More Nigerian Details

From my hotel room in Paris, Port D'Orleans area to be exact, I have time to catch you up on things that happened in NGA before we left.

We moved back into "our" house on Thursday -- that was ahead of schedule which, we've been told, was a first for the contractors on the camp! Jim emailed BB (remember, Big Boss) to let him know how pleased we were with their prompt responses and thorough work. The carpets were all yanked and beneath them the tile was in great shape. It took a lot of solvent for the workers to get the glue off the tiles (the carpet was like an indoor/outdoor thin stuff that had been glued on). Carpet in NGA is not a good idea due to all of the moisture. Lucy will be able to clean the tiles daily. She loves the tiles in the sitting room because they sparkle after she's cleaned them and she says it makes her pleased to look back and smile at her work when it looks so clean! 3 ACs work and the kitchen one is getting replaced soon. The cost to run this camp is amazing -- we have 7 ACs in our house, alone. And they're on almost non-stop, depending on power outages when the generators are getting worked on. The leaks in the bathroom have been solved after much tearing out of cement walls, replumbing, etc. And they fixed a lot of little things -- caulking around the tub, etc.

"There's a better way, guys!" is something I find myself thinking often. One of the problems is that each worker just does exactly what he's told and doesn't initiate a lot of individual thinking. So, if he's supposed to paint the ceiling, he doesn't think about what that might do to the tiles on the floor, the furniture they moved into the bathroom when they were pulling carpet in the bedroom, the bathroom door, etc. So, we had to ask someone else to get the paint off of the afore mentioned items. And paint is still to be found everywhere it was not meant to be. That's representative of the style of work in general.

Lucy to the rescue -- she and I have talked about the whole workers'-style enough that she knows what "Madame" wants and this week, while we're gone, she is taking on a bunch of projects -- cleaning paint off is just the beginning. She's washing down the walls and shelves in the closets because the moldly smell permeated the wood (the closets are actually like built-in wardrobes). She's washing and ironing every curtain -- also retaining some of the odors. She's washing the couches and chairs as best she can. She's deep cleaning the bathrooms -- especially the grout/caulk stuff that can grow mold faster than you can sneeze. I anticipate that she will be beaming when we return and she shows us all that she's done. I told her that my son, Brad, would call her a tank -- and that's a compliment. So we laughed on that one because we agreed that most women wouldn't appreciate being described as a tank but she understood the meaning!

Because Lucy had been cleaning both houses and personally carried multitudes of loads of breakables and clothes back to the house herself because she didn't trust the workers (especially after the glass in the frame broke on the first little move) -- we treated her to lunch at the clubhouse. She was honored and embarrassed at the same time. She'd never been in it. I'm confident she's never eaten in any real restaurant because she didn't know about the bread plate, the extra silver, etc. She cautiously watched our every move and mimicked us. She giggled at the idea of being served by workers who live in the same maids quarters as she does. The whole thing was bizarre. She'd never experienced one-way mirrored windows and the clubhouse has one entire wall of them along the pool. She'd seen the outside from far away and knew she couldn't see in so imagine her shock when she found that you could see out. When she asked me about it, I described to her how funny it is when men walk by the windows outside and use them as a mirror to tuck in shirts and fix their hair -- another great time of laughter from Lucy!!!

We left on Friday evening, feeling very grateful for all that has been done to make our house a pleasant place to live. The 2 guys heading up the project are from India and one of them struggles with English. I think he'd done some preparation when he proudly said to me with a bow -- "It is a pleasure to work on Madame's house. Our job is to make you happy. Madame is such a positive lady (he struggled with the word 'positive' so I know he'd looked it up or asked another one who speaks his language) that it brings us great joy to work for you. Whatever you need -- new furniture, something built, something fixed -- we are neighbors so please ask any one of us. When you are happy, we are happy." And then he said something about because I'm always happy, they are always happy and laughed!!!

These are all such lovable people! It's weird, but, I really enjoy hanging out with the workers more than the residents -- the gardeners, Christian (the produce guy), the drivers, etc. So many of them love Jesus and it's just great to visit with them. They have so little yet they have such joy. Whereas the residents have so much but just think about what they don't have that they're used to!! I'm getting more opportunities to encourage the residents, though. One gal wanted some counsel about her marriage of six years. She's a recording artist in Indonesia and she's put her life on hold for her husbands' career. We'll talk more, I'm sure. Another gal, one of the French women, wants me to teach her boys about Christianity. She's agnostic but wants them exposed to all beliefs. She's proud of being tolerant of all faiths. And she's very tolerant of Islam. But she doesn't see how very biased her view of Christianity is!!! (and her view of Bush, Houstonians -- she lived in Houston for 4 years, U.S., etc.)

What great adventures await us upon our return to Nigeria!!!