Universal Truth #1298 Un-Cooperative And Dishonest Construction Workers are Universal (November)

And now we come to the post you have all been waiting for:
The largest contributing factor to my general unhappiness for the last part of 2010 and the subsequent lack of blog updates.

When I was shown what would become my new house at the beginning of last summer, I remember asking if the landlady planned to continue the planned renovations while I was living there. After the Ho-Ho-Kus Rennovation of 1995, I am suspicious of anything involving plaster dust and sledgehammers.

And I distinctly remember her replying that there was only some outside work left, which they would do while I was away helping at camps over the summer. Excellent. We shook hands. The next day my fridge and gas-bubble fueled stove were in place. The day after that I was all moved in and doing two weeks worth of laundry.

The summer was wonderful. (See previous blog posts). My landlady stuck to her word and asked me when I was going to be away, and the workers worked around my schedule. And then it was three days before the start of school….

I came back from a weekend in Salyan to neighbours painting inside my house. I had been given no warning. The smell was nauseating, so I promptly caught the first bus the next morning back to Salyan lesson preparation materials in tow. I came back when school started, and the painting was still in progress. But I was willing and able to live around the work since my bedroom and kitchen were still accessible and I could shut out the smell with conveniently placed doors. The work was completed when promised and my living room was now a lovely shade of pink.

Then on a particularly stormy Sunday in October I returned from Salyan to discover my mattress in my living room. Then as soon as the rain stopped workmen I’d never met before were knocking at my door with bags of plaster and sledgehammers. Apparently they’d come to refurbish the room where my kitchen currently was. I had been given no prior warning.

For ten weeks I never knew what would be changed when I left my house for any length of time. At some point in mid-October my kitchen and living room became one. I used my gas bubble on the floor amid the construction in the room next door (the tank was too heavy to move from room to room). Then a few weeks later, I came home to teenage boys dismantling my bedroom. The workmen never kept a reliable schedule, sometimes they would arrive first thing in the morning, sometimes they wouldn’t leave until 1AM, sometimes they would go a week and half without working.

It wasn’t a good situation and there never seemed to be an end in sight. PeaceCorps staff came out to assess the situation and speak to my landlady twice. She blamed the ‘lying workmen’. The village accused me of being un-co-operative and difficult. It was particularly frustrating to hear these things being said because I knew that under NO CIRMCUMSTANCES would they allow their own young women live in a situation such as the one they were expecting me to cope with. It was generally a very negative time in my PeaceCorps service – it was difficult to cope with emotional rollercoaster of my daily life when I didn’t feel comfortable in my own home.

Eventually at the start of December, my kitchen was relocated to a separate room and I was told the work was complete. Just in time for me to head home to America for the holidays….