New home and team visit

The last few days have been spent enjoying my new home! I really do feel blessed in this place, it really is a great place to be living. My room has its own private upstairs balcony overlooking the gardens, where I can sit and read or cook my food.

My room

My balcony and the garden view

It has also felt really nice having the community feel to the house, and sharing a meal together with Farouk, Beatrice and Alice (the young girl staying here while she completes the tailoring course). It’s been designated my job to pray for the meal before we eat, and there is always lots of laughter around the table, especially with the funny facial expressions Farouks little boy makes.

The place is very comfortable and the security is meant to be very good in this area. Seeing as I am living with Farouks family in the same house it just adds to the security of the place as well.

The other night though I was awoken to banging downstairs, as if someone was trying to open the backdoor. I checked my phone and it was 3 AM, so I stood out on my balcony for a while trying to see if I could spot any thieves. After a while I went back to sleep when I couldn’t work out what the strange sound was. In the morning I told Farouk about it and asked if he had heard the banging as well, to which he laughed and told me that on his first night in the house (he moved in a few days earlier then me) he had heard the same thing and spent half an hour sitting in the downstairs room trying to catch a thief. He told me that after a while he checked outside to see that it was only the goats, which are kept in the courtyard, banging their heads against the backdoor.

It is funny how when you move into a new house you need to get used to all the sounds, especially those strange ones that occur at night.

I do have to admit it will be nice not being awoken and kept awake from my night guard at the previous place I was staying. Now I would like to say the night guard Godfry is a fantastic fellow and works very hard at his job. But it was amusing the amount of times I would be awoken by something he was up to.

This includes the following:

Godfry having passionate sounding discussions on his mobile phone outside my bedroom window at 3 in the morning.

Blaring the little radio on his phone, which is kept in his pocket, and waking me up by standing outside my room every half an hour throughout the night.

Placing his larger portable radio, which is blaring upbeat African music, on the veranda right outside my bedroom morning at around 2 in the morning.

Getting a new dog which howls and barks all night and tying it up right outside my bedroom window during the night.

Chopping wood outside my bedroom window at 6 in the morning.

Slashing grass outside my bedroom window at 5.30 in the morning (using a torch because it is still dark)

I always felt safe with him around that’s for sure .. But on many nights I also felt very awake with him around as well haha.

The other day the HopeBuilders team came to visit the Tailoring class. Agnes and I were able to work together to explain what we do at the tailoring class, so all of the team could get a picture of some of the other work HopeBuilders is involved in.
It is really nice to work alongside Agnes, she usually is always the one translating and helping me run things with the team and the girls. Often I feel like we are going to make a good team together, and I really love having her stand by my side as we work together in connecting the two cultures that are present.
The team was able to bless the tailoring class as well. Rob gave a devotion to the girls on going through hard times which was encouraging to many of them (especially since many of them do go through tough times). We also had two of the team members sing a great acoustic version of Hillsong United’s ‘Oceans'. One of our girls Damelee also sang a song of her own to the team.
Afterwards the team got to spend time socializing with the girls and being taught how to use the tailoring machine. Lots of laughter was shared around, and it is always encouraging for the girls to have visitors.
Often people may not realise just how special it is for the girls to get these visitors, and just like last time when the schoolies team came, the girls ended up talking about the experience for the rest of the day.

Otherwise not much other news here. It has been very hot as usual, and yesterday, for the first time in a while, we got some rain (which was nice to stand out in and have a bit of a shower in the heat).

Interestingly when the team was here the other day two electricians came to the house to hassle us, and Farouk had to spend some time dealing with them (which meant he couldn't be present during the teams visit). The electricians work for the power company here and were decked out in their full working gear. They came up to Farouk to tell him that our power has been connected illegally, and the house has an outstanding bill of 3 million (about $1,200). They were threatening to disconnect the wires there and then and remove our power, so Farouk called the owner of this house who said everything had been sorted. Farouk ended up having to give the men 20,000 for them to give us a few days to sort it out.
It was very unusual as the owners of this house have been great to deal with and very thorough and professional. We called the woman we have been dealing with and she said everything should be fine and she has the papers to prove everything is legit.
Later we ended up finding out from our neighbors that the men (who were actually legitimately working for the power company) were also con men, and they were going around telling lies to bully people into paying bribes to keep their power on.
All of it was a lie, the power is connected legally, and there is no outstanding bill.
Apparently they had tried the same tactic on our neighbors, only to be surrounded by the neighbor and his friends and threatened to be beaten.
As we had just moved in we were not really 100% certain on our situation with electricity here, they got the better end of Farouk.

Farouk told me how people who work for the power company’s here can often do that. Corruption really is ingrained right through the country here, starting from the top with the government, right through to local workers of a power company.
Farouk also told me a story of how one time two con men tried to do the same thing to a house full of young men who were a part of a gang. The young men ended up murdering the con men just for trying to trick them into paying a bribe to keep their power on.
The differences in how things are done here can be stark to say the least.

So we are a few dollars poorer, but a little bit wiser. Luckily the owners of the house came straight away to give us all the papers and documents we need in case they come back to try the same thing.

Otherwise this year we are looking forward to more programs being started, and making use of this house to benefit the community and show the love that we feel Jesus has called us to.

God bless