New House, and other news (Nyumba mpya na mambo mengi)

 Hello my beloved family,

    As you can see, it has been a while since I have written here! My apologies, life turned upside down for a while and now I finally have time to unpack what happened the past 2-3 weeks. I hope you all are doing well and enjoying the beginning of springtime in Montana (or elsewhere). It is still nice and toasty here, sun never leaves, and the "cooler" temperatures mean it is 80 degrees and humid instead of 90.

    So, the tea! My roommate and I had to move houses recently because it was no longer safe to stay at the place we were. We thought originally we were getting a whole house to rent to ourselves. We find out after we move in that our German landlady (in her 60s, retired) will be living in there with us, as will her significant person (in his late 20s). We find out later this is actually a security breach according to the embassy.

    We decided to see what happens and stick it out, because we do not know where else to go since we just arrived. By about week two, the young man in our house--whom we coded as sugar baby-- started to make advances on my roommate and sexually harassed her while at the beach. He desired for them to become an item and do so behind his mistresses back. My roommate rejected all advances and took care to not be alone with him inside or outside the house, and we had to consider if we needed to move, but neither of us wanted to move at that point.

    Our friends encouraged us to find another option for housing, but we did not want this to blow up and negatively affect the relationship with our NGO. One of the members of our staff is cousins with the sugar baby, and we knew word would get around if we made noise about it in that way. My roommate was also concerned that she would not be taken seriously by the group if she came forward and reported the harassment.

    The straw that broke the camels back was sugar baby cornering my roommate in the kitchen while everyone else was away and accusing her/myself of leaving messes around the house ("It's not nice that you left egg on the stove, not nice you left the laundry in the washer, etc.). That ranting situation was not actually about us not being clean enough, it was fuel for him to express that he was not getting the attention he wanted and so decided to go all out while I wasn't there. Our German landlady walked away from the situation and went to sit outside during this event.

    That same day we had a friend help us look for new housing (funny enough, that was the day rent was due). We had found a couple spots, but nothing was confirmed. We came back and informed our landlady that night we were moving out, but the house is not ready. So we showed her that we were paying another weeks rent to her now, and would move out next week. She was slightly confused, her English is very broken--but we made it clear the new house is closer to our school and better for us. She tried to show us the guesthouse she has... Which only has one queen sized bed. No thank you.

    The following day, we were called down to the living room area to explain the same thing we did yesterday, only sugar baby was present for this talk. He said it was because our landlady did not understand what we said yesterday, and needed him to translate for her. We repeated the same thing we said the day before to both of them, clearly as could be. At no point during this talk did sugar baby translate anything to our landlady in "simpler" English. They both affirmed they understood, and that is fine. I thought that sugar baby was acting like a snake here, because he knew very well what was going on (which was highly frustrating, since our landlady has no idea about his advances on my roommate).

    So on day three shit went flying. I had left for work that morning to be in school, and was going to host Taekwondo club after school for the boys. Landlady called my roommate down yet again, with sugar baby in tow, and they sat down to have another conversation. He did most of the talking; the gist of it was now that you are no longer long term renters, we are going to charge you the tourist price to stay in our home. Coincidentally, that means that the money you paid this week has only covered two nights worth of staying, and so you have two options: give us more money or move out today. My roommate thankfully recorded that entire conversation, and sent it to me. She came to pick me up from school so we could inform our NGO and then go home to pack our bags.

    We came back to the house with a car and two friends to help us pack. Within an hour we were moved out and had cleared out what we had. Our landlady was shocked to see us pull in with a vehicle--we doubt she has ever seen somebody move out so quickly. We were going to stay with friends, because the house we had agreed upon would not be ready until the following week. Thankfully, nothing more of notice happened while we left.

    So we spent several days couch surfing at our friends place, but still had to show up to work or attend events with our NGO. It was very stressful and sad, because there was not much we could do to get some privacy. Our friends (who are American) were gracious hosts, and lovely companions. I am so thankful they were there when we needed them!

    So now we have a new home. A quiet place, our own pool, separate rooms and a shared kitchen. We have lovely trees, our gate watchmen are friendly, plus we are so much closer to the grocery stores! I hope now you understand why I have not been online much. Our friend's did not have Wi-Fi, so we went a while without being connected. Now I have the internet almost all to myself-- mwa haha.

Please enjoy some photos of my place, and I will write more soon. Cheers!  -Andi

Living Room 

My bedroom and bathroom