Culture Clash

"This is like a film," Bercy said to me, laughing, because I woke up this morning to discover I had been evicted.

Things have been going really poorly on the housing front, I suppose you could gather that from the previous entry. I had intended to write an update when the work was finished and I could compare it to childbirth (you know, how now that it's over it wasn't so bad and look what I got out of it...) I'd hoped to take some photos, but the work still hasn't finished and I am no where near settled, so no photos.

I'm not really sure what happened. I think it's a combination of culture clash and unrealistic expectations and the landlady's inability to separate me from the previous tenant from the previous tenant's subletters and the fact that if I'd waited until Nov. 1 to move in, I probably wouldn't have been so difficult to deal with.

Basically I went yesterday to pay for broadband installation and discovered upon arrival that the landlady had come in earlier that day and revoked her permission for me to install the broadband. No warning, no discussion, no nothing. I phoned her and asked her what was going on and she said there was an unpaid bill from the previous tenant for 1.4 million cedis and she was no dummy.

Apparently not.

So I called up the subletters, who are still here, and they thought the figure was a bit high, but came up with a million cedis. (Just over a hundred Canuk dollars.) We had a big chat about the place. I was telling them that Pearl, my landlady, has
refused to let me sign the tenant agreement because she knows I want her to go away. I'm tired of her always popping up. The housegirls are there at 5 a.m., peering into the windows while they sweep and wash and otherwise bang around, getting a good view of the obruni sleeping in her underwear. Pearl shouts at them constantly. I mean, constantly. In fact, I found one of them crouched up behind the front door one day, in tears. Connie, who stayed there for a couple months when she first arrived in Ghana, told me she used to hear Pearl slapping a bunch of eight and nine year old kids who were visiting.

I thought I was being patient withe the constant flow of workers coming in and out and in and out and the constant noise and
distraction and the constant delays. I thought I held it together well after they chopped down the only shade tree to make palm wine and then informed me that someone would have to come on the property every day for SIX weeks to tap the tree. (In an ironic aside, the workers came yesterday and removed the tree because it was "spoiled" and produced not a single drop of wine.)

I said in no uncertain terms when I got off the overnight bus from Tamale on Sunday morning that I wanted her to stop moving my furniture around. She told me it was the girls as they cleaned, which I'm 98 per cent sure was a bald-faced lie. I told her that was fine, but if they move something, they should move it back.

I could have really lost my cool when she walked through the door Monday afternoon saying, "knocking" to tell me that her son was on his way over to see the place and would be there in 15 minutes. My mind was so on my work -- trying to get a radio piece refiled and get a story off to Ottawa -- that I packed up my laptop and headed for a quiet Internet cafe. She pointed out this a.m. that that meant she couldn't get into the apartment, as she doesn't have a key. Oops, but c'mon. Everyone knows -- and our unsigned agreement states -- that she needs to give me 48 hours notice, not 15 minutes.

While I was up in Tamale, the real estate agent I had worked with before taking the house texted me to say the price of a one-bedroom I'd seen in Osu had come down to $450. I think they call it "serendipity;" the timing was pretty fortuitous. So I called him yesterday from Ghana Telecom and we arranged to meet this morning. I had worked my stomach into knots by morning trying to puzzle out how I would get my money back.

Turns out I needn't have worried.

Pearl handed me an envelope with $7,400 in it -- that's $400 for the past month, which is about what I figured I'd be willing to forfeit -- and told me she didn't want to rent the place to me, then railed at me for half an hour about how I spoke badly to her in front of the house girls and how I don't appreciate how hard she's worked to make the house comfortable
for my convenience and how she was embarrassed in front of her son. She also went on and on and on about how the subletter had hung up on her ("I wish Nikki was here! I wish she could see me now!") and how the subletters had destroyed the place (she hadn't set foot on the property in two years, hadn't done a lick of maintenance...) and the garden was in shambles and so on and so forth.

I didn't say anything. I was just glad to get the money back.

I'm moving tomorrow and hopefully unpacking all in one day, as I'm giving a presentation on Friday and then heading for Anamabo beach, something that's been planned for weeks. I just really need a sleep and a drink.

The new place is on the third floor of a building in Osu, behind Koala. It's a one-bedroom, with air conditioning and a huge terrace. It's got a nice big bathroom and a fully-stocked kitchen. Hopefully there will be no more fridge fiascos. I sold
the fridge and cooker this a.m. to a friend for the same price I bought the fridge. He's coming to collect it tomorrow. My new landlord is the head of Somotex, which is a major distributor of fridges, etc. so there's also a washing machine, which is excellent news.

My brain is totally fried.