Moving Day, #3

We are in a new apartment.  All five of us, including the kitten, who says he (she?) can help me type, since the children are in bed and not much of any kind of help.  It really is a very purr-y kind of thing.

It is one of those days that I just hate Uganda, and hate being stranded here with three children.  So, to focus on the positive: we now have a living room.  And a kitchen, with counters space.  That's about all the positive I can come up with.

We didn't end up moving into the place I had reserved last week.  I spent more time with my erstwhile neighbor, who is an American who has living in Kampala off and on for many years.  She had seen that apartment and a bunch of others in the area, and thought I could get a nicer place for less money.  Which was true.  So we've been looking at apartments for the last three days, in all the random corners of the days not filled with other things.

We called the new landlady to confirm that we wanted this place yesterday morning.  I met with her yesterday evening at her laundromat in Kabalagala.  We were going to meet again this morning to exchange payment and keys and so forth.

I packed in the morning, and waited until a friend could show up to stay with the kids.  But for some reason the lady thought I was coming at 8:30 am (I never would have promised to show up at 8:30 am!), so when I didn't arrive, she went into Kampala instead.  I called and texted her when I was able to leave the house, and she texted that she would call when she got back to Kabalagala, and didn't answer any more of my calls.

So a trip down to get money, copy my ID, pick up the keys, and double-check the house turned into about a five hour errand!  I waited and waited and waited for this lady, and finally she answered a text and said to deal with someone or other else who was at the laundromat.  I am not quite sure why she didn't just say that three hours earlier!  So I dealt with him, who seems to be one of her many sons.  He brought me back to the apartment, and we looked it over together.  This took approximately forever and a day.  Then there was the issue of payment: I said that I wouldn't pay the whole amount unless he gave me an official receipt.  He explained that the receipt book was still being made, and I would get my receipt in a few days.  I said that then he would get his full payment in a few days.  He said they needed the full payment up front.  I said that I was paying upfront, and what I was paying was enough to get them started, but I needed to see something official to make the full payment.  We went around in circles like this, including the mother on the phone, for another forever and a day.  She was a much more insistent argue-er.  Finally she called up HER boss, who apparently owns the place, and he suggested right off the bat that I pay the rest in full when he came to town next week and could write me a receipt.

So anyhow, that is how one starts off thinking that one will pack for a bit, pop down and get the keys around 10 or 11, and yet actually doesn't return home until 5:30 in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, the neighbor had also worked out with her friend with a pickup that he would help me move my stuff over, and they were stuck waiting for me while I didn't have the keys.  ALSO, the landlord of the original place came over the morning and hovered around for a while, and finally started begging and scolding me to move out so he could clean the place and get it ready for the next tenants.  As though I had any choice in the matter!  While I was waiting for the landlady to show up, he texted me several times.  After a couple of hours, he said that if the landlady wasn't showing up, we should just get a new place, which kind of flabbergasted me.  As though making a whole new agreement with some other person could possibly be any faster at that point!

So anyways, I finally got the kids all over here before dark, and they ran around a little bit.  But then it got dark.  And they were hungry.  And the "cooker" is both gas and electric, but the electric didn't have a plug and the gas didn't have a tank.  And there is supposed to be a microwave, which could also make food, but it hasn't arrived yet.  And there is supposed to be an electric kettle, with which I can at least boil water for oatmeal and tea, but that also hasn't arrived yet.  (They are trying to say that they aren't going to provide one, or that I should pay for it, which is ridiculous because EVERY place has an electric kettle.  People live in tiny guard huts barely big enough for their mattress and an electric kettle.)  Meanwhile, we've been trying to eat up our perishable food so we don't have to move it, so we were almost out of bread and yogurt and everything else.  So I kept shuffling through all the random bags, trying to find something that could be eaten without being cooked, and doling out things little bits at a time.  I don't need to tell you what the kids were up to, which is everything, and nothing productive, and involved lots of crying.  Mostly because Hibiscus was hurting people, including herself; she had a spectacularly banging-into-things evening.  Along with the kitchen not having anything in it that actually cooks, there was also the problem of the lights: not much of them.  Half the bulbs haven't been installed yet, the one in the dining room keeps randomly turning itself off and someone has to climb on the table and re-screw it in (someone taller than anyone in our family!), and I couldn't find the switch for the light in the kitchen.  I did finally dig some candles out of our kitchen bags, although I'm sure the children would have much preferred some nice crackers or a rotisserie chicken or something.

We finally got upstairs and towards bed.  Buttercup suddenly came tottering towards me, clutching her privates and wailing "my vu-va is coming! my vu-va is coming!"  I am amused that a child who can't come up with any wider variety of verbs than everything is "coming" knows the correct anatomical name for her private parts!  So she needed to get in the bath, which involved finding bath-ish things, and the older children were going crazy and I ended up screaming at them.  Which I think was not the first time.  AND the landlady's sons showed up to fix the lightbulbs, because apparently 9:30 at night is a perfectly normal time to do business in Uganda.  The one who had brought me up to the house earlier made a vague mention about contracts, but said "I think I will come back in the morning because you are very tired now, you just have a peaceful night."  That was an acute observation.

It was almost ten when I left the children in bed, so it is getting very late now.  I also happen to have a little thing in the corner of my lap, who has tucked in his or her legs so he or she is just a ball of fluff and purr.  I was all out of nice motherly, open-home-ing love, but somehow it's kind of nice to have a little fur-ball around after all.