Bumps Along the Road

Our week started off great.  Joe and I had just purchased some furniture and I was surprised to find something I actually sort of liked.  We had our appliances on order and were getting ready to move into our own house!  Possession date was to be September first so the day before Joe contacted the real estate department to make our walk-through appointment to get the keys.  Real estate informed us that everything was in order and they were waiting for the landlord to return the call with a meeting time.

The landlord phoned and out of nowhere tells us that another company offered double the amount of rent (that would be $8000/month instead of the $4000 we agreed upon.)  THE DAY BEFORE OUR MOVE IN DATE HE DECIDES TO WITHDRAW!  There is speculation that he doesn’t have another renter lined up but was hoping to secure more money from us.  Regardless, he screwed us out of our house the day before we were to move in leaving us homeless yet again.

Joe and I were obviously extremely angry and upset.  I made several empty threats but in the end, it comes down to the fact that we need to restart our house search.  There are barely any houses on the market right now so we are hoping that something just right comes up relatively quick as I’m not sure how much more of this hotel living we can take.

On top of that, Joe had to make a quick trip to Libreville to get his residence card.  Last week when we re-entered Gabon he was given a temporary card and was to return a week later to obtain the real deal.  I was not going as he was flying into Libreville at 8 am and would be home by 8 pm.  When they landed and were booking their return flight they were informed that the government office decided to close that day for a monthly cleaning so they would have to wait until the next day to get the cards.  The quick trip turned into an overnight trip, which was rather inconvenient as Joe was dressed up, tie and all, and had nothing with him for an overnight stay.

I, of course, was not happy to be spending a night on my own here but had no option.  Finding a cockroach in the bedroom (the only one we’ve seen inside since we’ve been here) and having to kill it on my own before going to bed was the cherry on top of this really shitty week!  (For those of you who don’t know, I deal with all bugs by use of a vacuum as it allows me to keep my distance.  We don’t have a vacuum in the hotel so this required Joe’s shoe and a lot of courage.)

We are quickly learning that securing anything is quite difficult in Africa but we are both trying to keep a sense of humour throughout everything.