One of the first things we found out here is that the house we will be staying in isn’t ready for us yet. The hospital CEO has been eliciting help from the other physicians and their wives to get the house ready for us. The most wonderful thing they have done is added a bathroom! The house is 3.5 bedrooms and had only 1 full bathroom. Just in the last two weeks they have added a very nice master bathroom.
They also had plans to redo the kitchen counter tops, the living & dining room floors, and the inside paint! They were just waiting to surprise us and have our input on the final choice of colors etc. Apparently, the house we will be renting is the 4th house to get some updates and the plan is to slowly continue to update all the houses owned by the hospital! We know they want us to feel at home, and stay in Africa forever! They also say, that keeping up the houses is good for resale value of the homes, so we are glad be involved in the upgrade.
They also had plans to redo the kitchen counter tops, the living & dining room floors, and the inside paint! They were just waiting to surprise us and have our input on the final choice of colors etc. Apparently, the house we will be renting is the 4th house to get some updates and the plan is to slowly continue to update all the houses owned by the hospital! We know they want us to feel at home, and stay in Africa forever! They also say, that keeping up the houses is good for resale value of the homes, so we are glad be involved in the upgrade.
While this is a very nice surprise for us, it also means we are staying in a hotel for a few weeks. The hotel they picked for us is very nice: within walking distance to the hospital still, and we have the use of a pool, access to the internet while in the lobby, and use of the hotel kitchen for cooking. We even got to make a few Skype phone calls home this week! Though, even here, the electricity & internet have been off a couple of times for several hours.
It has also sparked some internal debate about cost. We are trying to walk the (fine?) line between graciously accepting their offer; honoring the desire to put their best foot forward versus remembering that we are here to serve not to be served. So, though I find it moderately distressing, I have been convinced that the hospital is using a small part of their funds to maintain the houses they own, and part of that means a new bathroom and kitchen for us to use!
Since I have been in the hospital most days, Darryl is supervising the remodeling of the house. We hope to get it finished in time for the container with our furniture to arrive. We have learned that it crossed the ocean safely and has landed in South Africa. They say it is headed overland toward Mozambique!
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