A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That

I had a rough week last week; nothing so bad…but a rough week nonetheless. I liken my week to being on the downside of a roller coaster, a cultural stress roller coaster. The week started out great. My internet was installed only two weeks after I signed up (although even that is not sorted out as they installed more expensive hardware and service than I signed up for) and the engineer who I hired to come fix some things around the house finally came over to go over what needed to be looked at. So Monday was a pretty great day. I came home from work and talked to my parents on Skype for 2 hours.

Then came Tuesday; if there was a plane leaving at 2:30 in the afternoon I would have been on it! It has been hard transitioning into my work life here. I came at the exact moment Food for the Hungry changed its entire financial system. It has been chaos here for the past two months. We also have a Korean Finance Manager, so I have had to adjust to both Korean and Ugandan work cultures. That has caused several moments of work stress for me. On Tuesday the stress came to a head for me. Nothing earth shattering, just upsetting and frustrating at the same time.

Wednesday went down hill fairly fast, although it ended with a banana split! The engineer came to fix several things around the house and put some things up for me. After my experience with the holes in the wall when trying to have a towel rod installed in the bathroom, I wanted to have the landlords engineer do any work in the house that involved putting holes in the wall. I had three mirrors that needed to be put up in the bedrooms and living room, as well as two wall hangings I had purchased. When the engineer came on Monday, we went through everything, even marking x’s on the wall where the screws should go so the spears that hold the wall hangings could sit. When I came home to check on the progress I found the following…the concrete used to fill the holes in the bathroom was so dark that it would take several (5 or more) coats of paint before you wouldn’t see the patches, the paint is a lighter shade than the wall color, the mosquito net was not hung by the center ties but the outside ones so the net did not hang evenly over the bed (It has since fallen down), the mirror in my room was not put in the marked location, the replacement door handle was not installed in the same spot as the broken one leaving gaping holes on the side of the handle. And the kicker…he screwed the wall hangings directly to the wall right through the fabric loops that hold the spears and not even on the x’s he and I marked together on Monday. I think that is what sent me over the top and down the stress roller coaster. I refused to pay him his over priced fee until he fixed the wall hangings, the unnecessary holes in the wall and the mosquito net. But to top it all off, I discovered the next day that my butcher knife was missing. He has said he will replace it, but no word on that yet.

I do realize that there are homeless and starving people living in Kampala and throughout Uganda. Holes in my wall are not a big deal, holes in the loops of my wall hanging are not a big deal (the loops can be replaced). I am blessed to have a roof over my head and furniture in my house. But it is stressful nonetheless to have shoddy work done, work that I could do on my own at home when I am not worrying about an entire wall crumbling down at my feet. Wednesday night was great though. I had dinner with the gang who run the youth group at a fancy restaurant and topped the night off with a banana split. Yummm!!!

Thursday and Friday were OK, although I was in a bit of funk. We had an awesome storm early Friday morning which caused flooding throughout the city, damages to my hedges and the top floor of our office flooding. Blocked drains and a broken gutter caused the patio to fill up and flood the finance, Go-Ed and Bringing Hope departments. But the upside was that Sang Hoon thought that in light of the flood in the morning, we would stop work at 3pm and watch Evan Almighty before heading out for the weekend. It was a nice way to end a frustrating week.

The nice part of the cultural roller coaster is you don’t stay down for long. There is the fun and anticipation of the uphill climb to look forward to.