A few days ago I saw two men carrying the broken refrigerator that had been in my apartment when I first moved in out of an apartment down the hall. I chuckled to myself when I remembered all the drama that was waiting for me when I moved into the place I’m in now.
A little over a month ago I moved from the studio apartment I was in to a one bedroom next door. I figured I would need more than one room once the rainy season picks up and it rains every day for months. (Liberia’s rainy season is from May –November/December.) I would have moved into the one bedroom right away, but they were all taken so I moved into the studio so I wouldn’t have to stay in a hotel and would at least be able to cook my own meals. The studio was fine, no big complaints. This one bedroom! Oh my goodness! I can’t believe they’re in the same building, let along right next to each other.
It was dirty. There were cobwebs everywhere. The refrigerator didn’t work. Only one of four burners on the stove worked. Two of the windows were bent off the track. It had an interesting smell to it. There were small holes in the ceiling. And to top it all off, there were roaches in the kitchen cupboards. It also runs out of water at least once a week.
I moved into the apartment two days before I left for Senegal, so I didn’t have too much time to deal with these things. I told the manager before I left and he said, “Ok, madam. Sorry, madam. By the time you come back from your trip it will all be taken care of.” Great.
I came back - none of it was. The only thing they had done was to put another refrigerator - that didn’t work very well - into my apartment, so now there were two. I went to see the manager and asked “What happened? These things were supposed to be fixed. I need you to come upstairs and see all of the problems.” He reluctantly did and when he saw them, said “Oh my God. We will take care of all of this tomorrow.” This was a Tuesday. I have learned that “tomorrow” to Liberians does not mean the same thing that it does to Americans, so I was hoping that by Friday everything could be done. HA – no, it took almost three weeks of daily visits to the manager before everything was taken care of.
The next day they had a crew clean the apartment and they sprayed for bugs. They also took out the broken refrigerator. A few days later they wedged some pieces of bed sheets into the window frames to keep the windows on track… (yeah, I don’t know that I understand this one. We’ll see how they hold up.) I bought some roach poison huts and put them around the kitchen. The next few days there were bugs dying all over the place, but now things are better in that department. At first the manager tried to assure me that the holes in the ceiling were no problem, I shouldn’t worry about them. They just made them to drain the water tank when they had problems with it but it was fixed now. As comforting as that was, I insisted they seal them. Who knows what will happen in rainy season? I’d prefer that water not have a ready-made entrance into my living room. He finally had the repairman come.
The final thing was the smell. The remedy came when I went to a grocery store I hadn’t been to yet and saw Febreeze!! It cost $11 but I didn’t care. I sprayed my apartment and it was WONDERFUL!!! It was the first time when I walked into my apartment and sighed, “Ahhh. Home.”
This past week there were a few upsetting things that happened. (In both work and life - not gonna go there now.) By Saturday I felt downtrodden and WORN OUT. In the afternoon I realized I needed to go get some more credit for my phone. (All phones here are pay as you go. You buy cards that have a code you scratch out, you text the code and get however many minutes you paid for.) An interesting thing happened on my walk to the scratch card cart.
I left my apartment and walked down the dirt road. I passed some chickens and a rooster on my right. There were two men on my left, one was giving the other a shape up in the front yard next to clothes laying on the grass, drying in the sun. A little further down I passed an adult man practicing his reading aloud. A group of children ran in front of me, playing and yelling to each other. As I walked down the road I felt comforted. I realized that Liberia is starting to feel like home to me.
You know how when you move to a new place, part of you can’t relax there, part of you is always on guard against the unknown? But then, after you’ve been there a while, you feel more at ease, your muscles relax and you feel comfortable. I think I have reached that place here. I definitely still have days when I think, “Ohhh! America! I miss you!” But three months in, I am happy to report that I am feeling comfortable here now. I'm not phased when the electricity randomly cuts off. Instead of freaking out when there's a bug in my apartment, I just kill it. I still won't drive here, but Liberian driving does not concern me like it used to. I have become accustomed to the unpaved roads and PSA billboards that explain how to avoid contracting diarrhea, malaria and HIV. When I first came all of those things left me in a little wide-eyed and speechless, but now I'm all right. And walking down the dirt roads of my neighborhood, past the children and chickens comforts me.
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