Rosa’s back…

7:45am, December 1, 2011. My office, Tete, Mozambique.

Man, how is it December already?! Sheesh, time is crazy…almost as crazy as a blazing-hot Christmas season (but not quite). There are a few things about Mozambique that I don’t think I’d ever get used to, were I to stay here indefinitely, and one of those is the season/holiday mix-up. My childhood memories and associations are waaay too strong for me to be okay with sunburns on Christmas Eve and decorated palm trees, and advent candles that melt before you light them. Ha.

Several folks have recently asked me about my housing situation, which had yet to be resolved when I mentioned it early last month. I hoped to wait to give an update until things were finally settled, but that’s yet to happen, and the story has actually taken some funny and ridiculous turns in the past weeks. So, for those of you who’ve asked, here’s the Reader’s Digest version of my personal housing crisis:

When Cheng and I found the new house I mentioned in my post from November 11, we interacted with a guy named Armando, who initially told us that his mother owned the place and that he’d be managing it for her. He had the keys to the house and some authority in speaking to the family that was moving out, so we took his word at face value, and signed a rental contract with him. We also paid the first three months’ rent upfront, which is pretty standard practice here; I had him sign a hand-written receipt for the first month’s rent, but he said that he’d bring me an official, printed receipt for the second and third months’ rent (which was the equivalent of about US$1,000).

To make a long story short, Armando ended up not being the owner of the house, and was actually contracted by the real owner simply to find renters. The contract he signed with us was illegitimate – the real owner never saw it – and after several weeks of broken promises to bring the receipt, Armando disappeared with the second and third months’ rent.

Cheng and I finally figured out what was going on at about the same time as Armando’s disappearance, and Cheng tracked down the real owner of the house at his workplace. Apparently the owner was about to kick us out of the house, as we were living there without having signed any contract that he knew about, and he had only received one month’s rent. Cheng explained the situation to him, and the owner said that because we didn’t have any evidence regarding the missing money, he wouldn’t have anything to do with its recovery. He also said that we’d have to sign a new contract, with him this time, and the document he produced ended up being very different from the one we’d originally signed with Armando. The new contract took away lots of the selling features we had liked, and gave us much more responsibility for the house in the case of emergencies. The owner gave a copy of the contract to Cheng last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and allowed us the weekend to think it over.

As you can imagine, last weekend was a tricky one, and Cheng and I had lots to figure out. For one, we wanted to try and track down the guy who stole our money, and see what we could do about getting it back. Second, we had strong suspicions that the real owner and the fake landlord were actually working together, as the new contract felt like a bit of a bait-and-switch maneuver, so we decided to look for a quick exit strategy (which would ordinarily be something of a joke; remember that it had taken us more than a month of dedicated looking to find that place, with Tete’s crazy housing market). Also, we had three or four people employed to do carpentry, electrical and plumbing repairs at the time, so we tried to figure out how best to cancel their work and reimburse them fairly for the half-jobs they had completed. Ha. It was a mess, and we prayed a lot.

For those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you may remember, from way back in the beginning of my term, a very long story about an impromptu road trip that I took with an eccentric Mozambican woman I met in a restaurant. (If you don’t, it’s probably not worth going back to.) In any case, I had also been looking for a house at the time of that trip, and last weekend I remembered that Rosa (that’s the woman’s name) had mentioned something during our drive about some domestic workers’ quarters she was building on her property.

Two years had passed since I’d spoken with Rosa, but I still had her number in my phone (under the name “Rosa Crazy” – oops), and decided to give the idea a shot. I sent her a long text message with obscure details about myself and our short-lived friendship, she remembered me and called back, and we decided to meet that night and talk over the situation. I ended up running errands with her and her Australian husband, David, for well over three hours, and by the end we had struck a deal. They’re really wonderful folks, and, even aside from the housing situation, it was really good to reconnect with them.

So, here’s the current situation, as it stands: The place we’re going to move into is still in construction, and is probably about a month away from completion. Rosa and David spend 95 percent of their time living and working out in the bush, so they’re going to let us live in their own house until the construction is done (which is kind of weird, but extremely generous and trusting of them), and we’ll help oversee the building process. We signed a contract yesterday, and will probably move into their place in the next several days.

Whew.

In reflection, the past month has been hard, and good. It’s amazing to me how God provides for our needs, and how He’s able to set up unlikely and funny ways out of tricky situations. Several of my friends around town have counseled Cheng and me to lie to the fake and real landlords, setting up traps or taking advantage of them to “make things right”, and it’s been cool to refuse those options, trust God to take care of us (don’t get the impression that I’m super-holy or anything, though – there were definitely some pretty anxious moments in there…), and see alternate options unfold in front of us. Man, He’s so good.

It’s also been hard to feel like my time is being wasted, and that I’m unable to engage fully with my work because I have so many other things to take care of. That’s certainly a cultural issue on my part – the idea of fixing a value to one’s time is something I brought with me to Mozambique – but it’s a difficult one to release. I’m definitely ready to get settled down, get our stuff out of storage (Cheng and I have been sharing a single spoon and mug for the past month and a half. Ha!), and return to a semi-normal lifestyle for the last months of my contract. I’ll keep you posted.

Hey, before I wrap this up, I just want to say thanks to the folks here in Tete and in other parts of the world for all of your prayers, care, and for taking the time to read these posts. I really appreciate you people, and the role you’ve played in my time here. So, thank you!

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