Tenant Meeting

I attended my first tenants’ meeting on Saturday.  Our landlady called a meeting, requesting a representative from each of the 13 units in my compound.  I was looking forward to this chance to not only meet some more of my neighbors but also to meet my landlady for the first time.  I’m the only North American in my compound, but there is one Indian family and what I think is an Italian father and son, and I believe that several African countries are represented.  It was quite an interesting snapshot of local culture, particularly the time aspect:

The meeting was set for 9am.  Being Uganda, I knew it wouldn’t start on time, so I casually started to head out of my apartment at 9:05.  (Ha!)  Fortunately, I was smart enough to first look out my windows to see if anyone else had gathered.  There was the house manager standing by a stack of chairs.  No one else was around and the chairs hadn’t even been unstacked yet, so I figured I should wait longer.  Around 9:20, I started feeling guilty for purposefully being late, so I decided to head down in case my appearance would magically initiate the gathering.  Or I thought I could at least help to unstack the chairs.  Just as I headed down, the house manager set out the chairs in a semi-circle in the shade, so I just chatted with her for a few minutes.  It was pretty obvious that no one else would be there for a while, and she went off to talk to someone, so I decided to go back to my apartment to kill some more time.

I completed random chores around my apartment until about 9:45, by which time 2 other women had gathered.  I figured it was a good opportunity to get to know my neighbors a little better, so I headed down.  It was funny how people kept telling me “You know, Ugandans don’t know how to keep time” in an apologetic way.  But it was nice to get to know a couple of my neighbors a little better.  It turns out that the single woman across the hall from me is actually an electrical engineer, so I told her about EMI and that we’re always looking for volunteers for our design projects.  Another lady told me about how she had been cheated out of more than $100 by some respectable-looking people who had offered her a ride!  After chatting for quite a while, and having no one else show up, I finally decided to go back to my apartment to do my dishes, in the hopes that at least the landlady herself might show up by the time I was done.

The landlady finally arrived to her 9am meeting around 10:15, and by the time I got downstairs, almost everyone had arrived.  We started the meeting a little before 10:30, but it was nice and succinct and so was over by 11:15.  It was a good chance to voice our concerns about the apartment (particularly the night guards who often sleep while on duty).  I also got to recommend the plumber that EMI uses since the plumbers the landlady had been using didn’t seem to be doing a very good job.  It’s always nice to be able to refer dependable people to more work opportunities.  There were also various concerns voiced about no lightening rod on the 3-story building, too many flies and cockroaches (fortunately they don’t make it up to my 3^rd floor much), noisy neighbors, security gates that don’t close/open well, and the need for more laundry clothes lines (as well as the reminder/appeal to return any clothes that you take off the communal line and later realize are not yours).  It was pretty fun to realize that I’m part of such a community.  I haven’t gotten to know my neighbors as quickly as I had hoped, but I do feel like it’s coming “slowly by slowly,” as they say here.

The rest of my Saturday was spent having a relaxed, scenic lunch with a few friends, getting pedicures together, a mad dash through the on-coming afternoon downpour, banana bread baking, dinner, and watching a Batman DVD.

In other news, I found out Friday that my work permit had been approved!  I am so thankful.  For those who didn’t know, I applied back in January, it was denied in July, I appealed in September, and 9 months later it has finally come through!  It’ll be another 2 weeks or so until I actually get it in my passport, but at least I know that it’s been approved! 

On Tuesday, the EMI women took Paula out for her birthday, since her husband was out of the country on a project trip (note the beautiful background scenery):

Let me out!

Last Monday morning I had quite the unexpected adventure.  I got stuck in my bathroom for an hour and a half!  Thankfully Sarah, a new EMI staff member, is staying with me while she finds a place of her own.  I’m so thankful that she was home – otherwise, who knows how long I would have been stuck in there!
 

Bathroom door handle, after my escape

I never had any problems with the door handle before, but all of a sudden the mechanism that causes the “tongue” on the side of the door to pull in when you turn the door handle stopped working.  I could turn the handle just fine, but it had no effect on that tongue (I’m sure it has a better name) that holds the door closed.  At first I thought Sarah could free me by turning the handle on the outside.  When that didn’t work, I suggested the credit card trick (she tried to manually open it with a butter knife), but the door jam configuration wouldn’t allow that.  So she slid the butter knife under the door to me, and I tried to push the tongue in with the butter knife, but it wouldn’t budge.  Next Sarah tried to unscrew the outside of the door handle, but that didn’t reveal much of its inner workings.  Unfortunately the door was so low to the ground that all we could slide underneath was the butter knife.  It was a good thing I had a handy-dandy Leatherman-type device, of which we used several tools in the attempt at my freedom.

FORTUNATELY, all of the interior doors in my apartment have this large, screened opening above them which is meant to facilitate circulation throughout the apartment.  So Sarah climbed up on my handy-dandy step ladder, cut away the corner off the screen, and handed me the utility tool.  I then removed the door handle from my side of the door, revealing an equal amount of unhelpfulness, except that I now had a peep hole to the outside world.  At this point, the whole thing was getting pretty ridiculous.  Sarah’s next suggestion was to try to remove the pin from the door hinges.  Unfortunately, the pin seemed to have a cap at both the top AND the bottom.  I still haven’t figured out exactly how they work, but we figured you should be able to pry one or both of the heads off in order to free the pin.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get them to budge with either a flat-head screw driver or a paring knife.  It was at this point that I finally started calling for help.  I called Maggie, my next door neighbor and our office “granny,” to see if she knew of anyone who might know how Ugandan hinges worked.  I called my landlady, asking if she could get in touch with her carpenter to find out how the hinges worked.  I called Robert, another EMI friend, who I knew had removed a door in his house to see if HE knew how these hinges worked.  Unfortunately, no one seemed to know what I was talking about (I guess they are unusual even here), but there were several promises to pursue help.  Meanwhile, I allowed Sarah to go get ready for work while I tried my best to pry the heads off the hinge pins.  

Bathroom door, after escape

It was around this time that I started thinking about those people on TV who are kidnapped and then dig their way out with their fingernails.  And here I had a utility tool, a paring knife, and a small framing hammer – surely I could escape!  Then I started to consider whether I could crawl out the bathroom window (my apartment is on the 3rd floor) and somehow leap over to my back balcony which is only a couple feet from the window.  After entertaining this thought for a few minutes, I realized that would be impossible since there are wrought-iron security bars welded onto all my windows – duh!  We did entertain the idea of me somehow getting up to, through, and then down again from the opening over the door, but there was still the fact that the bathroom door would need to be opened at some point.  If there was no other way to get the door open, then we might as well go at it with a sledge hammer or machete or something.  (I later pondered whether I would have been able to kick my way through the door if no one else had been home….it’s only made of thin particle board, so I think I could have done it if needed.)  =)  

Door jam, carved hole, broken metal

Finally help arrived in the form of Stephen, the head of security at EMI.  Everyone’s first instinct was to try to pick the lock.  I had to assure different people several times that I had a key on the inside with me and that the door was not locked.  Stephen came up with the idea of cutting the hinges off with a saw (destroying the hinges, but saving the door), so he went back to EMI to get the saw.  Robert returned with Stephen per my request, in case he was able to offer any help, but by the time they had returned, my landlady and a carpenter of some sort had arrived.  They tried wiggling and forcing the door for a while, but after they realized that would not work, the man climbed the step ladder, punched out the screen, and then crawled through the opening over the door, feet first – quite an awkward, yet rather impressive feat considering he had nothing to step onto on the other side.  He tried the butter knife (with more vigor than I had) for a while and then the saw, but at the end of the day, the only solution was to chip away a hole in the door jam to free the “tongue” and allow the door to be forced open from the outside, twisting the thin piece of metal holding the tongue in place.  

Some of my rescuers; Note the emergency egress over the door

I was very grateful for all of my rescuers – all 5 of them.  =)  By the time I got out, I had been stuck for 1.5 hours!  Understandably, Sarah and I were allowed to come into work late that morning.  I never felt too anxious about being stuck in the bathroom since I knew I would eventually get out somehow, even if it was by breaking down the door, and because I knew that at least people knew where I was and were working on getting me out.  I began to wonder how long it would have been before someone would have come to check on me if I had been by myself.  Work starts at 8:30, so I’m sure someone would have called me by 9 to see where I was.  But since I didn’t have my phone, would they have thought my battery had died or I was busy doing some volunteer activity in the community?  How worried would they have to get before someone actually came over to my apartment to knock on my door?  Fortunately, I think they could have heard me yell if they did come to my door.  I also wondered if anyone would have heard me or thought anything of it if I had yelled for help out my bathroom window.  Since I got stuck at 7am, I’m sure I would have been there for several more hours if I had been home alone.  I feel like it was an answer to an unanticipated prayer that Sarah had NOT yet found an apartment of her own and was there to facilitate my rescue.  =)  Interestingly, the very next day she DID find a place to live, although she still hasn’t been able to move into it yet.

Now, I wonder if I should take my cell phone into the bathroom with me whenever I’m home by myself….