner with other expatriate families last night, sharing our experiences and supporting each other. We’ve also found wonderful support in the community of teachers here at VVA and the house church here.

Thank you all for remembering us in your prayers! They may have just saved this electrician’s life. 😅