wtf?

The other day I got home after a long, long time away from site – training, Pretoria, swearing-in for the new volunteers, Limpopo, Sabie (geez!) – all excited to see my family again after 3 weeks, start making some delicious spaghetti, and show off my sweet digs to Erica. Unfortunately, instead of all that I got a little bit of a shock as the taxi pulled up in front of my house.

My host family recently bought a car (which is a whole different entry), and decided that they needed a garage for it. Before I left, my host mother pointed to my house and mentioned that they were planning to expand onto it to make said garage. My interpretation of this, aided by her hand gestures and pointing, was that my home would go from two cozy rooms (one that I use exclusively as a sort of studio apartment, and one that we share for storage) to three, with a third room being added on for the car. You’d think, by now, I’d have learned about the perils of assumption in South Africa – I mean, since probably 98%of my assumptions turn out to be wrong, why do I even trust them at all anymore? But, well, I haven’t.

Can you see where this is going?

So I get home, and now instead of home I have one studio apartment-esque space to live in (to reiterate mom: yes, I still have four intact walls and a door) and…one three walled catastrophe that looks like a mix of a movie set and a construction site. The taxi stopped, and we were all staring at what was once the inside of my house. I was a little surprised. Three hours later my family got home from whatever important business they had, and explained to me that there had been some sort of ‘mistake.’ I’m not entirely clear on this, but it seems like the original intent was for three rooms and then…an error was made? “Oops, knocked a gigantic hole in your wall by accident, well, we’ll just keep ripping it out now.” Who makes mistakes like that? More likely, I’m thinking, is that its cheaper to extend one room a few feet for a car than it is to construct an entirely new one.

I’m a bit pissed/surprised/irritated, but I’m willing to call that normal. I mean really, how difficult would it have been to call me with a “by the way, we’re knocking down a wall tomorrow. Heads up.” I kept a lot of books and school supplies in there, and they were apparently just sitting out for anybody to take them for at least a couple of days before I got home. Nothing got taken though, for once I guess the utter local apathy towards books and literacy has worked out in my favor. I guess the local tsotsis don’t see a lot of value in smuggling over to Maputo and then selling the complete works of John Donne and Shakespeare. A canonical western literature black market on the streets of Mozambique seems unlikely, though I’m not saying I wouldn’t stop by.

Geez.