Before we arrived, we worked with someone who finds houses, and we were told that there was a good house available with 4 bedrooms in a good area for a reasonable price. We sent a deposit in advance to hold the house for us, and Aly's brothers viewed the house for us and wrote a contract confirming that the house would have electricity.
So the night that we arrived, they said well, don't come tonight because the electricity isn't on, and we need to see about getting a generator so we can have electricity when the power from the city doesn't come. Sounds reasonable.
The next morning, we went to the house. It is a nice house. The grounds are well kept, and it is large and attractive on the outside with a lot of space on the inside. I liked it. There are three bedrooms, a large living room, a little side room and the big balcony that was partially covered upstairs. The balcony would be a nice place for classes. Then downstairs had one bedroom, a kitchen, a big living and dining room and a little alcove with couches.
So that night, the woman who found us the house told us to come stay at her house with air conditioning while we waited for this house to be ready. The girls and I went there, and Aly, his brother and an assortment of drummers stayed at this house.
The house we stayed at was great. Air conditioning for much of the night, very relaxing, we were in a little house with two bedrooms and a front salon that was in a courtyard shared by her family, and there were four houses in total in the courtyard. A big 4 bedroom house with two big salons and satellite tv, and then 3 little houses with two bedrooms and a small salon each. A basketball court. A big parking area. We ended up staying here a total of FIVE nights while we dealt with our housing situation. The next day we went back to the house, and watched while they carried in 3 brand new air conditioners. Another good sign. They had told us the water was working, but alas, no running water.
The next day, which was a holiday because of the inauguration of the new president, they sent technicians to fix the wiring to the house. The technicians worked thru the day, and then said we just needed to wait for the power to come on in the city that evening, and then everything would be good. But no power came on. And when the power finally came on, it was no better than it had been. It was inconsistent and could not power an air conditioner.So we gave up on this house and told the lady that this was not going to work for us.
Aly then began the search for another house. One of his brother's woke up early the next morning and went looking for available houses, then came back and got Aly and took him to see two promising options. He was really excited by one of them, and called me to tell me that he found a really good house with everything we need. It was 1.5 times the price we had planned for, but he suggested that we just take it for a month, and then he could find something smaller and closer to his friends the last couple of weeks that he his here. Sounding good! The only problem is that they guy did not want drumming at the house, but apparently Aly had already found a nearby option for a class space that we would be able to rent. Even more promising!
So Aly would need to go meet the guy in the evening and everything would be finished. He waited all night, and the guy never called to say that he was ready. The next day, Aly called and was told that the guy had said that he did not want to rent to us. Ugh. Aly even sent someone else to ask about the house, and that person was told that the owner does not rent to artists!!!
So, they started again the next day. One of Aly's brother's went again and found some new options. Aly called and told me that he had found something with air conditioning and running water, and he had paid them for a month and signed the contract. So then the next morning, I went with him to see it. I was not thrilled. This was the ground floor of a multilevel building. Only one other unit was occupied, and the guy would be at work during the day when we would be drumming. But the inside was kind of dark, even though the rooms were actually pretty nice, and the bathrooms were clean with running water. But the outside looked dingy and messy, and there was a swimming pool in the back full of algae that just seemed like it would be a hotbed for swarms of mosquitoes. He told me that there was also a place to drum on the roof, but he hadn't seen it yet. We got the guard (every house we looked at had a live-in guard) to unlock the door and we headed up. The stairs were pretty wide and not too dark at all. When we got to the top, there were a lot of heavy cables lying around, but there was a really nice hut-like structure that would be big enough for classes for quite a few people. If it was cleaned up it would be decent, but there was also a school within shouting distance across the way, so that meant we couldn't use it during school hours!!! Ugh. On top of that, to have electricity, we either had to buy 60 litres of gas per night for the massive generator that was built to run the whole house, or we would need to buy our own generator and test it an make certain it would work to get the house going. Another few days of effort would be ahead of us.
So, I was thinking to myself that maybe if I went to talk to the guy with the nice house, and explained that we weren't really artists, we were a program with adult students and very responsible, that maybe he would reconsider, and right then Aly walked over to me and said hey, why don't I take you and the girls and go see the guy at the other house. Maybe when he sees our family he will reconsider. Perfect.
So, we headed to the other house, which we couldn't quite find at first. So we walked around the neighborhood a bit in blasting hot sun with very dusty dirt roads and whiny children, until we found this little oasis -
Aly told the guard that he wanted to show me the house and then speak directly with the owner. So the guard showed me around, turned the generator on, demonstrated the air conditioning and the running water and flushing toilets and HOT WATER HEATERS! Wow. He said the owner was sick and was resting, so he left and went to his house to wake him up and ask if he would consider renting to us. We waited a bit, and the guard came back and said that we needed to meet with the owner, but he was too sick to come to us, so we would need to go to him, and he had brought us a taxi. So we piled in and headed to the owner's house a few miles away. We went inside, and he did look rather week, but seemed nice enough. He talked to us a bit, and then agreed to rent to us, and said we would need to go to the house so he could show us some things and sign a contract. I learned that he had just been in the hospital for a month with typhoid. So glad I took those typhoid pills!!!
So we signed the contract and we had a house!!! Just one more night at our friends house, and we were able to hire her chauffeur on his day off to lug all of our bags to the new place. Phew. But all was not done. Then commenced the effort to recoup the deposit we had made on the first house and the full payment we had made on the second house. That only took two days, and we only lost $100 from the whole thing, which I thought was fair since Aly and the drummers had slept at the first house for a few nights. But it did require that Aly's brother wash and iron all the bedding from the second house in order to get the full amount back!
So here we are, and all is well. We've been in this house now for about 3 or 4 nights, and it has worked out really well, and I finally have music here. i'm going to end now so I can go videotape the gongoma playing of Aly's little brother and upload it later!
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