It feels like such a quiet day, but the last couple of days have been so busy. Salaries were paid on the 1st, I had to finish all of my reports, work on my modified IRB, and today and yesterday we’ve been out, scouting for new houses.
And yet now feels so calm, as I sit in the sunshine and listen to the birds, while Aketi battles his arch-nemesis, the toilet paper wrapper, on the bathroom floor ten feet from me.
I’d gotten most of my scouting done before 9 am -- starting with the attached house for rent at the HUGE cathedral at the edge of town. The rooms are quite nice, as are the grounds (sort of like where we stayed in Banalia) but I’m pretty sure it’ll be too expensive.
They’re used to MONUC (the UN) coming and staying there, and in comparison to MONUC’s endlessly deep pockets, we’re always going to come up short of the desired asking price.
Seba and I scouted out a couple of other houses, purportedly empty and locked, and we spied inside the windows to see what we could of the interiors.
Thus far, none are quite set up like our current house, and numerous houses we saw today were riddled with problems -- dirtiness (easily solvable) -- but excessive leaking during heavy rains, which, PS, there are a lot of here, is going to become a problem really quickly.
Even older beautiful Belgian houses seem so debilitated -- dirty things scribbled on the walls inside, old corn and insects and rodents -- it does indeed make me wonder what they were once like!
But we continue to look! Our new friend the official is helping us (and we in turn are “helping” him with gas for his moto) and allegedly at some point today, we will go on a tour of several houses and select the best one!
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