making a house a home

March was a month of nesting for me, as I tried to make my apartment a
little bit more comfortable for my stay here. This is a mixed bag, as
every convenience entails a certain amount of inconvience. But I
decided to embark on three projects: a telephone line, a shower, and a
cat. I know many of you must be thinking what's the deal with this guy
and the cats, but rest assured the tale has come to an end this month.
First up: the telephone line. I made three visits to the telephone
company, the first two during which the only man who sells telephone
service was missing because he was depositing his paycheck. The third
was more successful, although hampered by my lack of a copy for my
passport. I finally managed to track down the only copier machine in
town, which was low on toner, but when turned up to the darkest setting
could produce a barely legible picture of my passport. I think I could
still deny it in a court of law, however. Armed with my ghostly
reflection of my post-call passport picture from a Walgreens in Denver,
I was able to plunk down my $30 to try to get a line installed. Things
seemed like they were going well, the only service vehicle visited from
the nearby city only a week later, and a hole was drilled in my wall and
a line installed. Unlike home, a line doesn't include things like the
box that you plug your phone into, so it was just a bare wire sitting on
the floor for another week until one of my compatriots made a visit to
the capital and bought me a phone and a 'jack point', that magic box
that allows you to talk. Unfortunately, even though it's a 'new' line,
the cable they hooked into is one of the oldest cables around, and
there's too much noise to call out on the line, or connect to email. I
take a perverse pleasure calling them on my phone line, which they can
barely understand me on, and asking them to come fix it. Unfortunately,
the truck hasn't come back from Solwezi since I bought my phone box, so
we're still at square one, or perhaps square two, since I now have a
line, just one that doesn't work.
Second project: a cat. Actually two, or three, depending on how you
look at it; I caught two kittens, one for me and one for my family in
the village to catch mice. I had placed a bounty on the cats with the
nursing students, a system which resulted in my being called three times
while at dinner at another person's house to inform me that the students
had caught two 2-day old kittens for me. At 2 days old, kittens are
barely able to stand up, much less take care of themselves, so i
returned them to the mother and went back in two weeks. At that point,
they were more capable but also more wild, so I managed to trap them
behind one of the filthy toilets on the closed TB ward and bring them
home. Some of the kids were envious of my cute hissing and spitting
cats, so we went back and caught the third one the next day. Since then
I've had the joys of little kitten claws in my skin, effort of
house-training (concrete floors are beautifully easy to clean) and
trying to tame them and get them to come out from under the
refrigerator. Today I delivered one to the village, so one remains,
Kisela, who looks like she's going to be a good cat. She even wags her
tail and has taken to coming to sleep on top of me at night, which is
okay for now but not that good for my sleep patterns overall.
Third project: a shower. I bought the pieces necessary for a shower
installation, and after five days had progressed to two pipes sticking
out of my wall, pouring water unfettered into my bathtub. This state of
the union has remained for the past week and a half while they try to
replace the faulty part that was bought in the first place, although we
have managed to staunch the flow of water by screwing on two garden taps
to the end of the pipes. Maybe before I leave Zambia I will be able to
enjoy a shower. Until then, we're still stuck with baths.