In addition to dealing with parasites and having guests this week, we also had a problem with our car and a problem at our house!
The car story is sort of amusing: the key got stuck in the ignition because of something faulty in the steering wheel (car still turned on and off fine, we just couldn't take the key out) and as Charles was taking it from one car place to another to get it fixed, something else caused our exhaust pipe to crack or break or fall off or all of the above (clearly, I am no mechanic). When Charles got to the right car place they could easily fix the key-stuck-in-the-ignition problem, but they wouldn't have the time to fix the exhaust pipe until the next day. I don't know if you have ever heard or had a car without a functioning exhaust pipe, but let's just say it is REALLY loud! Our car sounded like 12 motorcycles! It wasn't driving that well, which we could handle for a day, but the sound was so loud and awkward and embarrassing! We were stared at (more than usual) everywhere we drove and, unfortunately, we did have to actually drive places - like to our baby class and then for my test at the hospital and to the UN and back! Oh my...we must have sounded like teenagers trying to show off in our tricked-out car! Luckily, on Wednesday Charles took it to be fixed and all is well now.
The next day, Thursday, came a phone call from from the Kenyan Power Company - actually the employee was visiting our compound and called me from the security gate at the top of our hill (we live at the bottom) to tell me that we owed money to the company and our electricity would be shut off. Say what?! First of all, we haven't got an electric bill since the middle of November, which I have asked our caretaker about two times with no luck. The bills are in our landlord's name and he gives them to us through the caretaker - he denied ever getting our bills (yeah right). Second of all, I put a lot of money on our account when we went away for 5 weeks so that there wouldn't be a problem. And finally, the amount of money we did end up owing was like $12 - way too little to shut off power for people who have never paid a bill late.
I asked the guy on the phone to come down to my house with our caretaker, whose name is Hilary, to talk to me about this and he wouldn't, saying that I had to go to the power company to deal with the problem. So Hilary comes down and tells me to just give him the money and he'll pay the bill and we won't lose our power. I don't think so! We tried to pay a bill through him that way when we first moved in to the house and he stole our money without ever paying the bill. He is always trying to get us to give him cash for bills or other things and is generally a very, very shady character who we do not trust at all. We have complained about his sketchiness to the property management company before but they say he is employed by the landlord directly and when they have complained about him the landlord has done nothing. So there is definitely something fishy going on there.
I got extremely angry with Hilary because it is his fault that we haven't received a bill in two months and I am not one for paying bills without an invoice/documentation (even though you can get your balance over text-message, I don't pay bills that way!). In fact, I got so angry that he didn't let them turn off our power and on Friday morning I went to the power company to pay the chump change that we owed and also got copies of our missing bills. No more Mrs. Nice Guy - I am writing to our landlord directly about how sketchy Hilary is and am encouraging our neighbors to do the same. The situation was much worse for them actually because they had the same problem but nobody was home to put up a fight so their power was actually shut off for 24 hours. So frustrating!
The Kenya power company was not the real villain, though, and they were very nice when I went to handle the bill. Actually, when I got to the power company I was treated very nicely by the askari (askari = security guard). He let me cut the line of 40 people who were already waiting because it was incredibly hot and he didn't want me to have to stand in line for so long. That was a VERY nice Kenyan to respect my pregnancy that way!
Soon I will send Charles to handle such matters on our behalf (he has sort of been in training for errands like that and collecting packages at the post office)...I am certainly not dragging Simba around to deal with classically Kenyan business matters if I can help it, that is for sure!
My 36 weeks picture is coming soon...I have to go wake Kristoffer up from his nap so that he can take it!
LMW
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