Olympic Village
A while back, I was trying to take advantage of the “fast” internet at Kelli’s lab, when she burst through the door:
You’re never going to believe this!
Uh oh.
Unfortunately, Kelli has said this exact phrase a few too many times. Usually it signifies that her employer and/or those meant to help us here have done something stupid/maddening/counter-productive.
This time, the tone of exasperation wasn’t because of some Texas folks, but because we got some unexpected news:
Apparently we’ve been given a house—TWO houses—and a car (!) by the Ministry of Health! And now we have to go out to Cabassango to accept them from the governadora.
– WHAT? Right now? Don’t they know we already have housing?
Yeah. Right now. Paulino is coming to pick us up. There’s going to be a news crew there and everything.
Never mind that we were finally settled into our own apartment after six months of the Staff House or that we had been asking for a car for nearly a year. We were now expected to break our lease, pack our bags and move out to the “Olympic Village,”1 a condo complex that had been built for the Africa Cup of Nations soccer tournament a few years back.
You gotta love Angola. You plead (beg?) for months and months and nothing happens, so you take matters into your own hands. Then all the sudden, someone somewhere decides to finally give you the things that you’ve stopped asking for. And it turns into an emergency that you must do what they say RIGHT NOW.
The powers that be told us on October 17 that they had promised our landlord we would move out by October 15.
Uhm. Ha. No.
We put our foot down and let everyone know that we would move out in a reasonable amount of time—at the end of the month.
To be honest, I wasn’t too excited about moving. Our apartment was in a good area, close to the grocery stores and just down the street from where I play soccer. Suddenly we would have to live in a suburb 15 minutes away, in a cookie-cutter complex you could pretty much find anywhere.
Now that we’ve been at the Aldeia Olympica for a few weeks, I’m actually coming to prefer it here. Sure, we don’t have the central location or the charms of the other place, but there’s something to be said for creature comforts: the complex has a lap pool, a big gym and even a soccer pitch. The distance to town hasn’t been a big deal and having a car has given us a bit more freedom. There’s even a daily cleaning service. Luckily, they knock before coming in. I’d prefer not to have any more shower mishaps.
