Insult to Injury

A few days ago, the electrogaz man came to my house.  He speaks no English or French and is extremely creepy. Rwandan physical boundaries are in general much closer can American and can be uncomfortable at times. This man far exceeds any normal discomfort and each time I see him manages to freak me out in new and horrible ways. The first time I ever met him, I was sitting on Sue’s porch reading a book and he came up and grabbed my feet. And held fast until I managed to wriggle away. On Wednesday, he came in and went about his business with no attempt to explaining it to me. But, he did come over and after shaking my hand, grabbed me and put me into a headlock. When I managed to untangle myself from his smelly and ripe armpit, he grabbed my face and slapped it! Now, I think it was meant to be a friendly tap, but it was hard enough to make me gasp and recoil. Clearly, the only reasonable thing for me to do was run into my house.

A bit later, when I tried to turn on my kettle, I realized it wasn’t turning on. Hmmm….. The lights weren’t working either. I called Janiver (the bursar at my school and my guardian angel) and she made a few phone calls. Apparently, they had shut off the water and power for non-payment. BUT I had never gotten a bill! It was past 5pm so Janiver said we could work out the next day.  So this man had come for the express purpose of shutting off my power and had no only NOT mentioned this to me, but had decided that assaulting me would be  a better plan than trying to explain to this to me, or finding someone who might be able to.

Long story short… our entire compound shares a water bill (electric is pre-paid, but they shut it off to scare you into paying the water bill…since water is on so infrequently, it could be awhile before you notice that its off officially). The one house in our little compound that has Rwandese dwellers had received the bill and then not mentioned it to anyone else (or paid it). Apparently, when the bill comes, we are all supposed to sit down and decide who will pay what. A flawed system at best but pretty impossible if there is no notification that the bill exists. But, the important thing is that now my power is on! (until the next billing cycle at least….)